Ep. 231: Deanna Raybourn on Why Being a Writing Magpie is a Great Thing

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including five RITAs, two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, a Last Laugh, and three du Mauriers. An Unexpected Peril is her most recent novel. 

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

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Transcript:

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing. 

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #231 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today as we are talking to Deanna Raybourn on why being a magpie of sorts a collector is such a good thing as a writer. I know you will enjoy the interview with her. She’s just one of those people I’ve been meant to meet for a long time and it was a joy to speak to her. So that is coming up. What is going on around here? Oh my God. What isn’t going on around here? Tragically, we lost our cat Willy on Monday morning and I’m not even going to think deeply about it as I talk about it ‘cause I don’t feel like crying any more. But yes, that is two pets in one month that we have lost, our darling Clementine and our darling Willie, one of the two brother cats. But we have been trying to find an amazing rehoming space for, Willy was the one who has had sickness in the past. Wayland is fit as a fiddle, his brother, but Willy had had problems with kidney disease in the past and just got really attacked by a basically renal collapse. And there was no way we could save him and it was awful. It was just awful. I do feel like the hits have just been coming, you know, three months of being very, very sick and losing Clementine and losing Willy and some other stuff that I don’t need to go into or want to go into here and also moving, packing and moving, kind of pre-grieving the loss of leaving America and going to New Zealand, while I’m not really leaving grieving leaving America, honestly. But I am grieving leaving my family and my friends. Doing a little bit of pre-grieving about that. 

[00:002:15] However, I did just write a Patreon essay yesterday that went out as I’m recording this. The March 2021 Patreon essay is how I’m starting the memoir on moving to New Zealand. And it is going to be really fun to write. I think this is exactly up my alley. I love writing about what I’m doing, what I’m feeling, how I’m changing. So, one of those is going to come out every month and I’ve gotten a really great reaction to it so far. So, thank you. If you are a Patreon supporter, thank you for responding and telling me what you think about it. It was really good to put out and it’s gonna to be raw and honest and funny and confused and excited. Just the way that I am right now. Just the way that my wife and I are around this move. So, strangely as we record this, it’s on Thursday and Willy died on Monday. It was awesome. Willy died and then I went home crying on the porch swing and my tooth broke in half and I have a dental phobia and required a crown that day. Luckily, I go to a dentist who number one could get me in and number two actually could make the crown on site and put it on so it was, a two-hour procedure, un-sedated no, I’m so phobic that I’d normally require some kind of medication, Valium or Halcyon even to get to the office. So, the two hours of pain and mental agony actually did distract me from the loss of Willy for a couple of hours, so I was grateful for that.

[00:03:54] But as I was saying, it’s Thursday now and I somehow feel okay today. For Clementine, her sickness was so drawn out for so long, it was very, very difficult. For Willy, it was sudden. Just a sudden complete collapse and we couldn’t save him. And the vet, it’s really comforting when the vet is like, no this cat is ready to go. This cat must go. We must help you with this. They don’t say we must help you with this. But when you say I want to put him down and they say, good, that’s what I hoped you would say, oh, that is- it’s so helpful. And I feel like I’m back on the upswing, I feel healthy and strong. And while I’m still really sad about Willy, I feel more positive than I have in a while. I think it’s because my body is getting just steadily, getting stronger. I’m doing a lot of swimming and it’s so wonderful. I love being in the pool and I feel more positive about everything and that is, that’s been really, really good. 

[00:04:55] So, what I wanted to mention today is just something that really, really amuses me. Really amuses me. I had an interview, which you’ll hear in a few weeks with someone that I was very excited to talk to. Kind of a big name, she does a big podcast. And her name is Katherine Nicola. You can look forward to that. That’s coming up, I don’t need to make a secret of it, but off air, when I interviewed her the other day, she said, you know, I didn’t know who you were. And I looked up your podcast and I saw this review, this terrible review that just made me want to be on your podcast so bad. So I said, yes. And I was like, oh my gosh, yay! I love bad reviews. And I wanted to talk about that for a minute, because it was just talking about it with a friend the other day. Bad reviews for you as a writer will occur. And they will not be reviews that say, oh, you know what? It just wasn’t my style. Oh no! You’ll get so many reviews that will say that they hate your characters, they hate you as a person, they wish they could kill you. I don’t know if maybe more women get those kinds of reviews than men, but boy. And I have to say that learning to love the bad reviews and really leaning into them is kind of a superpower. I honest, hand to God, do not read my reviews. The only time I read my reviews is maybe in the first couple of weeks of a book coming out. I want to see if more people are liking it than are hating it, which has always been the case and I don’t know what I would do if the, if that weren’t the case, but then I let go of reviews altogether.

[00:06:39] The only ones I read are the one stars, because one stars amuse me so much. This is not, however, the way it always was. My first review, I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the show, but my very first review was in a trade magazine, publishers, was it publisher marketplace or publishers weekly? I think it was publishers’ weekly. No, obviously it was publishers’ weekly. Marketplace doesn’t do reviews, I don’t think. And it was for my first book. It was my first review that had come out and it just was so blah. They said I stepped into formula, the writing was good, but nothing special to see here, people. And I went to bed for 24 hours. I called one of my best friends, crying hysterically. She thought someone had died. I lived and died for the reviews that came in when the book came out on Amazon, on Good Reads, on Martin’s Noble, on Coba, I would, on I-books, I would go check reviews like they mattered. Here’s the thing: They don’t matter. I don’t believe the five stars very much because they say, oh my god, I love this book. It’s the best book ever! It’s not the best book ever. It’s a good book. I don’t believe one stars because those are just hilarious. The truth lies for most of us, for I’m going to, I’m going to say for all of us, the truth lies between the four and the two stars.

