From Rachael Herron’s book launch, an awesome conversation between her and Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars) about what it’s like to launch a book in the middle of a pandemic!
Transcript:
Edward Giordano: [00:00:00] Hey everyone! I’m Ed, Rachael’s assistant. As you know, she’s off busy moving to New Zealand and we wanted to get this great recording from the Hush Little Baby launch at Murder by the Book out into the podcast world. This is an awesome conversation between Pretty Little Liars’ author, Sarah Shepherd, and Rachael about Rachael’s new book and both of their writing processes. Special thanks to John at Murder by the Book in Houston for letting us use this audio who also hosts many other great author events on their Facebook and YouTube page. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show!
John McDougall: [00:00:38] Hi, everybody! Thanks for joining us this evening. This is John. I am the event coordinator at Murder by the Book here in Houston, and I’m so excited for tonight’s event. But before we get started, I just wanted to give everybody a couple of general announcements about what’s going on in the store. So if you have not come to visit us in a while, we have been open since October for in-store browsing, so you can come visit us. We’re still limited to six people in the store at a time, just because it’s a small space. I’m sure, in the next couple of weeks, we will probably adjust that a little bit with the new CDC regulations. But even with those, we’re still asking everybody to please wear a mask when you come in. As many of you know, with us being in Houston, so close to the medical center, we do have a lot of immuno-compromised people that come in that are getting treatment at MD Anderson and we just want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable in the space. So we hope that you will continue to mask up when you come to visit us, but please come visit us. We know that not everybody is getting out and about just yet. So if you were still doing curbside pickup, if you want to do that, just give us a call when you pull up. We used to have a table where we would set your books outside. We’re not putting the table out anymore mostly because we’re lazy booksellers in generally forget that the table is outside. So inevitably we would set the alarm, walk out the door to lock up and realize there was a table in there and try to scramble to get it in before the alarm went off. So just give us a call when you pull up and we’re happy to run books out to the parking lot for you.
John McDougall: [00:01:54] We’ve got lots of great stuff coming up. So if you have not checked out murderbooks.com lately, we’ve got a bunch of virtual events, we had done over 200 of these with over 350 authors since the pandemic started. So those are all up for watching on our Facebook and our YouTube channel. Next Monday, we’re going to be doing another a Gore and Pulse Event. Next Thursday, we’re super excited, we’re going to be chatting with May Cobb about her new book, The Hunting Wives, which comes out Tuesday and then another great Texas author, Amy Gentry, is going to be in conversation with her. So we hope that you guys will check that out. Also when you’re perusing the website, make sure you check out the signed book and signed personalized pages cause we’ve been getting, we just confirmed a lot of really cool sign stuff. And also, a general disclaimer, we haven’t had any issues in a couple of days, but sometimes when we do our virtual events, especially on Facebook, we will get some spammers pop up and post links asking you to click away from the event to go somewhere else, to put in your credit card info to watch the event, you don’t have to do that. The event is free to watch. You’re watching it already. So you don’t have to click away to get somebody, your credit card info to watch something that is out already. If any of those pop up, I will block them as I see them. But sometimes I just wanna make sure you guys don’t click on them before I can get to them.
John McDougall: [00:03:05] As I said, I’m so excited for tonight’s event. R.H. Herron, Rachael Herron, is one of my favorite people in the world, as we were talking before. She has come and stayed at my house when she was in town. I visited her out in San Francisco with her wife and everybody that lives out there. So I’m so excited that we’re doing this. If you guys have not read Hush Little Baby yet, you are in for a ride. It is a nail biter. It’s twisty. It’s so fantastic. And we’re super excited to have Sarah Shepherd to be chatting with us this evening. So I’m going to bring them out. I’m going to start with Rachael. How are you tonight, Rachael?
Rachael Herron: [00:03:35] I’m so thrilled to see you. I would really, really like to give you a hug, but this will do. Are you in the downstairs bedroom where I sleep?
John McDougall: [00:03:43] No, I am actually, I’m in our, in the library and the computer room that we just repainted and just got new bookcases. So it’s all like,
Rachael Herron: [00:03:50] It looks beautiful by the way.
John McDougall: [00:03:51] Thank you. Pro tip, don’t remodel a room in your house when you’re serving on jury duty in the middle of a pandemic, because it’s exhausting. Like, don’t do it.
Rachael Herron: [00:04:00] I cannot even imagine! Good for you. Well, it looks great.
John McDougall: [00:04:02] Thanks. Congratulations on the new book, Hush Little Baby. It just came out yesterday. So for anybody who is watching, if you pre-order from, or if you order the book from us, Rachael will send you a signed book like. So when you order, when I send you your order confirmation, I will send you her email address so she can get in touch with you, and if you want to personalize, let her know. But so if anybody is tuning in and doesn’t know Rachael AKA, R.H. Herron, she received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland. She is the author of the thriller’s Stolen Things and this new one, Hush Little Baby, as well as the best-selling author of more than two dozen books under a different name. She lives and teaches in California. And as I said, we’re super excited to have Sarah Shepherd with us this evening. I’m going to bring her out. How are you tonight, Sarah?
Sara Shepard: [00:04:46] Hi! I’m good! How are you?
John McDougall: [00:04:48] Thanks so much for being here with us.
Sara Shepard: [00:04:51] I’m so happy to be here.
John McDougall: [00:04:53] So, Sarah Shepherd is the number one New York times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series, the Lion Game series, the Heiress, the Eliza’s, the Perfectionist series, and Reputation, which is her most recent. We have copies of both authors’ books in store. So if you want to order those, you can do that at murderbooks.com. I’m going to drop a link in the comments in just a second, so you can get more information about them. And I’m going to turn this over to Sarah in just a second. But before I do, if you guys have any questions while she and Rachael are talking, please, please, please post those in the comments on Facebook and YouTube. I will be collecting those while I’m listening to them chat. And I will pop back in and just a little bit to relay those. So Sarah, I’m going to turn it over to you. You guys have fun and I will see you in just a little bit.
Rachael Herron: [00:05:36] Thank you, John.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:37] All right, thank you! Hi! How are you?
Rachael Herron: [00:05:41] Hi, Sara! It’s so nice to meet you in person. We were kind of saying a little bit backstage that we have a mutual bestie.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:48] We do.
Rachael Herron: [00:05:50] Cari Luna, who is an amazing writer and wrote the Revolution of Every Day. And, she said she’s here tonight. So shout out to Cari.
Sara Shepard: [00:05:56] Hi, Cari!
Rachael Herron: [00:05:58] But because of that, you and I go back like maybe almost 20 years.
Sara Shepard: [00:06:03] Yeah. So I, it’s so funny because when I got the request to be on, in this event, which I was really excited about, I was like, I know that name! Why do I know the name R.H. Herron? And I think, I mean, I know the other name that you published under, but I really knew you from the days of blogging and we both used to be really into knitting. You probably were a more talented knitter than I was. I just made stuff but I feel like you’ve designed patterns and like.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:41] I have like designed four patterns and they were so broken. They were,
Sara Shepard: [00:06:45] Really?
Rachael Herron: [00:06:46] They were not good at all.
Sara Shepard: [00:06:47] I don’t know if I made them, I think, did you do a lot of socks?
Rachael Herron: [00:06:51] I always had socks on the go.
Sara Shepard: [00:06:52] Okay.
Rachael Herron: [00:06:54] Yeah, and I still do. Maybe that’s like, that’s one of the few things that just stuck around. Do you think that, I know we’re already like in the weeds now, but do you think that as we get more and more into writing, that that kind of scratched that itch for creation? I don’t know that myself
Sara Shepard: [00:07:10] You know what I think has happened with knitting is my phone, unfortunately.
