Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self-publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self-publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there, and welcome to episode 30 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, and I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about Planning for Writing Full Time, but before we start, how was your week, KC?

My week was awesome actually. I released a book, which is always super exciting. I released In the Twilight Hours, which is a novella, and it is the prequel to my super-secret project. Finally. Yeah, exactly. It is called Mai Tais and Murder. It is a mystery story and it is starring, Mel and Helen from In the Twilight hours. So, it's set in Hawaii and it should be super fun. It's part of a sapphic suspense collection where there's nine other authors who are, also putting out books at the same time, dealing with mysteries. Cool. Very excited about that.

Mai Tais and Murder. 

Mai Tais and Murder.

Yeah.

That sounds like fun.

Yeah. Can't wait to read it.

Oh, thanks. 

Cool. 

When does it come out? 

May 1st. And it's on pre-order. 

Well fun. Okay, so it's me. Let's see, what did I do? Well, I did something kind of strange, but I guess not strange because I was telling my pod pals about it. They thought it was cool. So listeners, you get to hear what I did too. I found my great-great grandparents, graves.

Okay. 

Yeah, well it was just kind of cool to think, ever since I found this picture of one of my female relatives dressed up as a man. It's like, huh, where did my gayness come from? You know? So, it's made me search out some things. But I was surprised that there's a cemetery about an hour from where my great-grandparents are buried. That's where my great-grandmother came from. So, I thought, well, shoot it's not that far away. And I went over there and there's all kinds of other relatives buried there. It's just funny to think back, you know, this is back in the eighteen hundreds. These people, they didn't go very far from where they, originally, grew up. But then that's how, you know, we began to spread. But look at us now because of the way we can travel. You know, it's like, I don't know, it's just interesting to think about. How people end up where they are.

Yep. Very exciting. 

Yeah, that's what I did. And I came across some really cool names, so that was kind of fun.

Yeah. You could You could use them in a book, maybe in the future.

Maybe. Okay. Kimberly, what were you up to?

I had a busy week writing. I'm writing two books at once or one is done, but I'm still doing all the marketing prep and stuff like that. But I got a lot of words done this week, so I feel happy about that. And I went ahead and joined the Authors Guild. I know a lot of people are talking about it. I went and looked at their site. It looks like they have a of beneficial things for authors. 

Cool. Yeah.

Yeah, so I've been just basically doing author things this week, and that's about it. KC did we get any texts this week?

We got a couple of texts from our usuals. Cheryl says she really appreciates how the three of us interact with our fans. I think that's very cool. We enjoy her as a reader, so it goes both ways. And CeeJay says she's not a full-time author, but she's a full-time plotter in her head, so I thought that was cool. But she has a request, she wants our episodes to be 26 minutes long because that's how long it takes to walk the Husky. So. Editor, Editor-in-Chief, uh, Kimberly, if you don't mind... 

I'll get right on.

Exactly. If you hit that mark, she would appreciate it, but that's it. What about emails?

Well, she followed up that text with an email. One thing she does though, on these emails, she sends me, really beautiful pictures of, places along her walk, up there in Maine, in the middle of nowhere, it's, pretty territory. But she said, hell no. She wouldn't want to be a full-time writer because that would probably mean writing from home. And she, at one time, had a job from home and she hated it. Some folks are like that. I get that. And then Cheryl emailed us several times checking in and, she enjoys our banter and how we get along with our readers. So that's the mailbag for this week.

Nice. Okay, so this week we're talking about planning for writing full time, and I know there's someone that is very excited to talk about this. 

Yes, I am!

Listeners, you should see the smile on KC's face. 

Yes. I'm sure you can hear it in my voice. I am a happy camper right now. Yes, I am retiring and by the time this comes out, I will have less than two days, so how about that? I know. Isn't that insane. 

So, I'm trying to prepare myself for a lot of the things that come with, writing full-time. People talk about how you can even become bored if you work from home, which I don't think will happen. 'cause I have a lot of other projects going on and I'm kind of an introvert anyway, so it should be fine and a good fit. But the big thing is, of course, I wanna make sure I don't have to go back to the corporate world. I wanna make this a success. So, the first thing I'm working on is financial.

I wanna make sure that I track everything that I'm doing so I can see what's working and bringing in money. And, what's not working, and I'll just leave that behind. So yeah, financials is a big one, but I'm not the only person on here who writes or is going to write full-time. So, we have Jamie, who's, semi-retired and let her talk about her plan.

I think that's a great idea on the financial things you need to kinda, keep an eye on your income and your expenses, just to be sure. Because it's like you said, you don't wanna have to go back and I think really, I'm semi-retired, not the full-time deal. For me, it was having that extra time, you need to be careful because you can't look at it as a vacation because you might end up permanently on vacation and then run outta money.