[00:08:10] A very well thought out, well-articulated, well-argued three-star review of my book that is what can hurt me today, 11 years into this being published game, my first book came out in 2010. So, I really avoid a three-star. I don’t want to read a smart reader thinking critically about my book and talking about it in three-star ‘cause she might be right and her words can get in my head, but no other words can get in my head anymore, they can’t stick. So, I wanted to encourage you to maybe if you don’t have a book out yet, practice. Every book you read and love, like you should be reading pretty much only books that you love and you should be reading a lot of them. We do not have time in this life for finishing books that we don’t love. So you’re reading a book. You’re always reading a book. You’re passionate about it. It’s incredible. When you finish it, always go look at the reviews, read all of them, read the five stars, read the one stars, read the ones in between. See if you can find commonalities that they have, things that they share. If they all say that this hero wasn’t believable, perhaps there’s some truth in that, that kind of thing can be helpful for an author. And in the past, I have used reviews to help me get better as an author, but right now, I’m pretty comfortable with using my editors to tell me if this book is good or not and how to make it better.

[00:09:36] I’m, I really love it when I hear from readers who’ve read lots of my books that say, this is my favorite one, favorite one yet or when I get emails from new readers who love the book, that means a lot to me. So, I’m going to encourage you to practice reading those reviews. Practice imagining that those one-star reviews are yours because it does feel like death at first. And then I promise you, it starts to feel like nothing and indeed it becomes amusing. I have said this often, but a couple of friends of mine, whenever we get a really excellent one-star review, we will send it to the other ones, which then prompts the other ones to remember, to go look for one-star reviews on their, on their newer books. And it’s just this glorious competition that we have with each other who can have the worst. But with that said, I want to share with you, where did I put it on my computer screen? Here it is. The one-star review of a podcast you know well, How Do You Write, unless you’re new to the show, in which case, welcome and listen to a bad review. This is so good, you guys. Check it out. This came from August 30th, 2020. Could have been mildly useful. That’s the title, one-star. I wanted to like this podcast. Herron has a lovely voice, which is rare among female podcasters. But a few minutes into the show, she started talking about something she had said in a previous show. And I think her intention was to make nice with people she had burned, i.e. conservatives or republicans. I already knew Herron was a far-left character, but was willing to put up with that if the content was good enough, but somehow her make-nice-speech morphed into just more bashing. Not only was it hateful, it was based on nothing. She somehow thinks I’m assuming he’s saying. She knows what responsive from the White House would have prevented anyone from getting or dying of the Chinese virus. Nobody can know that because the end of this movie has not played yet. And to claim otherwise, especially with the vitriol that she was spewing is just dishonest and serves no purpose, but to vent against the other, if you can put up with this feeling, good for you, or maybe you agree with it, but I do not too- okay, predict and you guys can speak this line with me, too bad there is no way to award zero stars. 

[00:11:58] Do you know how much I love this review? This review makes my life. I put it on Twitter, I told everybody about it. Just to be clear, I was never making a make-nice-speech, to Trumpians. Trumpians just really don’t belong listening to my show because I am a far-left character. I wasn’t making nice. I probably was bashing them. And if this earns me a few more reviews like that, honestly, that helps me because then people like Catherine Nickel, I will say yes to coming on my show, in a few weeks, you’ll hear that one. And it’s fantastic! This is just, I don’t, if you watch on YouTube, I’m just grinning, this makes me so happy. Also, that I was wondering like, ‘cause I haven’t looked at reviews in months and months and months and months, maybe more, so I brought up the one stars on Stolen Things, my most recent book, there are only four of them. Yay. But this is my favorite one. Here it is: Okay, one star read something else. This, I just do not agree with this first two lines. Audio version was terrible in my opinion. I did not enjoy Exisan’s voice or how she tells this story. Aside from me to you, Exisans is such a brilliant narrator. She works for some of the biggest names because she is incredible and she also happens to have become a friend of mine through an author friend of mine. And she’s incredible and the fact that Penguin allows me to say, I want her, and then they can actually book her, and get her when she’s doing Kristin Hagans and other huge, huge names is incredible. 

[00:13:41] So, this person is just bananas about that. But let’s go back into the more interesting part. I cannot stand how often the author uses the F-bomb. Everything about this book is controversial. It’s just too much. Racial issues, half Caucasian, half ‘cocatiyon’?, half Iranian daughter, rape, sex trafficking, police brutality, prostitution of a minor, LGBT, and probably more, but I probably couldn’t, but I just couldn’t read the whole thing. I literally hated this story and gave up on it halfway through. I will not read this author again. The story was way too far-fetched and I prefer to read stuff that is a little closer to reality. I love it so much. Oh, it just gave me like butterflies of happiness. I don’t know if it is like a reverse in your face reaction that I have, but it is literal delight to read these words. Even if they say something like Rachael Herron couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag, she’s the worst writer I’ve ever read, she can’t put two sentences together. It’s delightful because we know it’s not true. Reviews just aren’t true. They are just opinions that people have. Something that is very fun and I just heard this tip on a podcast and I can’t remember which one it was. But this was posted, the one I just read was posted by LOL doll question mark? So, LOL doll, you go to her reviews, which are always visible on Amazon. You can go to any reviewers, all their other reviews. She particularly hated my books.