Rachael Herron: [00:07:15] Oh yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:07:18] So, knitting used to be my thing where, you know, at night, I’d watch TV. I wish I could have done it reading, and I never was able to like, turn the pages on that. So I would always be watching TV. And, it was sort of my thing to do with my hands while I was watching the show. But now, unfortunately, our phones are so much more part of our lives. Like, you know, this is like the knitting, I’m talking about, this was like in 2006, 2007. So like smart phones weren’t as big of a thing.
Rachael Herron: [00:07:50] Yeah, yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:07:52] FaceTime, not FaceTime, Facebook, like all the social media stuff, like instant. I don’t think I even had email on my phone, any of that stuff. So I just didn’t look at it all the time. So now I’m just looking at it all the time. So it’s kind of like, oh yeah, I guess I could knit right now, but I’m playing this game on my phone or like doing a crossword on my phone or like doing whatever. And it just like feels too much to like use my fingers
Rachael Herron: [00:08:17] It always comes down to dopamine hits, right? What is it going to give you a bigger dopamine hits? I talk about, I talked about this with my students a lot, is like, are you going to, is it going to feel better to knit or to like write words that are not coming easily or just eat ice cream and watch Netflix? I just, I wanted, to look at TikTok.
Sara Shepard: [00:08:40] Yeah, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:08:41] The TikTok. The TikTok is the dopamine explosions. Are you on the TikTok yet?
Sara Shepard: [00:08:46] Yeah, you know. I like the TikTok. I am not a TikToker. I don’t do my own TikTok videos, but I enjoy TikTok, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:08:56] I do enjoy.
Sara Shepard: [00:08:57] I do, I watch a lot of dogs on TikTok. I mean, TikTok’s fun cause it’s just so mindless and it’s not like Instagram where you look through Instagram and you feel a little bit, I generally feel a little bit terrible about myself a lot of times, so I’m just like, ugh, I can’t, I can’t do that anymore. But so I think the bottom line is like, I would love to get back into knitting because I would just not, I would love not to be on my phone as much, but it’s a hard, it’s a hard habit to break. So anyway,
Rachael Herron: [00:09:29] Get back to me on it, get back to me on it.
Sara Shepard: [00:09:32] Yeah. That is how I got, I knew you were, and I knew that you were a talented writer even in your knitting blogs. So, I was so excited when I found out that you had moved into the Thriller world. But I am curious how that happened. Like, what is the progression of how, because you started out kind of writing romantic stories.
Rachael Herron: [00:09:59] Yeah. Like women’s fiction romance is where I started and it was Knit Lit.
Sara Shepard: [00:10:05] Yes.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:06] My first one was “How to Knit a Love Song” and that turned into a five book series, and then I wrote a knitting memoir. So I was definitely in the knit world really, really, really hard. But honestly, honestly, like I ran out of things to write about when it came to knitting. I’m rereleasing life in stitches, like the 10th anniversary edition, and I’m adding a couple of essays and you know, I’m putting these essays into the book and I’m like, oh yeah, I only have about two more essays in me. Like I, otherwise I would be scratching about it on the barrel. So then I was reaching out, looking for other things and I did three or four kind of family women’s fiction, a little bit darker themes, a little bit heavier. They did not sell well, although they were really, really books of my heart.
Sara Shepard: [00:10:57] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:10:58] So I kind of, you know, bummed in that industry, but what I was reading was thrillers. I’ve always read thrillers. I’m not as big a mist, like a solid, you know, mystery, mystery person. I am a thriller person. I want to be scared. I want to, I didn’t really want to be inside. I kind of want the women’s fiction could mash up with thriller. I love domestic thriller. I love being in the family, looking at that kind of structure, and how I got into it was I came up, how did I get into it? I came up with an idea, oh! my agent, hello, Susanna. If you’re watching, she made me write the whole thing as she does. And then, and what I did was I wrote a mainstream contemporary, more on the women’s fiction side novel that was really full of emotion and connection and heart because that’s what comes out of my fingers when I write. And she just kept saying, make it scarier, make it scarier, make it faster. All of my beautiful prose,
Sara Shepard: [00:12:03] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:12:04] All of the sentences that just sang, I swear to God, she was just like, nope, this is beautiful, but it’s got to go, just get faster, just get faster. And, so that was Stolen Things. And then I had a contract for the second book and my editor did the same thing. So what I do is I tend to write the same kind of book. And then I speed it up. Then I add the gasoline and a match and I light it on fire after I’ve written the first couple of crappy drafts.
Sara Shepard: [00:12:28] Okay. That’s interesting because the way it starts, I mean, it starts in a really scary place, but even the first chapter, you can tell that something is a little bit off, you know, you can tell immediately. So that was not like an early draft or because you, there’s also the character development. Yeah. I mean,
Rachael Herron: [00:12:50] I don’t think so. Yeah, my, I think my strength is character development. I think character development and the interactions between characters. That’s what, that’s what I really love to spend time in, but I can definitely spend too much time in it. I can just drag it on forever. I could, you know, the kitchen table scenes are just my absolute crush and I always have to write them and then, and then nix them. But yeah, that one, that one I really, and I just got somebody who added me on Instagram and she left the best review in her, in her bookstagram, and it said something like this was, you know, a slow build up until the midpoint, and then, oh my God, like the roller coaster came off the tracks and it was, I think she said, and the banana peels, you know, it just went banana peels sideways, and she just loved it. But the words that she used was kind of the way I felt when I was writing it too. I was like, build, build, build, build, step, step, step, step, step. Not that there’s not a lot of stabbing, well there is a little bit, but, you know, yeah, so that’s how I got into it and I really, I really love reading it and I know what we’re talking about my book today. Can we talk about your book real-quick? Cause I just read Reputation and I enjoyed it so much!
Sara Shepard: [00:14:05] Oh, thank you.
Rachael Herron: [00:14:06] So you do this incredible job of always, okay. And I want to actually talk about craft with you because I think one of the things that I’m always struggling with a little bit is the twist. And you had so many twists in that book. I always thought I knew what was going to happen next. And then you always yanked to the rug out from under me. Is that something that comes naturally to you? Can I learn it? How do I do I learn it?
Sara Shepard: [00:14:31] Oh my gosh. I feel like with almost all of my books, I start out thinking it’s going to be one twist and then I’m like, that twist is amazing! And then as I’m writing to that, I’m doing, I’m in the middle of this actually right now with something that I’m working on, where I’m like, thought I knew the end and then I’m like, no, that’s not the end. So I feel like, no, I mean I think I come to them as I’m writing and sometimes even like in later drafts.
Rachael Herron: [00:15:07] Okay, that makes me feel so much better.
Sara Shepard: [00:15:10] Yeah, no. Kind of the same, in the same way I mean, I can’t, especially in like reputation, I feel like the sort of person who did it, not to give anything away, but like, I feel like that was a different person maybe in earlier drafts. I mean, I worked on a series in a series years ago where, you know, I think I wrote a whole first book of the series thinking it was going to be the bad guy was like somebody, a different role. And then I was like, oh god, I hope it still works because there were 600 books or something that I had to do. But it did, but it did. But so no, I think I have a general idea and I sort of worked towards that, but yeah, I mean, I just, I do try to think of of a lot of twists, but it is not, it, it does not kind of flow out of me super easily.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:17] That makes me feel better.
Sara Shepard: [00:16:18] But so, but I like doing it and its fun to think up really crazy things. But sometimes, I have to pull back because it’s like, my problem is that I get a little over complicated. Like, your problem is writing too many kitchen table scenes. I write in way too much complication. So I always have to kind of simplify. There’s like way too many steps to, or maybe things that just like aren’t plausible or,
Rachael Herron: [00:16:47] I love that though and I like and I really, love it when, exactly what you’re saying is when you think you know what you’re doing.