So, you have to be a little bit disciplined. I'll say on that part, I wanna point out for me, if writing is a business, it doesn't go so well for me. That is what I have found out. I semi-retired, not quite a year ago, and when I started looking at writing as, business and income, other than my part-time job, then that's when things did not go well as far as my word count every day. I wanted to point this out. I have to look at writing as something I enjoy doing that I love. Instead of a job or it'll mess me up. So, there's that. Okay. Kimberly, you're a full-time writer.

Yep. I write full time. And I think one of the things for financial, that you really need to remember is if you have a book that you launch and it does really well, the best thing you can do is pretend that it didn't do really well and save all the money that you got from it so that book might fund, your writing career to keep going because the next one, you don't know what's gonna happen. There could be a launch problem, there could be the time of year. There could be so many things that your book just doesn't get picked up the way that you usually expect it to. So, you can't expect the norm to always happen. You have to save the money from that book so that you're safe. So, when the next month comes, if something happens, you're okay. And you can keep writing and keep doing what you love.

Yeah, I have tracked that and it's so true. I do have a bank of money that I plan to live off of for the rest of the year, and I hope that I, don't have to take too much from it every month, but I really look forward to having a bigger book where I can put money back into it so I can keep it filled. But yeah, definitely the highs and lows. One of the things that concerns me is, this mystery coming out. I don't know how it's gonna do. It's a mystery. It's not necessarily the biggest selling genre. Nobody knows what they're like when I write them. So, it could be a bomb and that is not how I wanted to start this, retirement career. 

No.

And right now we're going through some turbulent times as far as author income goes. You know, it's happening. and it's still happening. I think maybe it's a little bit better, but I'm not sure yet. It happens and you have to be flexible and not freak out. 

Did you say something about other streams of income though? See, for me, semi-retired, I had several streams of income so that I'm not just depending solely on my author income. And so that has something to do with it too. 

Yeah, I do have some other things I'm working on, other projects, uh, YouTube, things like that. So, I wanna be able to monetize different, areas. So, I do have multiple streams of income and I don't have to rely just on the writing. That'd be too much pressure.

Right.

Yeah, and I think one of the other things I wrote down is, I try to plan ahead and I don't know how many people do this, but you know how everyone's talking about romantasy right now. If you didn't get on the bandwagon early enough, like you had thought you were interested in writing a romantasy— you can still do it, don't get me wrong.

But I was listening to a couple other things where there's, been some agents out there and they're just overwhelmed in general, not just with sapphic, with the romantasy category. And same with, like I wrote, vampires. Vampires had its peak and people are creating so many vampire books.

But if you look at the market, the people that purchased Vampire Books is way down compared to like 10 years ago. So, when you have a book idea, it's good to look at research, so I use K-Lytics to see what they're coming up with, and then also, Kindlepreneur has a book validation, thing that you can go look at on his blog. And that I found was helpful too. So you can just see are people buying these kind of books right now? You know, and how long is it gonna take me to write the book? And is it a good idea? If you're making a zillion vampire books, let's say, but no one's buying them. Then what's the purpose of putting it out there with a zillion other vampire books? You really need to think about that when you're coming up with an idea for a book.

Yeah, it's kind of like write to market. You hear that all the time. Do y'all do that? I don't think I've ever really done that, at least not intentionally. When I have an idea, I go with it, and usually when I get through with that book and another idea's there and I just kind of go with it.

Yeah, I did make one of my books that I was already writing into an age gap because age gap was so hot at that time. So, What the Heart Sees, was not necessarily gonna be an age gap, didn't have to be an age gap, but, I then I did make it much more of a, a difference between their ages.

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened for me. That's why I gave the example of K-Lytics. I was on some romance seminar that he did, and he was talking about how Mafia was coming up at that time. So, I had already had an idea 'cause of my family and stuff about writing Mafia book. And so, I just started doing it. I was lucky 'cause I got to have one of the first sapphic, not first, but one of the earlier ones come out, in the mafia genre because I had seen the K- Lytics, thing. I actually made a conscious effort to do that and so that worked out.

Very smart That's good.

I just wondered, you know, writing to market, I think that's hard.

Yeah, that's the only one I've ever done. Everything else is just been what I like.

Yeah. Well, it's not gonna be what you think, I think is what I wanna say. But isn't that with anything, when you start something new, you have all of these expectations and then it doesn't really, turn out the way you exactly thought it would, but a lot of times it's much better.

I was surprised at my writing time is what changed. I thought once I semi-retired that I would have much more time to write. I. And it turns out I don't really think I do because there's so many other things that you have to do that go along with being an author, you know, all the self-publishing things that you have to do, social media, etc.

But what I did find out in the months that I have been doing this, I become a more efficient writer. So, when I know whenever I sit down, because I know y'all write early in the morning and I don't do that, but when I sit down to write, I get a lot more done in that time than I did before, because before I was riding over all day long.