[00:15:11] She very much prefers romance and I wonder if that’s where she came to me from, I’m not sure. But the book she loves the most, of all of the books she’s ever reviewed, she really loves Curly Girl, The Handbook, which is a handbook for people with curly hair. It’s a manifesto, it’s a curly hair manifesto and, LOL doll loves it the best and that just makes me feel great too, I don’t know. It’s just so fun. So honestly, with this conversation about reviews, I just hope you get some really good one-star reviews and that you get to enjoy them and you get to go dig into the reviewer’s other favorite things on the, I wish I could remember the podcast I was listening to might’ve been Tim Ferris but, the person who had looked at some of his bad reviews and then went to see the other people’s reviews of things, they went too far. They picked a really beautiful five star that someone had left them. And then they went and looked at that reviewer’s profile and they were aghast to find that they had reviewed really stupid products too. So, what did that mean about the five-star? Reviews don’t mean anything, people. They’re nice to have. I just noticed that, still I didn’t, I had no idea that Stolen Things, do I still have it up? I don’t. Stolen Things had maybe like 240 reviews, which is a good number for an expensive trad-published book and I was thrilled about that. I’m thrilled that it has, I didn’t even, I wish I could tell you how many stars it has on average. I want to say it was like 4.4, 4.5, which is fantastic. I love that. Anything above a four on Amazon makes me happy. So, it’s good for that. 

[00:16:54] I do look at that every once in a while, how many reviews does it have and how, what’s the average star rating. So, that’s what I’m gonna encourage you to look forward to those reviews. I promise they will stop hurting after a while. I really, really promise. It is really interesting though how thick the author’s skin becomes over time. And it will happen to you. I know that it will. So I think that’s all that I wanted to tell you about today. Let’s jump into this fantastic interview with Deanna Raybourn, who has amazing reviews and I didn’t actually bother to look at any because she’s such a good writer. I don’t care what other people say. I just love her writing. So please enjoy this and happy writing to you. 

[00:00:16] Hey, you’re a writer. Did you know that I send out a free weekly email of writing encouragement? Go sign up for it at www.rachaelherron.com/write and you’ll also get my Stop Stalling and Write PDF with helpful tips you can use today to get some of your own writing done. Okay, now onto the interview.

Rachael Herron: [00:17:57] Well, I could not be more pleased to welcome to the show, Deanna Raybourn. Hi, Deanna! 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:01] Hi, Rachael, how are you? 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:03] I just had to interrupt our chatter to push the record button because we were just going to chatter for the rest of the afternoon. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:10] It probably would have, it’s like a virtual slumber party around here.

Rachael Herron: [00:18:13] It’s and also, what I love about doing the show and you probably love about doing this podcast as your book is coming out. It’s kind of like the water cooler, you know, we were just gossiping about people that we know and how

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:24] Exactly!

Rachael Herron: [00:18:26] It is nice. I need that.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:27] Exchanging war stories. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:28] Exactly. Lovely, lovely war stories about love. Honestly, lovely people that we know. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:18:31] They were. We were saying nice stuff about people behind their backs. We should get some credit for that. 

Rachael Herron: [00:18:37] Exactly. Well, let me give you a little introduction. New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including five RITAs, two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two, how do you say Dilys Winns? I don’t know that one. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:19:05] Dilys Winns. Yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:06] Okay. A Last Laugh, and three du Mauriers. An Unexpected Peril is her most recent novel. Well, you know, this probably won’t be live for a few weeks when your book comes out, but I just want to ask you, how are you doing with like the Texas freeze and like, do you have family involved? 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:19:22] I actually don’t, yeah. I live in Virginia now, but we still have a lot of friends and even some families still back there and we’re checking in on people and I mean, there’s only so much you can do from a distance. It’s horrifying, some of the stories that are coming out and I just, you know, keeping everybody in our thoughts and hoping that it all gets back to, some semblance of normal as fast as possible because it’s fairly dire right now. 

Rachael Herron: [00:19:48] It really is. Do you know John from murder books? In Houston?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:19:52] John is my Patronus.

Rachael Herron: [00:19:53] Oh. Johnny. Johnny cakes.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:19:57] Okay. So Johnny and his husband always take me out for barbecue at Good Company. Every time I go to Houston, we have a standing date and, they are, they are the greatest. They, I adore them. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:08] This is the connection that I 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:20:10] One of my highlights.

Rachael Herron: [00:20:11] This is the connection. I’m like, I know I have a good friend who is good friends with you. That’s, there, there it is. It’s Johnny. It’s Johnny.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:20:17] That’s our Venn diagram overlap. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:18] That’s our Venn diagram. I love them so much. And he was saying that his house is the warmest house. The warmest room in his house yesterday was 42 degrees. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:20:28] Yeah. And that’s honestly, that’s one of the warmer temps I’ve heard from people. 

Rachael Herron: [00:20:32] You’re kidding.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:20:33] Because, no, I have a cousin whose inside temperature was getting down just like barely above freezing. So, and I’ve seen a lot of people have posted pictures on Twitter of what’s happening inside their houses. And I mean, there was a woman in Dallas whose entire bathtub is frozen over. And I just, it’s hard to wrap your head around that when you grow up in Texas and you’re like, this is a hot place to realize that things are changing so much, that you’re getting these catastrophic events and you’re like, this is, you know, we gotta do a better job of taking care of folks.

Rachael Herron: [00:21:04] We really, really do. We really do. Okay, thank you. I’m glad that your people are okay though. And now we’ll get into actually the meat potatoes of this podcast, and you are talking to writers on this podcast. So, I want to know all about your writing process because we’re geeks for that around here. You are very prolific. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:21:25] Am I?