Sara Shepard: [00:16:57] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:16:58] In a book, and then you get to where, usually I get close to where I think I’m going, and then something smacks me in the head and surprises me. And if I get that knee-jerk jolt of, oh, I can’t do that. Then that’s usually the answer or awesome, that’s the answer.
Sara Shepard: [00:17:17] Yeah, no like I’m writing something now where I thought I was going in a direction and then I just was like, this is not working. And I don’t know if this happens to you but I was really cranky about it for a few days because I just, because you kind of panic because, if you have a contract for a book, you know, you’re like, oh my god I have to hand something in. But then I did kind of, I think I figured it out and it’s kind of satisfying to figure it out, you know. But, especially with thrillers, there’s a lot of figuring out where,
Rachael Herron: [00:17:49] There’s so much figuring out.
Sara Shepard: [00:17:50] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:17:51] Honestly, it takes a lot of time and sometimes, I have to draw myself diagrams of,
Sara Shepard: [00:17:57] Oh, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:17:58] If this, then that and she’s, she is over here at this point. So this can’t happen.
Sara Shepard: [00:18:04] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:18:05] And I’ve forgotten about that person and I have just worked my way into a hole. And I wish, I wish that I plotted more, but I try my best but I just, it just, all the plans always go to the side.
Sara Shepard: [00:18:17] Yeah. So you are not really a plotter?
Rachael Herron: [00:18:20] I’m a wannabe plotter. Look, I’m in the hotel, like I told you about, and they have these little bottles of water. And doesn’t this make you feel like you’re at a book signing? Like don’t you?
Sara Shepard: [00:18:31] I love it! Yes!
Rachael Herron: [00:18:32] I was like, I’m gonna drink this during the book launch. Plotter. I usually know the inciting incident, the midpoint, and I sometimes have a glimmer of the dark moment. And then I write towards those places in the Elmore Leonard, you know. Drive as far as you can see with your headlights. I have tried to do very detailed outlines and it’s like my brain says thank you for spending two weeks doing that detailed outline and we’re putting it in the trash now because you did a bad job. So, yeah
Sara Shepard: [00:19:06] Yeah, for a lot of my stuff, I would write really detailed outlines and it, it just, it was nice. It was good to have the road map but I feel like, even so, it still didn’t end up what the outline, what the outline was because you just have to kind of get in there and know what you’re, and see what these characters want and I don’t know, yeah. But I love your main character.
Rachael Herron: [00:19:37] Thank you!
Sara Shepard: [00:19:39] Back to Hush Little Baby. She’s in a very interesting predicament. And I feel like your publicist told me that you kind of were inspired as a, ambulance dispatcher?
Rachael Herron: [00:19:58] 911 dispatcher.
Sara Shepard: [00:20:01] Yeah. Not an ambulance dispatcher, 911 dispatcher.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:04] I also dispatch the ambulance. So yes, that would do. Yeah
Sara Shepard: [00:20:07] Like, sounds so fascinating. I feel like that would be great research as a thriller writer. I’m sure you heard all kinds of interesting stories. And is that true and can you talk a little bit about it?
Rachael Herron: [00:20:25] Yeah. So, when I got my masters in creative writing, I saw my friends going into writing and then not writing.
Sara Shepard: [00:20:35] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:20:36] Also, I had spent a lot of money on this diploma and I had a lot of debt and all of the freeway flying teaching jobs that I, that I you know, I taught for a very, very short amount of time and realized that I couldn’t live in the bay area on $19,000 a year. So, I decided to become a 911 dispatcher because I saw it in a trade magazine of jobs when I was looking to try to get a truck driving job, I just wanted something that was absolutely divorced from writing in all the ways.
Sara Shepard: [00:21:05] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:06] And I had this really selfish, very selfish thought that was, I bet 911 could give me a great view, a great window into the human condition, and I was completely right. And I feel like between 911 and all the stories I heard over 17 years of doing that, and People Magazine, I have all the story ideas I ever need for life.
Sara Shepard: [00:21:31] Yeah, no that’s so
Rachael Herron: [00:21:34] Yeah
Sara Shepard: [00:21:35] That’s so lucky. Well, not lucky, but like I just remember
Rachael Herron: [00:21:38] Yeah
Sara Shepard: [00:21:39] I remember being in grad school, and one of our teachers being like, the best thing that you can do as a writer is go and do have some other job.
Rachael Herron: [00:21:50] Yeah. Well,
Sara Shepard: [00:21:52] get experience,
Rachael Herron: [00:21:53] Which is so offensive when you hear it.
Sara Shepard: [00:21:56] Yeah. I didn’t take that advice. But,
Rachael Herron: [00:22:01] I actually had my very favorite professor of all time sat me down in his office and said, you know, Rachael, you are really, really talented writer and then he said two things. He says, I don’t, but I don’t know if you have the discipline to be a writer. And then he said, and I just don’t think you’ve lived enough. You need to get out there and have a life. And I was like, screw you, I know.
Sara Shepard: [00:22:23] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:24] And he, and he’s still a friend of mine and I love him and, but I always send him a copy of my books.
Sara Shepard: [00:22:29] Yeah. Hey look, didn’t think I had the discipline?
Rachael Herron: [00:22:34] I did have to learn the discipline so, yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:22:36] Yeah. Although maybe that was inspiring, maybe that was to kind of inspire you, you know like.
Rachael Herron: [00:22:42] He even admitted as much. Yeah. But so for this particular book, there was an, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but there was something that, that Jillian, the main character, she is a pregnant OB GYN. There’s something that she witnesses in the hospital, at, I think it’s right around the 30 or 40% mark. But she witnesses something happened in the hospital that I had never known could happen for real, for me.
Sara Shepard: [00:23:09] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:10] And it blew my mind and I, it really never left me. And there’s a bunch of those kind 911 stories that kind of got stuck in my psyche and seared into my soul. And they’ll eventually, some of them have worked their way out and some of them maybe won’t, but there, but the thing about being a dispatcher is, I really, I got out of the police and policing industry cause I didn’t want to be there, but I spent the majority of my time with fire medical. And every 911 call, you’re hearing the very first few seconds of the worst day of a person’s life.
Sara Shepard: [00:23:42] Oh, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:23:43] And if you get lucky, you get to, you know, give them the instructions to do the CPR that saves the person. But most of the time, because of very valid and good and sturdy HIPAA laws, you never know what happens. Like you hang up, the baby might or might not be breathing, the paramedics swoop in rip the baby out of the child’s arms and run toward the ambulance. And then I’m gonna eat my oatmeal and pick up the phone and talk to somebody about their beeping smoke detector, old lady who wants us to come over and change her batteries, which in fact, the fire department will do if that wheel is squeaky enough.
Sara Shepard: [00:24:19] Good to know.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:22] Exactly. So, I have thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of unfinished stories in my head that every once in a while I pull out and finish one fictionally.
Sara Shepard: [00:24:33] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:34] I just make up an ending for it.
Sara Shepard: [00:24:35] Yeah. I never thought about that. That you wouldn’t know and you never found out the end of most of these.
Rachael Herron: [00:24:43] Most of them, interestingly, there’s a lot of the baby thing was mentioned on purpose cause there’s a lot, there’s more sympathy and empathy around a baby. Like I remember one time when I got this call of a man whose voice was just shaking and he was at south shore center in Alameda and he was, he was a person who likes to look in trash cans and trash bags to see if there’s anything valuable inside. And he had found this paper grocery sack with the top folded over in the parking lot, like in the driving lane and he peeked into it and it had a baby.
Sara Shepard: [00:25:15] Oh, god.