Mm-hmm.

See the difference. I'd write a little here, write a little, there. But at first that bothered me because I was like, I'm supposed to be having more time. But no, when I would go sit down, say for an hour, and it was dedicated time to writing. I have become more efficient. And that's just in the last couple of months I've noticed that. So.

That's good.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, scheduling is a big item on my list of things to make sure I'm doing when I become full-time author. Definitely set a schedule for at least the first half of the day. I do wanna have some of course, time to just, if I decide, it's a nice day. I wanna work outside. I wanna have that flexibility built in as well. But definitely time to write, time to market, etc.

Yeah, and I agree with that because I write in the morning and I do all the stuff that Jamey was talking about all the crap, basically the marketing stuff. And usually by three o'clock I'm fizzled. Like I don't completely stop. I might then look at email or a podcast I wanted to listen to that's writing related or something, but I like crash around three.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you start really early, so, yeah, even earlier than I do, which I think I'm gonna skew a little bit differently. I don't think I'm gonna get up at four thirty in the morning anymore. I won't have to do that because I'll, not have to cram everything in before the work starts. So, I think gonna stay up a little later. Get up a little later.

Please sleep till five thirty please. Good Lord. 

We'll see. I have to train the cats that we're sleeping in too. So, we'll see...

Well, that's true too, isn't it? I would also suggest to have a dedicated writing space. It might just be a corner in your living room. I mean, you could write from anywhere in your house. I get that. But I know some authors like to go to coffee shops or places like that to get a different POV. That's not me.

But I ended up, spending a little money, making, one of my extra bedrooms into more of a workout room and an office, and I wasn't sure I would like that at first, but I love it now. I got a new computer and a nice desk chair that my butt seems to like. But I mean, you might, need a dedicated writing space, I think. 

Yeah. I'm lucky that, I have a dedicated workspace already because I work from home in my regular day job, so I'll just be getting rid of those monitors on that side of the desk and having more space to let all the cats sleep on, have more space for that. 

But yes, marketing is gonna be a big part of my time. I spend as a full-time author. I'm gonna, rededicate myself to TikTok. That's gonna be a big one that I wanna tackle. I really believe that I can get more readers through BookTok, hashtag BookTok than I can in other channels, especially younger ones, because as we talked about before, is Facebook has kind of an older niche, older group of people reading and I wanna get some younger ones.

That would be the place to find them. One thing I'd like to add though is you need to embrace the fact that you're doing something you love and getting paid for it, and that's your main job now. I think that's awesome. You need to embrace that. 

It's exciting. 

Mm-hmm. 

Totally agree.

I think it's awesome when your job is something you love. I think that's important.

Yeah, totally. I mean, the passion part is the best part. This is something I've been planning to do for a number of years. I started writing as, KC Luck seven years ago, and it's always been my passion and it's also always been my dream to become a full-time author and I'm finally gonna do it. And it's actually gonna take a while to sink in. It's all very surreal right now. I'm like, what do you mean this is my last week of the day job? It's gonna be really cool. 

We'll have to do a follow-up podcast like six months later to see, right? Say, so this is what we thought on, March of 2025. Let's see six months later.

Yeah, if I'm... 

You know. 

Yeah. 

Be curious, right?

If I'm eating rice every day and...

No.

You're gonna be fine. Well luckily, I do have some books already in the works. So that's gonna help a lot. I will have a book coming out at the end of July. I am already working on it and that's really gonna be helpful 'cause I already have something I hope will bring in extra revenue, later in the month. 

Contemporary romance?

It is a contemporary romance, so that will help. 

I know you'd like to write those occasionally.

Yes. 

Let's be honest, the contemporary romance, genre and books, are bigger income earners than some of the others, and that's why we do this.

Yep. Okay. Do we have anything else?

I just wanna wish KC all the luck in the world. She's gonna be great at this and I know it's gonna be awesome. So, congrats my friend, my PodPal. 

Okay. So next week we're gonna be talking about Deciding on Your Next Writing Project. And KC, did we have a question?

Yeah, I had a couple questions. One focused on the authors who are listening and when you're between projects, what helps you pick up your next story? Do you go on your gut instinct or do you have spreadsheets of what's next in the pipeline, etc. So, I would love to hear some of that. Again, as I say, often I will steal your ideas, so let me know. And for readers out there, how do you decide what you're gonna read next? What's your trick? We'd love to hear that too. Okay. Well, that's it for this week. Thanks for listening. 

Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.

Oh, one more reminder. KC has a new book out. What's the name of it again? KC

In the Twilight Hours. 

Y'all have a great week. Thanks for listening. Bye. 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at Three Lesbians and a Pen using the number three. And finally on our website, at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.