Rachael Herron: [00:21:26] When, yes of co, look at your canon, when and where and where and how do you get it all done? Break it down.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:21:32] Well, okay. So anytime I talk about process, I only do so with a huge caveat to begin with. Talking about process is kind of bullshit. And the reason for that is because it’s so idiosyncratic. And it is terrifying to me that somebody might sit there and say, oh, that’s how she does it, that’s how it’s supposed to be done. Hell no. It has to be done for you the way you do it. And you know, I mean, I remember, very early on in my career, picking up two different books on how to write. And one of them was from a prolific and accomplished novelist, and she talked at length about her outlines and how they’re a hundred pages long. And the other book was from an accomplished and prolific novelist who a pantser. I mean like, how do you reconcile that? 

Rachael Herron: [00:22:25] You can’t.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:22:26] The answer is you don’t. You figure it out what works for you, you know, you it’s the throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And I figured out for me that I work really well with my own circadian rhythm. I try not to fight it. I’m a morning person. So I try to get my writing done in the morning. And my very first editor gave me a great piece of advice. She said, never let the business of being an author interfere with the business of being a writer.

Rachael Herron: [00:22:52] The, it’s the biggest truth that is so hard to learn and remember. Yeah.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:22:55] It is. Because you have to learn how to compartmentalize what you’re doing. And so, afternoons are when I tend to do more of, you know, interviews, any extra pieces that I have to write that I have to sit in because I do a lot of extra things, you know, we’ll do extra content, we’ll do, you know, guests, blogs for different websites, listicles, things like that. I tweet a lot, that gets done periodically throughout the day. Research, anything like that tends to get done more often in the afternoon and the actual writing is more often in the morning. It’s not as hard and fast as it used to be though. I’m finding it just kind of depends on what else is going on. I’m learning to be a little bit more flexible with regards to time. I am not at all flexible about how I write. I write on a keyboard. I learned my, the best, people have asked me before. What was the best? You know, you double majored in English history, what was the best, the most formative, most important class? It was my typing class. Golf coach. The golf coach taught in high school. Shout out to coach Davis at James Madison high school in San Antonio, getting it done. Because, I mean, I graduated, you know, back in the midst of time when you learned keyboarding on a typewriter, it was an IBM’s electric with the keys all blacked out, so you had to learn by touch. So, I can type a 110 words a minute, easy, which means I can churn and burn the pages when I have to. So, when I write, I sit down. I actually spend very little time on the writing itself because it’s good to go up here when I sit down to do it. The rest of the day is kind of noodling some things over, pulling little bits and pieces from research, from pleasure reading, from, you know, memoirs and Victorian journals and things like that. Whatever happens to kind of germinate with what I’m working on. I’ll make all kinds of notes in the afternoon. I’ll do some mind maps and some brainstorming. I’ve got my, you know, my gallery of inspiration walls that are tacked up everywhere. That’s more afternoon stuff that I brainstormed longhand, always. That’s on giant sheets of newsprint with markers and it looks fairly pre-school and I love it, but the writing itself is always on the computer and it’s always fast. It’s like taking vacation because by the time,

Rachael Herron: [00:25:25] Okay, so, I wanted to go back to that because I know that all the readers like were like, what does she mean when she sits down and she’s good to go? What is good? When you sit down, do you actually know I’m going to write 1500 words and they’re going to be about this and just?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:25:40] Yes, exactly. I know exactly what I’m going to write. And I know exactly like, I know what the next scene is. I don’t map out scenes before I start. 

Rachael Herron: [00:25:49] So you’re not writing down ideas somewhere?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:25:51] No, no.

Rachael Herron: [00:25:52] Oh my goodness.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:25:53] So the beauty of being a mystery writer is that things have to be pretty logical. There’s a fairly linear structure 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:01] That’s why I don’t write them. It’s so hard.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:26:02] Because you have to lay in certain clues that have to be discovered in a certain order. They have to be discovered a certain way. You kind of know the skeleton when you sit down, it’s just a matter of putting the flesh on it, you know, like I know points A, G, P and Z. I just don’t necessarily know all the ones in between, but I know what they’re going to. When I sit down, I know what they have to be. You know, if I’ve left off here, I know what, where to pick up what I’m going to do next, 

Rachael Herron: [00:26:31] And you’re, you’re catching those ideas as you’re going on the big pieces of the paper that you’re doing long hand.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:26:35] Yeah. So, I will sit down the next day. If it’s a really, really sticky part, and I’m feeling, a little about what I’m doing, I will very rarely, but it works beautifully. Have I needed to do this? I’ll stop in the middle of a scene and walk away. So, I know exactly what I’m doing when I come back the next day, it’s an old Hemingway trick.

Rachael Herron: [00:26:57] Yeah. Super easy to pick up,

Deanna Raybourn: [00:26:58] And I think he was like asked, but he was dead right about that. Most of the time though, I know exactly what I’m doing and I like, I will have a minimum word or page count that I know I need to hit for the day. And, as long as I have already hit that, I will generally continue to the end of the scene. Finish out the scene and then pick up the next day with the next thing and go that way. If the scene is really short and I haven’t hit my target, then I’ll carry on until I, until I hit the target. And then I’m good to go. I generally only write, and see, this is when people want to throw stuff at me. I generally only write about an hour and a half a day. But 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:37] Me too.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:27:38] I’m writing flat out. Okay, thank you. 