Rachael Herron: [00:25:16] Inside, who had just been born. Yeah. And the baby stories, like we will, we’ll bend the HIPAA rules a little bit. Like I know that when she was at children’s hospital, they had, this is such an incredible detail that’s never made it into a book yet, but they had two glass jars and they had different words in them. Just slips of paper, holding different words. And when the nurses would get a baby, an abandoned baby in the hospital, they would pull one slip and the other slip. And that would be the baby’s name until she got adopted. And this baby’s name was Tennis Four. And I have never forgotten Tennis Four. And we knew that Tennis Four, I knew that she was hypothermic. I knew they got her, that they got her warmed up and I knew that she got adopted. And, you know, I assume that she got adopted but she was healthy and strong. So the baby stuff gets back to you but yeah, otherwise, dispatchers just have to live with a lot of uncertainty.
Sara Shepard: [00:26:11] Oh my gosh.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:12] And another writer. As a writer, we like certainty. You know, we like to make up that certainty.
Sara Shepard: [00:26:17] Yeah. Was it hard emotionally? I mean, it had to be, right?
Rachael Herron: [00:26:22] It was almost, it was almost never hard emotionally, not that I noticed.
Sara Shepard: [00:26:26] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:27] I know that it took me about three or four years after I stopped doing that job and went full-time writing to actually be able to sleep through the night just because it was, like for the last five years of my career, I lived in the firehouse and when 911 rang, if I was taking a sleep break, I was paged up. So there was just never a time that your adrenaline would go down. So that was hard and there were probably four or five, four or five stories that were really shook me up. But otherwise, it was really just all in a day’s work and you learn how to completely compartmentalize and,
Sara Shepard: [00:26:56] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:26:57] And then eat your oatmeal.
Sara Shepard: [00:26:58] Oh my gosh, honey. Are there a lot of training? It’s all about being the dispatcher that just, yeah
Rachael Herron: [00:27:05] It’s about six months to a year of basically on the job training where you’re plugged in with a senior dispatcher. And one day they just say, okay, you, now you talk, your first time, you say 911 emergency. What’s the address of the emergency? And then they say something insane and your trainers just shoves you out of the way. She’s just used to pushing your chair out of the way and taking over the call because, you know, if you hear that somebody has just been shot, you forget what the next question should be.
Sara Shepard: [00:27:31] Right. Sure. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. But I guess you learned to be cool under pressure, but yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:27:38] And it was also great because like we had to stay up all night. Most of the time I worked midnights for those 17 years and dispatchers get paid to stay awake when it’s quiet. They don’t get paid to clean or to make things or whatever. And most of my coworkers would watch TV, they would read books and magazines where they would, you know, cross stitch or knit. And I would write.
Sara Shepard: [00:28:02] Nice, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:28:03] I would sneak that writing time in while I was on the clock and that was, and so it was a really good job for that too.
Sara Shepard: [00:28:09] Yeah. Yeah. I just feel like, you’re just so lucky to have all these little experiences, especially after the last year. I feel like after the last year, I mean, just being stuck in our houses, like what does anybody have to write about? Like, it was the same day again. Completely uninspiring, but no, that is very, very cool. But back to, okay, so back to your, I mean, I just, I really just love your characters. And I, as I was saying, we were saying before, I just got the book, I think like Monday or Tuesday or something. So I’m not finished. But I just love that, you know, you dive so deeply into the characters right away. I mean, we, and there are like a lot of stakes. I mean, there’s sort of the, obviously she is kind of, she’s pregnant and it’s this awkward situation.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:21] That’s a really good way of putting it.
Sara Shepard: [00:29:23] Yeah, I don’t know how much I want to give away.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:24] I think it’s, I actually, I think it’s on the back of the book.
Sara Shepard: [00:29:28] Okay.
Rachael Herron: [00:29:29] That she is pregnant with her
Sara Shepard: [00:29:30] Ex’s
Rachael Herron: [00:29:32] Ex-wife’s biological child.
Sara Shepard: [00:29:33] Biological child. Which, you know, again, like I was saying before we got on, like, it has all the elements of things that I love and I just like, love relationships, things, and like sort of mess, you know, relationships when they go wrong and like being in these predicaments and, you know, I love also reading about motherhood. I am a mom, but like the not so pretty parts of motherhood and like. The moms that admit like, oh God, do I even want to do this? Like, I don’t know.
Rachael Herron: [00:30:05] That’s really at the core of the story for a lot of it. Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:30:09] Yeah. And where, you know, where did that come from or did that just sort of come from, you know?
Rachael Herron: [00:30:15] It was one of those, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, like you start writing the book one way and I think I always and a lot of us do this, I’m sure we go towards the obvious. We think it’s original and unique. And then by the time we get there, we’re like, well, that’s obvious. So, we have to do something else. And I, and I’m, I’m pretty damn sure that when I started writing the book, she and her wife were pregnant. And I think it was her biological child, our main character’s biological child. And then her wife leaves her. And that’s interesting. That’s fine, whatever. That happens every day. But, in, I was trying to deal with her ex-wife’s possession of this child. And I actually, called a, an attorney, down south, who does California law for gay couples who break up when they’re pregnant, which apparently is a thing I didn’t know. But I thought, what is Jillian, our main character’s Ex-wife, what are her rights? And I thought that was interesting. But way more interesting is what if this is not even biologically her child, what rights does Jillian, our main character have now?
Sara Shepard: [00:31:21] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:22] Now her wife has left her for, I think she leaves her for four or five months into the pregnancy.
Sara Shepard: [00:31:26] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:28] And what are those rights? And it was so funny. I appreciate this, Sarah. I called a bunch of places trying to talk to a lawyer for free cause I’m not going to, I didn’t want to pay for this kind of advice. I was just trying to get something on the back. I just said like, basically one question, would this would this fly? And I got, I only got one lawyer to call me back, but he was a writer and he spoke for 45 minutes and he picked my brain about, you know, self-publishing and what he should do with this book. And then he sent me a copy of his book when it published and it was fantastic.
Sara Shepard: [00:31:54] Aw, that’s awesome.
Rachael Herron: [00:31:55] It was one of those like really fun research times.
Sara Shepard: [00:31:57] Yeah. I feel like whenever I have tried to reach out to lawyers with like, or like, yeah, usually with legal questions with, you know, murders or whatever.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:07] Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:32:08] The responses I get are so unhelpful or just, I get no response. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:32:13] Yeah. I think no response, but this guy was super excited, kind of the opposite when you reach out to other professions, when you do. What has been the most interesting research person that you’ve ever talked to?
Sara Shepard: [00:32:27] Oh my goodness. I mean, my father-in-law used to work in law enforcement, so that’s been interesting. He’s just been a great person to talk to. You know, like, so in an investigation, like how, you know, if they have a suspect, do they like, look for other suspects or like are they pretty happy with that one suspect? And he’s like, no usually they’re pretty happy with that one or, you know. But so, you know, I’ll ask him about, you know, protocol, certain protocols and whatever. And I remember he took me along on a, like a training in case there was a terrorist attack or something like that. Which is like, you know in Pittsburgh, and this was like in the suburbs of his, it was like the terrorist attack was taking place at a playground, but they had like SWAT teams. It was really neat. I mean, they had a helicopter landing. And I, and he, he was super excited to have me along. And I’m trying to arrange like a ride along, and you know, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:37] There’s something you should be aware of called the curse of the ride-along, which is, basically, if you were on a ride along, nothing will happen.
Sara Shepard: [00:33:45] Yeah, I mean I have.
Rachael Herron: [00:33:46] You’ll spend seven hours in the car. And then as soon as you get in your car, there’s a pursuit.
Sara Shepard: [00:33:50] Totally. Right. I figured nothing would happen, but at least I’d like, get the vibe of like, okay, this is what it’s like. I don’t know. Because for me, I kind of have to, well, I mean, not in every situation, because I’ve written about some pretty crazy things, but like, it’s better if I’m kind of experiencing the thing along with whatever it is. But that’s it, I’ve again, I’ve written about some pretty crazy things. I would say that’s the most interesting, I’ve definitely talked to, you know, interesting people in different fields, but like, I don’t know if I have ever, you know, there are things that I think I feel like I should do. Like I, my next book is about sort of an intentional, what are they called? Intentional communities basically like commune. I don’t think that’s what they’re called anymore.