Rachael Herron: [00:27:40] And I write, but I write flat out, but I think I have to do a lot more thinking ahead of time. I need to have a lot of stuff written down before I get into the scene. But when I am actually writing it’s 45 minutes to an hour, hour and a half. Sometimes two hours. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:27:51] Yeah exactly. So, I did a podcast interview yesterday and the writer who was interviewing me was talking about how, we know how it is when we sit there and we’re in the chair for 8 or 10 hours. And I’m like, yeah. 8 or 10 hours, I would open a vein. I don’t have that kind of stamina. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:11] I don’t think our brains work well for deep work that long.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:28:14] Mine doesn’t. Mine doesn’t. I do much better when I like, I love watching dishes by hand. Like I had a dishwasher yanked out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:21] Yeah, we don’t have a dishwasher either.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:28:22] I was like, do it by hand, because it, that is an Agatha Christi trick, because it helped you, things that are repetitive and don’t take a ton of mental energy, really give you a chance to kind of let things percolate and the pieces will start coming together. My subconscious does 90% of my job for me. 

Rachael Herron: [00:28:43] Isn’t that amazing?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:28:44] But it’s knowing what to stick in there. It’s knowing, you know, what kinds of things I need to be reading, what kinds of things I need to be watching and how to kind of let the pieces all do their thing and get put together and trust that the process is going to work. As long as I do my part, with just having a discipline to put my ass in the chair. Because you know, you’ve got to show up in order for the work to happen.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:06] That’s the hard part. So, in terms of getting your ass in the chair, are there any tips or tricks that you use on a daily basis? Are you a music person? Are you a quiet in the house person or?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:29:15] I am a noise canceling headphones person with my Spotify playlist, which is always instrumental. And it’s usually, I’m a very big fan of movie scores.

Rachael Herron: [00:29:27] Soundtracks, yeah.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:29:28] Yeah, the soundtracks, I’m a big fan of those. In particular, I even have a favorite composer. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:33] Who is it?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:29:34] Fernando Velasquez. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:35] I don’t know him. I have like three or four that I go back to, but I don’t know how I’m going to break it down

Deanna Raybourn: [00:29:39] He did Crimson Peak. He did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. 

Rachael Herron: [00:29:43] Beautiful.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:29:44] Yeah. He has done a lot of really gorgeous work. And so usually every soundtrack that he’s done, I can pull a few tracks and stick those on my playlist, and sometimes I’ll just hit repeat and let it keep going. If there’s a particularly good one and I just don’t even notice it because it, it’s my trigger to kind of get into the flow state and keep on going and then I’m good. But I don’t like distractions. I have friends who write in coffee shops and I’m astonished. Like 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:14] I used to like that.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:30:15] That’s witchcraft. I can’t do that. It’s witchcraft. 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:18] I like, I used to like to do it, but I do need to not be able to hear them at all. I have a girl friend, Sophie Littlefield who could just sit in a coffee shop with no headphones on and somebody’s screeching on a cell phone next to her and she’ll be writing and I just think that’s amazing madness. Yeah. Absolutely. I know 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:30:32] I love it! I know I have this conversation on a regular basis with Lauren Willig, whom I adore and who is a magnificent person, but she, like she even has her own special Starbucks that she would go to, pre pandemic, to sit and write. And I’m like you magic, magic unicorn of a human being. How can you do this? I am just in awe. I really am. But, 

Rachael Herron: [00:30:53] What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:30:57] The fact that after I get comfortable with a book or a series or a set of characters, I will then start to get restless. And I create challenges for myself that I’m almost, but not quite comfortable tackling.

Rachael Herron: [00:31:16] Isn’t that kind of great though? I mean that’s

Deanna Raybourn: [00:31:17] I will, push myself out of the nest, in ways that kind of make me a little, well, very nervous, very nervous. I’m scared witless right now with a project I’m working on and it’s entirely my own fault. 

Rachael Herron: [00:31:32] Can you talk about it a little bit without giving too much away?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:31:35] Yeah, absolutely. The deal’s already been announced. It is, it’s my first contemporary, continuing the Veronica Speedwell series. So I’m still doing that, but this is my first contemporary. I’m about halfway through the process, about two-thirds of the way through the process now. And it is, it’s about four 60-year-old assassins who are all women and who have to band together to take out a member of the organization that they work for 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:02] I love that.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:32:03] As they’re retiring. So, yeah. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:06] How are you finding the voice challenge for that? Because your books have that beautiful voice.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:32:11] Oh, I thought it was gonna be a problem. Turns out it’s not. 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:16] I guess you speak this language all day long.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:32:18] That’s what it is. I mean, my husband read part of the manuscript and he said, is this just your Twitter feed? 

Rachael Herron: [00:32:26] Right. It’s that voice. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:32:27] Yeah, that’s what it is. That’s why it sounds familiar. It’s me, unfiltered. No, I mean, I have made this remark several times recently. I turned 52 on my last birthday and my givechener is so broken, like so broken. I am all about tapping into middle-aged lady rage. Like it’s there and that really is so much like zeitgeist right now because every woman I know is fed up to the back teeth and just- it’s so liberating just to say, yeah, I’m not going to play by those particular rules anymore. I’m not going to really watch what I say about that anymore. Like my Twitter feed today has just been dunking on a particular Senator who decided to abdicate his responsibilities and take off on vacation. And so, I’ve had a very pleasurable day just tweeting smack about him all days. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:26] You are an instant Twitter follow up for me right after this conversation, because I love to, I’m addicted to Twitter, but I’m actually kind of on a little breakup on Twitter, but I’ll get right back into being on it 73 hours a day pretty soon.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:33:37] Yeah, right. It’s sucks you in. I gave up Facebook a couple of years ago. I went for one year were only my assistant was posting on my stuff. I wasn’t even there, and she was posting, and she was finally like, could we just leave? Cause it’s really bad. I was like leave. Leave. 

Rachael Herron: [00:33:54] Did you actually? You took down your Facebook page?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:33:56] Oh yeah. It’s been down for two years and actually, you know, people think that you have to have one. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:01] I always think that our publishers want us to

Deanna Raybourn: [00:34:03] My sales went up after it. No, and I’ll tell you why because God bless the folks at Penguin. If you ever listened to any of them give you advice, if you’re an up-and-coming author, or maybe you’re making a debut, you’re trying to establish yourself. The one thing that they will tell you is find a platform. 

Rachael Herron: [00:34:25] That you love. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:34:26] And do it well. Find one that you love and do it well and don’t worry about the others. Yeah. I just gave up, Veronica Speedwell used to have Pinterest boards too, and I just had them taken down last week. She does still have a Spotify list. There’s a Veronica Speedwell playlist.  

Rachael Herron: [00:34:40] But that doesn’t take much time, so that’s great.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:34:42] It does not take much time. It gets updated like once every three years. But the Twitter is something I absolutely enjoy. And I do, I share, I mean, it’s my own personal snark, but I also do, I share a lot of book recommendations from, you know, people who have releases coming out or things that I’ve read and I share a lot of sources for really cool things that end up finding their way into my writing. I follow a lot of funky little museums and so there’ll be things like that in my Twitter feed that I think are fun that I really like to share with people. So

Rachael Herron: [00:35:17] That is fabulous. And also,

Deanna Raybourn: [00:35:18] Twitter is my jam. 

Rachael Herron: [00:35:19] I’m really, really excited about what you said, because, basically right now I avoid Facebook except I send my Instagram pictures to it. And sometimes I’ll link an essay, but at some point, I’m going to say, well, Deanna Raybourn doesn’t and then they’re going to.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:35:32] You know what, and they’re going to say, oh, she’s gonna. And then I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna be like, dammit Rachael.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:37] Okay, maybe I won’t, maybe I won’t do that. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:35:39] Curses.

Rachael Herron: [00:35:40] Can you, this is fantastic. Can you share a tip of any sort with our writers? 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:35:46] Okay. So, when I wrote my first novel, when I was a little baby writer, I wrote long. And I would have to, I would stop, I would go and research every little tiny point as I was writing. The book would end up being 120,000 words and I would have to slice and dice and kill all those darlings. And then, by the time the second book needed to be written, it was the first time I had to write with deadline and I was terrified of doing that. And I realized, okay, I don’t have quite as much time as I thought I did. And I’m going to have to get better at this and faster at this real quick. So what I figured out is, and this was strictly because it was useful, and because it was necessary, I learned to start writing a sentence and then if I hit something that I knew I needed to go look up, open bracket, insert question, close bracket, keep writing.

Rachael Herron: [00:36:42] Yes.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:36:43] And so, I had specific points then after I finished the day’s writing that I knew I needed to go research. Before this, if I needed to know what trees were in leaf in Hyde park, at this time in a year, I would have stopped writing and gone and done, gone and read a book about all the trees. 

Rachael Herron: [00:37:02] Or several books, right. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:37:03] In Metropolitan London. Yeah. No. This way, it’s so much more efficient. This way I stopped, I have a list of things that I know I will need to go and check in my sources. I go and do that at some point. Usually, I finished the whole draft before I worry about doing it and I’ll go search and find those things as I’m revising a draft and go, okay, this needs to go in here, this goes in here and I can, and it’s very easy because you’ve got your pretty little bracket. So, and for me, the point, it’s usually just a keyword, that I’ll go look up and it’s always in bold so I don’t miss it when I’m going back through the manuscript. And it’s very easy to find and I have just the punch list then of all the stuff I know I need to go and research and double check and that way too, if I need to order another research book, if I need to go do an inter-library loan, God bless librarians.

Rachael Herron: [00:37:55] Yes.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:37:56] I will have time to go and do that then, before I actually have to put the information in there. So, it’s just, it’s so much more efficient to do it that way so I can get a draft done a lot faster. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:06] Instead of getting lost in the weeds. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:38:08] Exactly. And I don’t end up wasting a ton of time looking at 800 pieces of information when I only needed two of them to settle whatever question I had. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:19] So I always tell students that, and I just want to know if you agree with this, ‘cause I could be, I tell my students a lot of things that I always tell them only believe me, if you think I’m right, if you think I’m wrong, toss it all out. But I almost think that there’s almost, I can’t think of a reason I would have to stop writing on a daily session. Maybe, you know, 1600 words or whatever it is that you want to get to look something up. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:38:41] Right. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:42] I always think it can wait until after that writing session, what do you think?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:38:48] Yeah, I wouldn’t stop. 

Rachael Herron: [00:38:49] Yeah. There’s not a reason. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:38:51] I was just, I was just trying to think, do, have I ever done that? And no, I will do that when I’m revising and I come to the bracket and I’m like, okay, this is a good time to go and take a look at this point. I’ll go down that rabbit hole for a few minutes, figure out, you know, what I need to put in there. That’s fine. And that’s why the revising is a slower process and I tend to do that by page count. I don’t tend to do that by scene. And part of that is because it does take longer and I will divide it out, going, okay, the manuscript is this many pages long. I have this many days to do it, that means this, I math, I math. Figure out how many pages I’ve got to revise each day and go, okay, this is what I’ve got to do. And some days it’s very easy because maybe I only have two brackets, some days I may have 20 brackets, but I’ve got to go in and figure out, but that’s when I’ll stop and do it. When I’m doing the fresh first go, no. That’s the horse you just let run. 