Rachael Herron: [00:34:48] It’s already signed me up for that because I want to read that.
Sara Shepard: [00:34:51] Yeah. So I’m like, really what I should do is I should go down there and stay for a few days and maybe I will, so that, that would definitely be probably the most interesting. Yeah, but you know, what if I get kidnapped or something and then I won’t come home, no, I don’t think that’ll happen.
Rachael Herron: [00:35:08] Research has just something that is so fun to do as a writer. And again, it’s one of those things that I always do at the end of my books, because,
Sara Shepard: [00:35:15] Me too.
Rachael Herron: [00:35:16] I don’t want to get, all of the time.
Sara Shepard: [00:35:17] I put placeholders.
Rachael Herron: [00:35:19] Placeholders, absolutely. I remember one time I was, my favorite was at a crematorium that I went to because I needed to see what happened behind the scenes. And this guy just did not care. He showed me everything. He told me all the secrets. He told me all these things that have gone wrong. It was the best.
Sara Shepard: [00:35:39] Yeah, that is cool. No, research, it is fun. And again, like this year, I just feel like we weren’t able to do anything. Although, when I started out, I mean, the internet has come so far and like YouTube. I remember for a book I was working on years ago. I was trying to look up old commercials from the seventies and eighties. And now like you just put that into YouTube and you can find anything. So it has made research for writers way, way, way easier.
Rachael Herron: [00:36:12] Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:36:13] So, the other thing that I wanted to talk about is that this is a, Jillian is, well, she had, she’s not with her wife. It’s her wife, right? They were married. Okay. Her wife anymore, and I just loved that this was a same-sex couple. And I feel like so many thrillers that I read, it’s like, it’s the perfect marriage, the perfect husband, not to knock any of those. They’re all very hetero-normative and, you know, very, I just, it was just really nice to read, like, because I don’t know. I just feel like it, obviously of course these people, everybody is going through, you know, creepy things or struggling things. But I just wonder why that’s not, there’s not more representation.
Rachael Herron: [00:37:05] I don’t know, it’s something that I’ve wondered too, but I’ve got to confess this to you, and it is something that I have forgotten until this moment that okay. So Stolen Things came out, and also with Dutton, and it was pretty political. It was, talking about police brutality, blah, blah, blah. And I know that perhaps I wasn’t going to do as political book the next time, just to, you know. I just remember this that I wrote this as a straight couple on the first draft. And then it just wasn’t working and it was so boring and it was so hetero-normative. And so it, I just did not care about this absolute jerk of a guy who was completely a cardboard cutout for the cheating husband leaving his pregnant wife.
Sara Shepard: [00:37:53] Right, yes!
Rachael Herron: [00:37:54] So, I sent it, I just shot an email to my editor, Stephanie, and I said, could I, can I make this the same sex? And for some reason, I’m stuck in 2002 in my head, right? And I was expecting her to say, well, you know, it just really might hurt the sales bottom line. She’s like, no, do it. That sounds great. And then I got really excited because this whole book is about women. It’s about women. It’s stuffed with women. There’s like one guy, I think, and I don’t remember who it was, but that was really, really, really fun for me. And I got to, you know, we don’t put ourselves, we put ourselves into all the books we write. And I obviously wasn’t writing about myself in any way, shape or form, but I did get to make her queer and she’s my first major, maybe my second major queer character. And also, I got to talk about addiction because she is,
Sara Shepard: [00:38:46] That’s right. That was gonna be my other question.
Rachael Herron: [00:38:48] Yeah, she’s a recovering alcoholic, which I am. And what I wanted to show was just somebody living their life as a recovering alcoholic, not somebody in the gutter, not somebody coming up out of the gutter, not somebody who thinks about alcohol every minute of the day, because I don’t. I just live my life. However, I will say today, as we said beforehand, like today, the floors are going into our house as we get ready to move to New Zealand, I’m staying in a hotel. I was doing my makeup in the bathroom near realizing I couldn’t see my eyeliner because I didn’t bring the right glasses. And I was like, yeah, a drink would be really good right now.
Sara Shepard: [00:39:24] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:39:25] And then, you know, and it runs through me and then it’s gone and the craving is gone and it takes, you know, 14 seconds or something like that. But I wanted to show Jillian like me just having an absolutely damn normal life and also going to some recovery meetings.
Sara Shepard: [00:39:37] Yeah. And I love that because it’s kind of in one of the really early chapters and it’s just sort of like, we’re at the meeting house. And I was like, wait, did she mention this earlier? And I kind of went back and I was like, wait she did. And I was like, okay, you know, it just, wasn’t like a big thing. Yeah. It wasn’t, it didn’t hit you over the head. It, but it also, and again, like, I am not that far into the novel, so I don’t know what the stakes are going to be. I don’t know if this is going to be something that’s going to come up later.
Rachael Herron: [00:40:07] It might, it might not, no spoilers.
Sara Shepard: [00:40:10] Yeah. But it felt like another layer of like holding herself accountable and like another, you know, kind of thing she was struggling with. Like, not really, but you know, another layer. And I think that’s sort of the character building and this is just another, you know, thing that makes her very real and, you know, authentic and just feels like, yeah, just like a real person. But, and again, like with, you know that it has hurt her wife, and then it is her, you know, her wife’s biological child, like that just made it so much more interesting to me versus if it would’ve just been a straight couple and they kinda just split up and it was just a battle over who’s, you know, the typical, like, custody of the baby, once the baby’s born, like adding this interesting layer of complication that we haven’t thought about before.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:06] Thank you for saying that. That really means a lot to me. We have to, for me, I have to write the easy first and then I have to go back and layer because sometimes I’m just not smart enough to build all the, to build the complexity. And I have to get to know these characters and I have to get to know this story before it actually can start to be really creative about it, which is why I love for revision so much. Revision is where, for me, all the magic of writing is.
Sara Shepard: [00:41:28] Yeah. Oh, me too. Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:30] Yay!
Sara Shepard: [00:41:32] I love revision. I do not like first drafts. They’re pretty, they’re, even if you have an outline, it’s still like, ugh!
Rachael Herron: [00:41:41] Yeah, yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:41:22] And everybody’s like, it must be so fun to be a writer like, oh, you just started. I’m like, eh, it’s not fun. Let’s forget it. It’s a great thing.
Rachael Herron: [00:41:51] It’s the best, it’s like the best job in the whole world, but it is not easy. It’s not playing apart, but it’s so much fun. I feel like I wanted to take a moment and then maybe we can bring John back, but I want to just say for people listening that, to reiterate, that if you buy Hush Little Baby from Murder by the Book, which you should, I will send you a bloody bookplate. It’s the coolest bookplate, Sarah. They like had blood dripping on it. It’s the coolest. But I also wanted to say if anybody buys any book, including Sarah’s incredible Reputation, I will also send you something in the mail, maybe a book plate to stick inside a different book. That would be fun. Why don’t you do that? So if you do that, I want to say, if you buy a book, any book from Murder by the Book tonight, please let John know and then send me, he’ll send me your email. And, that would be cool. And I, can I say one more thing about shopping? Where, what is your indie bookstore where you live in?
Sara Shepard: [00:42:54] It’s called Penguin. Well, there’s a few, there’s one called the White Whale, and then there’s, I think it’s called White Whale. Oh god. Yes,
Rachael Herron: [00:43:02] That’s a great name.