Rachael Herron: [00:39:45] Exactly. And if you do go research that tree, your procrastination brain will make that tree fascinating. Whereas when you were doing the research during the revision, you’re like, I got a tree it’s here we go. I looked it up. Bam. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:39:57] You’re laser focused on it. Plus, you’ll under a little bit more of a time constraint usually because you’re closer to the deadline. So you’ve got to make quicker choices. I happen to work much better under pressure, because I don’t second guess I don’t overthink, I make quick choices. You know, I’m super focused, done. And I don’t get into, oh, but what if I, oh, it should be more ooh, what no.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:23] Cause you can do that forever and your book will never be done. Yeah. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:40:25] Forever. Forever.

Rachael Herron: [00:40:28] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way? 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:40:34] I think everything in my life affects my writing. I kind of subscribed to the magpie theory, which is anything I see or hear is fair game. So, it can be, I remember a number of months ago, I got, it was more than a year ago. I was watching, I love Mary Berry. 

Rachael Herron: [00:40:57] Mary Berry?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:40:58] The British baker. Yeah. She was on great British baking show.

Rachael Herron: [00:41:00] Oh, you know, I’ve never seen that. But I need to see it. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:41:03] Mary Berry. She’s a lovely older woman with a very calm, demeanor. She has a very restful voice. She likes to talk about Victoria sponges. It’s all very soothing. And she had a series that’s on like acorn or brit box or something that I was watching it where she goes to different country houses. So I’m just watching this because it’s, it’s brain candy, I could just chill. And she happened to go to a place called powder and castle, which is the seats, the seat of the Earls of Devin and the inside of their staircase hall is painted a color called powder and blue. It’s a very distinctive shade of blue, and I’m looking at this blue color and all of a sudden it clicked. Oh! For the book I’m getting ready to write, it’s set in this Alpine country that I’ve made up in the middle of Europe. I wanted a distinctive kind of motif. This blue will pull in beautifully. 

Rachael Herron: [00:41:54] Wow. I was going to say is that the color from the book? And it went to the cover for those of you who are listening, which is most people, that is an incredible blue. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:42:05] It is a gorgeous blue, it’s a stunning blue. And the Earl explained to Mary Berry that this was a famous color called powder and blue. They get requests from other people, you know, hey, can you tell us how to mix it? Because we want to paint our dining room, this color or whatever. And it’s this gorgeous staircase hall that is just larger than life. It’s the most luscious, it’s kind of a cross between peacock and, and just this gorgeous Aegean blue, 

Rachael Herron: [00:42:23] Ooh, yes.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:42:24] But it’s lighter than that. I mean, it is its own blue and it’s lovely, lovely, lovely. And so, when they were at, so I wrote about this color that I termed Alpine walder blue, because I, you know, the country that I made up for the book was the Alpine world. And so, I, when they asked me, you know, hey, do you have, they always ask me for a few little snippets, to brief the art department with, for them to kind of go and let their imagination run wild and that’s the only input I have in a cover is to say, hey, these are a couple of the motifs, this is where it’s set. These are some colors I talk about, whatever. And they go off and work their incredible magic. And they asked me, you know, hey, do you have any color ideas? And I said, yes.

Rachael Herron: [00:43:20] As a matter of fact.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:43:21] As a matter of fact. And so, I made sure that my editor sent them the link to the photographs of powder room castle so that they could see this blue and they ran with it. 

Rachael Herron: [00:43:33] And it is gorgeous. Like they nailed it. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:43:35] It is stunning. And that’s the kind of thing I had no intention of doing like I was taking the day off when I was watching Mary Berry. Like, I was putting my feet up, she was making the bed, you know, the perfect scone. I’m watching all this and all of a sudden, it just led to this entire kind of rabbit hole and it’s gorgeous. I mean, it’s the essence of the book and you never know when that’s going to happen. 

Rachael Herron: [00:44:01] And it’s not even the essence. It’s also part of marketing like people are going to reach for that book because of the way it looks, which is directly a result of you taking the day off and watching some brain candy TV. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:44:11] Yeah. And you never, I mean, like I said, magpie. You gather up all these little bits and pieces and you never ever know when they’re going to come in handy and how you’re going to use them. And I mean, I’ve had, there are some snippets of English history, interesting little stories I’ve collected or you know, quirky facts, maybe that I’ve been sitting on 20 or 25 years that you never know when they’re going to prove useful or interesting, or they’re going to find their home and whatever you’re working on. So, I that’s, I think that’s one of the things that I love most about doing this is the fact that your work just becomes an extension of, you know, the weird little mind attic that you’ve stuffed, you know.

Rachael Herron: [00:44:53] The weird little mind attic. Yes. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:44:54] You know, that you’ve just been hoarding treasures in for decades. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:00] That is what my brain actually feels like. Yeah. That is, that’s a great way of putting it. There’s cobwebs

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:05] Well, I mean, you know, on Sherlock, they keep referring to the mind palace and I’m like, well, that’s a little too fancy. Mine’s more of an attic. An attic.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:15] There’s some stuff in there I don’t want to open, probably should. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:18] There’s a Taylor’s dummy in the corner, probably a ghost, I don’t know.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:24] Yes, yes. Maybe a rat or two.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:29] Don’t judge my mind attic. Don’t judge my mind attic.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:33] Oh my God. You are so entirely delightful. I’m so glad we’ve connected. What is the best book that you personally have read recently? 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:41] In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce. 

Rachael Herron: [00:45:43] Why is it great? 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:45] I was lucky enough to read this for a blurb. And it was one of those times when I went back to the editor and said, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rachael Herron: [00:45:53] Oh, Isn’t that great.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:45:54] Because yes, because a lot of times you get a book to blurb and you’re like, oh, this was fun. Thank you so much. Every once in a while, you get a book to blurb that you’re like, this was a gift. I loved this book so hard. It is a novel that is based upon a real woman by the name of Belle Gunness and Belle Gunness should be, and this is the quote that made the cover when I said that this is the book that should make Belle Gunness a household name.