Sara Shepard: [00:43:05] I think I have a mind block, I think it’s, I haven’t been there in a year. Then the other one that I do most of my events at is called the Penguin bookshop and it is in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. And it is lovely and they are also online. And, I have a book actually coming out in July then that I think I will be doing an event with them. So,
Rachael Herron: [00:43:28] Isn’t it cool though, to be doing these events online, like, seriously, I am going to go swimming after this. I’m going to,
Sara Shepard: [00:43:35] Yeah. I mean,
Rachael Herron: [00:43:36] That’s amazing.
Sara Shepard: [00:43:38] To not have to fly around and yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:43:41] And we get to have people listening from all over
Sara Shepard: [00:43:43] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:43:44] Everywhere.
Sara Shepard: [00:43:45] I love that. I feel like, it’s fun to. And I feel like a lot of people who wouldn’t have gotten to be at an event because I don’t go to a bookstore in their town or whatever and yeah. And that’s like, I love that. That has been sort of a bright spot in doing a book tour.
Rachael Herron: [00:44:06] Yeah. And I just, I, and I know I’m chilling here, but I love Murder by the Book. And sometimes, I will call and ask to talk to Sally, not even John, who is my dear, dear, dear friend, but Sally and I have the same reading sensibility. And I’ll just say, Sally, I need $50 worth of books. Give me the scariest stuff you’ve got. And she just puts it in the mail for me. So people, buy a book for Murder by the Book. It’s the best.
Sara Shepard: [00:44:29] Oh my gosh!
Rachael Herron: [00:44:30] I know it’s great
Sara Shepard: [00:44:31] to do a little, like a book club or something, right? Like Sally’s picks? I love it.
Rachael Herron: [00:44:37] Sally’s picks, I’m in.
Sara Shepard: [00:44:40] I love, I love Houston. My husband is from there, so
Rachael Herron: [00:44:43] I love Houston too!
Sara Shepard: [00:44:44] So, the next time we go, I am going to have to go to Murder by the Book because this is very exciting.
Rachael Herron: [00:44:48] I love Houston because John and Matt are there, like literally. Every, you know, they showed me around. They’re the ones who showed me what an amazing town Houston is.
Sara Shepard: [00:44:57] Yeah, good food.
Rachael Herron: [00:49:59] Yeah! It has the best food.
Sara Shepard: [00:45:02] Oh my goodness. I have one more question about teaching. Yeah, what is, who do you teach and just, yeah, I’d love to hear about that because I am not, I do not teach.
Rachael Herron: [00:45:13] I, so I teach the novel in the extension workshop at UC Berkeley and I teach memoir usually for a full semester at Stanford in the fall, although all that was, all of that was going online and I didn’t want to do it. And now I really, what I really do is I teach my own classes, I teach a 90-days to done course where I take people through a terrible first draft. I take them through it and then I, you know, hold their hands while they write this terrible first draft of a novel, which we all have to do. And then I take the 90-day revision, because I really believe in putting boxes of time around things. Otherwise, people end up taking 5, 7, 9, 15 years to write a book. And they’re not going to get a perfect book out of those times, but they get that. And so that’s what I’m teaching right now. And it’s like, it’s the light of my life, Sarah. Why, don’t you, do you want to teach?
Sara Shepard: [00:46:08] Yeah, I think it, I think it would be nice.
Rachael Herron: [00:46:11] It’s like the happiest thing!
Sara Shepard: [00:46:12] We have a lot of colleges here, yeah, I just need to kind of look into it.
Rachael Herron: [00:46:16] Well, I have a friend, Nicole Peeler, do you know Nicole?
Sara Shepard: [00:46:20] No.
Rachael Herron: [00:46:21] She is the Dean at Seton Hill of the commercial fiction, MFA. So if you ever want to hook up over there,
Sara Shepard: [00:46:31] Yeah, maybe. That would be amazing. No, I just, I don’t know. I have done a little bit of high school workshops and things like that, and it’s just really rewarding to work with young writers or not young writers, just people who, yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:46:50] It’s the best.
Sara Shepard: [00:46:51] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:46:52] Sometimes, I think to myself, like, what do I like better? Do I like writing more? Or do I like teaching more? And teaching sometimes wants to trump writing and I don’t let it. I actually started tracking my hours this last year in 2020, because I was getting concerned that I was spending more time teaching than I was writing. And I wasn’t, I proved to myself that I was writing more than I was teaching, but I was close to allowing it to take over me. Cause it’s the most rewarding thing I do is to watch people finish books. And then I have a shelf now at home where my students’ books are lined up. I know. It’s one of the few things that’s going to New Zealand with us.
Sara Shepard: [00:47:27] Oh, good. What are you working on next, by the way, besides moving to New Zealand?
Rachael Herron: [00:47:31] I am working on a bunch of stuff. But right now I’m working on another thriller idea, which is so scary that my wife will not let me talk about it with her. Period. She will not let me talk about it. Really, nobody knows what it’s about yet. And also a very light kind of funny, the basis is the premise is Marie Kondo wants her stuff back. Although it’s not about Marie Kondo, but see everybody does that. She regrets. She has regrets.
Sara Shepard: [00:48:03] Oh, that’s so cute. I love it.
Rachael Herron: [00:48:05] That’s what I’m playing with both of those ideas right now.
Sara Shepard: [00:48:07] That’s so fun.
Rachael Herron: [00:48:08] Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:48:09] Do we want to check in with questions?
Rachael Herron: [00:48:11] Yeah. Let’s check in and see what John says. Hi, John!
Sara Shepard: [00:48:12] Hello!
Rachael Herron: [00:48:15] No, but you’re still on mute, John.
John McDougall: [00:48:17] I always forget to unmute myself when I come back in, which I should know by now I’ve done like 400 of these. I should know that. You guys have done a really great job of actually hitting a lot of the questions that have come up. I want to throw in a few things. So I’ve been dropping links in the comments as they were talking about independent bookstores. If you guys don’t have an indie near you, or you’re looking for one, I dropped a link for indie bound.com (indiebound.org) Go there. You put in your zip code. They will find you the nearest bookstore. We also, I didn’t mention this when we were doing the intro, but we also recently started a subscription box service. So we
Rachael Herron: [00:48:42] We do have one!
John McDougall: [00:48:17] We do! So we have three different options. One of them is just the kind of, best of the month where we pick it could be any sub-genre of thriller. We pick something. And if you sign up for that one, you get a, it’s one hard back a month and you get a book club style zoom with the author, and we try to get signed books or book plates.
Sara Shepard: [00:49:12] Oh my gosh!
John McDougall: [00:49:13] The other one is a crime-fiction classics where we pick two trade paperback mysteries that we think somehow go together. Last month we did Arthur Conan Doyle, cause we know a lot of people have not read Sherlock, and an early kind of American Sherlock. And then the third one, which is my favorite, is John’s cozy corner. So if you want me to pick out a specific cozy mystery for you, we also have a cozy corner one and they’re available for mailing or pick up and you can do three months. You can do it 12 years. So I have also dropped links to that in the comments, if anybody’s interested in that.
Rachael Herron: [00:49:42] I love that so much.
Sara Shepard: [00:49:43] Oh my gosh, I’m doing it. I’m going to sign up.
Rachael Herron: [00:49:44] That is so, so, so cool. Thank you. Thank you, John.
John McDougall: [00:49:47] It’s been so much fun doing it, you know. Other stores have done it for years and we finally got our butts in gear and we were able to do it. So Sarah, so Rachael told us what she is working on next. What do you have coming up? You said you got something coming up in July?