Rachael Herron: [00:46:19] Oh, I love that.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:46:20] Because Belle Gunness was a serial killer. Was a serial killer of all kinds of people and she got away with it for decades. She was a vicious, vicious woman, and she’s deeply fascinating. And we spend so damn much time on Jack the Ripper when Belle Gunness was offing people at the same time. I mean, girlfriend took a hatchet to people to chop them up and, you know, make way for the next victim. Jack the Ripper has five canonical victims. She probably had 30, 40, 60. 

Rachael Herron: [00:46:53] Holy crap.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:46:54] Nobody really knows. And she got away with it for years and they still don’t actually know if she died when they think she died. She may have just faked her own death. Like this woman is legendary for her, just evil and it was the most fabulous book because, to take a character like Belle Gunness and make her not likable. Not likable, not even really relatable, but to make her so deeply fascinating that you are sucked into her story from page one going, you know, I don’t like bicker, but I understand why she’s doing like I do bet that. You know, I see the journey and I’m not going to judge her a hundred percent, is just, I mean, it’s a masterful thing to be able to do. And Camilla Bruce did a phenomenal job with this book and it just came out. 

Rachael Herron: [00:47:49] Now, is it, I’m sorry, I missed- did you say this is nonfiction about her or this is a novelization about her?

Deanna Raybourn: [00:47:52] Oh, it’s a novel. It’s a novelization.

Rachael Herron: [00:47:54] Okay, so that took balls for her to even attempt to do.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:47:59] Big hunting last ones. Yeah.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:01] Yeah. And also, when we started chatting you, when we were off not recording, you mentioned that you don’t read much thriller cause you’re a chicken. That sounds like a book that, that doesn’t sound like 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:48:10] Yeah, no, I was super scared as I’ll tell you what got me onto thrillers is, a year ago, December, so about 14 months ago, my husband and I took an anniversary trip to St. Kitts and I thought, okay, I’m going to take some fun beach reading. And one of the books that I took was that one right there. 

Rachael Herron: [00:48:32] Okay, I don’t know that one.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:48:33] And I love to put this on my bookshelf because the fact that it’s got such a fantastic cover.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:37] It’s gorgeous.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:48:38] It is My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. And it is, it’s a very fast read. It’s a fantastic beach read because you want to make sure people are not sneaking up on you while you’re reading it. And they’re not because it’s a beach and you can see.

Rachael Herron: [00:48:52] Right.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:48:53] It is so phenomenal because it’s told from the perspective of literally the sister of a serial killer, and it, it’s I loved this book. It was so great that I went, oh, thrillers. Okay. I need to do this. I still have to be careful, like, I don’t want to know about your dead babies. Like, I don’t want to read about somebody’s toddlers getting buried. No, that’s where I draw the line. But I am so into thrillers like this. It is, it’s my new favorite. Just pleasure read when I’m, when I’m trying to oddly enough decompress and de-stress, you know, murder. 

Rachael Herron: [00:49:30] Me too, me too. And I will say that you are less of a chicken than you think you are. I really do. Okay. So now let’s come to you. Will you please tell us about An Unexpected Peril? Just give us maybe the log line or, yeah.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:49:44] An Unexpected Peril. This was, I had so much fun writing this.

Rachael Herron: [00:49:47] What number book is this? Six? That’s what I thought.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:49:49] This is the sixth Veronica Speedwell book. I’m writing book seven right now. It’s the sixth Veronica Speedwell adventure. And in previous books, we have seen the curiosity club, which is the nickname for the Hippolyta club. It’s this organization for exceptional women that Veronica belongs to and these women are mathematicians or scholars or explorers. And there is a member of this club who’s a mountaineer who dies on a mountain side and very early on in the book, like about page two, Stoker, Veronica’s sidekick, realizes she must have been murdered. She didn’t just fall off that mountain. And so, the book is about Veronica trying to get justice for this member of the club. And she has a few Royal encounters, unlike any she’s ever had before, which were so much fun to write. And I got to bring in another, every book, every other book I usually bring in one member of the Royal family. Those are the only actual historical people who ever find their way into my books. And I only ever do one of them at a time, and this is the, the first time we meet this particular character. And so, it was great fun to introduce this one. 

Rachael Herron: [00:50:58] I love to see how you and, readers can probably listen to and readers, listeners can probably hear it in your voice that you really light up when you talk about her. That is so fun.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:51:06] Oh, I had so much fun writing these books. They’re great fun. 

Rachael Herron: [00:51:10] And they’re, it will be when this comes out available everywhere. Where can we find you online? And we can, where are you on Twitter? Let’s ask that first.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:51:17] I am @DeannaRaybourn, it’s just my name. I do have a blog (DeannaRaybourn.com) that I maintained mostly just for announcing appearances and things like that and sitting, and I do send out a newsletter once a month if people would like to subscribe. But Twitter is my jam. Twitter is where you can find me literally every day it’s shameful. 

Rachael Herron: [00:51:39] No. It has been such a delight to talk to you. 

Deanna Raybourn: [00:51:41] This was fun. Thank you so much, Rachael. 

Rachael Herron: [00:51:43] I hope that sometime we’re in Houston together or at a convention together with Johnny, we can

Deanna Raybourn: [00:51:49] We’ll make the first round of drinks.

Rachael Herron: [00:51:51] Yes. Oh, thank you, Deanna. All right. Take care and happy writing. Bye.

Deanna Raybourn: [00:51:55] Thanks. Bye, bye! 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.