Sara Shepard: [00:49:59] I do! And now I’m like, can I get down to Houston? And like, yeah. And like sign book plates that are bleeding. I have a book coming out called Safe in My Arms. It is a thriller. It is about this sort of very prestigious nursery school again about mothers and their sort of these three mothers who link up that are very much outliers in the community. They feel like they are kind of being pushed out. And you know, they don’t really fit in and they kind of find themselves in this predicament. Of course secrets are exposed and there are twists and turns and fun things like that. So, it does feel like it was more, this book is more about certain issues, I think. There were like, I did not want to write so much of the political, it’s not a political book at all. But it has, you know, it talks about like, you know, a lot of like postpartum issues that are ignored and like just kind of things like that, where I just thought, like, what are some interesting aspects of motherhood that we don’t really think about?
Rachael Herron: [00:51:09] That’s so awesome.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:10] Yeah! So that is out. I feel terrible because I don’t know the precise date that it’s out. July?
John McDougall: [00:51:18] July 27th.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:19] Oh, perfect!
Rachael Herron: [00:51:20] There you go.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:21] It’s right in the middle of summer. But yeah, exciting.
Rachael Herron: [00:51:30] It’s a great, great title too.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:32] Thank you! I am not a title person. But I actually came up with that.
Rachael Herron: [00:51:36] That’s your title? Wow.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:37] That is my title. Yeah. I usually don’t do my titles.
Rachael Herron: [00:51:42] I don’t either.
Sara Shepard: [00:50:43] But I,
Rachael Herron: [00:51:44] Well, I do my titles, but they’re always rejected.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:47] Yeah, yeah. Usually,
Rachael Herron: [00:51:49] They’re not good.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:50] No, no, this doesn’t work. And actually they said that about this one, about Safe in my Arms. So I was like, no, I really like it.
Rachael Herron: [00:51:56] Oh, I love it.
Sara Shepard: [00:51:58] And I’m like, no, it’s like a dark spooky cover, and they’re like no, you don’t get it. So, I say,
Rachael Herron: [00:52:04] Safe in my Arms and Hush Little Baby would look good next to each other.
Sara Shepard: [00:52:08] They would, they would. Yeah. Right.
John McDougall: [00:52:11] So Rachael, lots of people are saying that they hope that once you get to New Zealand that you will do a writing workshop. And they said, even if you don’t, you’re going to have them just randomly showing up on your doorstep.
Rachael Herron: [00:52:19] Absolutely. And I am planning on doing some kind of writing retreat that, I mean, I think that’s a crazy long way to go to go to a writing retreat, but I will handle it and we will do it.
Sara Shepard: [00:52:29] Oh, that’d be amazing.
Rachael Herron: [00:52:31] Yeah. I used to lead them in Venice a lot and I probably will start that again. But 2020 really burned me with a Barcelona trip. Whew! I’m not recovered yet from leaving retreats and having them canceled.
John McDougall: [00:52:43] So, for both of you, Mindy wants to know, when do you do any of the necessary research for your writing process? Do you do it before you get started or are you researching as you’re writing?
Rachael Herron: [00:52:51] I’m researching after I write. Like we mentioned, I place placeholder sometimes I’ll do like a quick Wikipedia kind of thing.
Sara Shepard: [00:52:57] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:52:58] But otherwise, I’ll get lost. I mean, the danger is always getting lost in research and then getting, for me, it’s getting too concerned. Like, well, am I doing this right or wrong? Honestly. So this, so Jillian is a doctor. And I know that to write a doctor, number one, I need to have Doctors read it. I had a couple of doctors and a midwife, a nurse midwife read it, and they gave me all the verbiage. As long as we can get like six or seven really convincing, very technical sentences out, your reader will believe anything else.
Sara Shepard: [00:53:27] Yeah.
Rachael Herron: [00:53:28] Right?
Sara Shepard: [00:53:29] Yeah. What you really need is an expert in the field to read and they’re like, no, no, it’s fine.
Rachael Herron: [00:53:38] Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:53:39] Or good enough. Those, I’ve had a lot of different things that have come up. One time, I had to have a jeweler read, I wrote a book called The Heiresses. There was a lot about diamonds and I just, I don’t know anything about any of that. So, just had a jeweler read through it and yeah. Just did tend to technical and certain time moments.
Rachael Herron: [00:54:01] And you can send them the parts that are relevant. They don’t even have to read the whole book.
Sara Shepard: [00:54:04] Right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, I will probably do a little research here and there just to make sure, like, as I’m writing something to make sense, and I’m not, not writing myself into a corner of like, you know. But I mean, I can’t think of a, of an example. Usually it’s something complicated, like a legal thing, or like, you know, something like that where I’m like, wait, could this happen? So I needed, you know, certain things to make sure like something will happen, but,
Rachael Herron: [00:54:30] Yeah, that whole conversation I had with a lawyer about what would be legal in California and that had to happen in the middle of the book because it was a complication I just introduced and I didn’t know if it would work.
Sara Shepard: [00:54:42] Yeah. Ooh. I can’t wait to get there, I’m so excited.
John McDougall: [00:54:48] You guys touch, you guys touched on this a little bit too, but Sandra says as a queer woman, she wanted to thank you for both, for being inclusive of the queer community in your books, which yeah, like, just like Sarah said, Rachael, you know, it was so nice to be able to read a queer woman who wasn’t in a relationship who isn’t now in this book and it not be about her coming out or a specific, you just got to be like just a lesbian living in the world as, I don’t want to say a normal person, but just going about their life as anybody else would. And it’s really refreshing. And I’m like you said, there, there’s not a lot of that. Unfortunately, a lot of times in thrillers, as I’m sure you both know, as you read them, the second a gay character pops up, you’re like, okay, this person’s going to be dead by the end of the next chapter.
Rachael Herron: [00:55:28] Well, they’re going to be dead, or they’re going to be the killer. Like one of the two things. Yeah, yeah. Not okay.
Sara Shepard: [00:55:34] No, no.
Rachael Herron: [00:55:36] Thank you.
John McDougall: [00:55:39] So, you guys touched on this a little bit too, but Edward wants to know, how has the pandemic been for both of you as far as like creative output has got gone?
Rachael Herron: [00:55:49] Sarah, you go first. I’m not even sure.
Sara Shepard: [00:55:52] You know, the first couple months, weeks, I felt a little stuck. You know, the thing that’s been hard is like a lot of my creativity comes with being out in the world and experience and talking to other people or traveling, or just like being anywhere, but in my house. So that was not great. That said, I mean, I still, you know, finished a novel and wrote a proposal for a new one and like worked on various other things and like found the creativity somehow. Do I think it has been my most creative year? No. But you know, I got through. I also had to do a lot of homeschooling, which like, you know.
Rachael Herron: [00:56:42] And you’re not a teacher, we’ve established that. You were not a trained teacher; you shouldn’t have to do that. Oh my god.
Sara Shepard: [00:56:47] I can’t teach children to read. I’m just like, how do you not know? Just, just do it. Yeah. So, no.
Rachael Herron: [00:56:55] Oh, that’s funny. For me, it’s kind of the same thing. I’ve always written out of the house. I love being out in the world and same thing. I finished a book. I, I’ve gotten a lot of non-fiction creative, non-fiction written and less fiction. I did finish a full draft of a book that I’m still toying with. So I guess creativity has been happening. But I feel, I just feel more fractured. I feel more, I full pulled in more directions. I think, everything is shiny maybe, right now. Especially, now that we’re hopefully starting to come out of it, everything I want to do everything I want to do all the things.
Sara Shepard: [00:57:33] Right.
Rachael Herron: [00:57:34] Yeah.
Sara Shepard: [00:57:35] Yeah.
John McDougall: [00:57:36] So, Rachael, what was the, can you talk a little bit about the decision to have the book come out as R.H. Herron instead of Rachael Herron?
Rachael Herron: [00:57:43] Yeah. That was actually from the publisher because R.H. sounds just a little bit spookier and also Rachael Herron with her, the darker family drama books had just not sold very well. So it looks better on their side at the numbers if they’re launching you as a debut author. Which is what you really felt uncomfortable to me for Stolen Things because even on the book jacket, it says, R.H. Herron is a debut author who lives in Northern California and it is true that technically, they call you a debut because that can help your sales. But I’m like, I’m not a debut author. It feels like a lie. It feels like a lie. I think they said that it’s a, maybe, on this, on the new jacket. I think it says maybe that it’s a pseudonym for it, but R.H. Herron is my real name, because my middle name is Holly and Rachael Herron is my real name. So I, I’m pretty comfortable with both, but it wasn’t, it was actually a conversation when they were buying the book. They said, would you mind being initials, Herron? And I said, I would absolutely not mind. I would love it.
Sara Shepard: [00:58:48] I think it sounds good.
Rachael Herron: [00:58:49] I think it does too, right?
Sara Shepard: [00:58:50] Yeah. Yeah. And it is a little spooky.
Rachael Herron: [00:58:52] Yeah. Rachael, Rachael Herron is a little bit sweet sounding.
Sara Shepard: [00:58:56] Yeah, well, you know. They’re both good. But R.H., who’s that R.H.?
John McDougall: [00:59:08] This is a great question, Emma from Melbourne is watching and she said, Rachael, you said, you go back and you’d like to add layers to character. What are your, some, what are some of your favorite ways to add richness to a character?
Rachael Herron: [00:59:20] Oh, that’s a really, really great question. I, in order to add richness, you know, it’s spending time with them, spending a long enough time with them that they become a full and unique character on their own. So when I write a first draft, they are cardboard cutout, pushing them. As I love Sarah you’re laughing. So I’m just pushing them around and making them do what I want them to do. And I don’t know who they are until at least the first draft and sometimes, you know midway into the second draft. But after a while, they start breathing on their own and they start answering things a little bit differently and they start standing up and that’s when it sounds a little bit ‘woo, woo’. And I don’t, I was, I can’t stand it when, you know, author’s like, well, I just, you know, the muse moves through me and the pen moves on its own, it does not for me. But the characters start to live and they start to surprise me and I start to believe them. Maybe that’s the thing is that I’m, I am layering them. But it is their reaction to things that surprise me. And I think that makes them real, if that makes sense. What about you, Sara?
Sara Shepard: [01:00:26] I think it’s a lot. It’s the same. Yeah. It is just sort of spending time with them. I mean, I feel like often I will write pages and pages and pages just about the character that I think are going to be in the book and then they’re not, but they’re useful because you’re just writing about them or writing their past or writing about something that happened to them two days ago, like whatever, and you know, it doesn’t need to be there, but it kind of does need to be there, just, it says you’re sort of for you and it’s funny. So Pretty Little Liars was like 16 books and I’m always asking my editor, my publisher, like, and the people that I worked with on those books. Can I please do more of those? Because I know those characters so well, like I don’t even need to, I mean, obviously I have to think of things that can happen to them, but like I know them. And I know how they’re going to react because that’s just who they are. Like, I’ve written 16 books about them.
Rachael Herron: [01:01:26] Because they’re real, they’re real people now.
Sara Shepard: [01:01:29] They’re absolutely real people. And you know, I wish I could, all of my books were 16 books long because it’s like, that’s, you know, that’s a nice amount of time to spend with a character to make a character real. But like, yeah, I think that’s, I think you’re totally right. I think it’s just spending a lot of time and putting in that time and yeah. I mean, they are just so cardboard-y when, you know, and just details, you know, just like, I just try to think, you know, even like, even if I’m somewhere else and they just think of like, that’s a detail that this character, that would work for this character. And it could be the silliest thing, like, you know, what kind of soda they like to drink or whatever. And I’ll put it in my phone, like as a note of just like, and just sort of keep this list of just randomness. But I feel like the more detail you can kind of steal your character with, the more real they become.
Rachael Herron: [01:02:27] Could not agree more.
John McDougall: [01:02:31] Awesome. Well, I think we are just about out of time, but I could listen to you guys forever. We’ve got so many great comments. People have been enjoying it. So just to recap for anybody who has joined us late, we have been chatting with R.H. Herron whose new book, Hush Little Baby just came out yesterday, and Sarah Shepherd has been kind enough to chat with us. Her most recent release is Reputation, which is in paperback, but she has Safe in my Arms, which is coming out on July 27th. I’ve dropped a link if you want to pre-order that. You can pre-order that for Murder by the Book. And yeah, Sarah, next time, like, if you find yourself in Houston or if you want to come to Houston, open invitation, let us know. We would love to see you.
Sara Shepard: [01:03:11] Yeah. I’m so excited and I’m going to get this promotion box.
John McDougall: [01:03:16] Awesome.
Sara Shepard: [01:03:17] I don’t know which one yet.
John McDougall: [01:03:19] And if you go to the website, it’ll actually like for the individual ones, that’ll kind of give you an idea of kind of what we’ve picked previously, so you can see what they were. And so for everybody watching, if you missed any part of tonight’s chat, you will be able to re-watch it on Facebook and YouTube once we’re done or if you know somebody who’s picked up the books and they want to hear the chat, you can share those links. Sometimes YouTube takes just a little bit longer to get the encoding done before it’s up, but while you’re there, we hope you will check out all the other great author events that we have done. We have pretty much any mystery sub-genre and most mystery authors represented in there. So there’s lots of great content, if you shouldn’t go wild and watch hours and hours of author interviews. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say. Like, this has been so much fun tonight, Rachael. I’m so sad that we don’t actually get to go like have Tex-Mex after this.
Rachael Herron: [01:04:04] I know that’s the best. Oh, it’s the best. And please consider yourself hugged. And I’m really glad that I got to see your gorgeous husband before we started rolling too.
John McDougall: [01:04:13] Me too, and I’m so glad, I’m so glad we got to be a part of launching this book out in the world, as I said before, like it’s so fantastic. Sarah, you were in for such a treat like it’s just.
Sara Shepard: [01:04:22] I’m so excited.
John McDougall: [01:04:23] Be warned. You’re probably about the point where you’re going to not want to put it down. So it makes sure that you’ve got time to inhale the rest of it.
Sara Shepard: [01:04:29] Okay.
Rachael Herron: [01:04:30] Sarah, Sarah, thank you for your awesome questions and just like being here and finally connecting after many years of knit blogging and history.
Sara Shepard: [01:04:36] Yeah. I’m just going to reach out. Yeah. Just let you know, cause I’m sure I’ll finish it in the next couple of days and hopefully you won’t be off to New Zealand by then. So
Rachael Herron: [01:04:45] 10 more weeks, 10 more weeks. Yeah. We’ve got to sell the house, which is why everything’s going crazy now.
Sara Shepard: [01:04:50] I don’t know why, okay. For some reason, I thought it was 10 days.
Rachael Herron: [01:04:54] That would be even worse. My 10 days, I’ll probably be ready, but right now I am not ready.
Sara Shepard: [01:04:58] Okay, all right. Thank you.
Rachael Herron: [01:04:59] Did I mention that I went out of the house and went around the world, doing things right before this, and then I looked down and I was wearing two different shoes? I, like in a rom-com, this has never happened before. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you everyone. And thanks for everyone for showing up by watching and listening.
John McDougall: [01:05:17] And, I also wanted to send out a huge thank you to Jamie Dutton for helping us up. We adore Jamie and I saw that she was watching earlier, so we wanted to give a shout out to Jamie. She’s one of our favorite people to work with. So Jamie, thank you for helping us get this set up. So y’all have a great night. Rachael, go swim.
Rachael Herron: [01:05:34] Okay, bye everybody.
John McDougall: [01:05:35] Take care.
Sara Shepard: [01:05:35] Thank you.
John McDougall: [01:05:36] Bye.
Sara Shepard: [01:05:37] Bye.
Join me.
❤️ Let me help you do the work of your heart. ❤️
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