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 34 of The Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd. I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about how do you know when your book is done? But before we start, KC, how was your week?

My week was great. I had the opportunity to do some yard work, which was really nice 'cause I don't work now other than write books. So, so, so I write in the morning and then the afternoons I get to do yard work and it's really, really relaxing. So, I love that. But I am writing, a new contemporary romance called Fixing Hearts. I've mentioned it before. And so that's come along nicely. I just finished my rough draft so. Yes. That's very exciting. Mm-hmm. 

But I'm also excited because this week I have a book coming out. I have my mystery coming out. Yes, yes. Mai Tais and Murder comes out on May 1st, so that's very exciting and I can't wait to see how people respond to me as a mystery writer, so that'll be fine. It's a who done it? So that was tricky to write, and I hope it's not boring.

You hope we can't figure out who done it before...

In the first chapter. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like to be able to kind of figure it out, you know, as you go and then at the end, you're like, yeah, I was right. But yeah, maybe not in the first chapter. I can get that. 

Okay, well, I got to go watch a middle school production of, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My niece was in it, and let me tell you, that was so much fun. She was 10 years old and she played Augustus Gloop where she falls into the chocolate river and disappears. But the funniest part was she had told me before it.

During the play, while she's on stage, she has to rub Nutella all over her face. I said, girl, that oughta be fun licking that stuff off after it's over. But she was so good. She was so cute. There was a bunch of our family there to support her and it was just, I don't know, it was just really fun. So I enjoyed that. That was my big weekend. 

However, Leo wasn't too happy I left him, but hey, you know, it happens, it happens when, you've gotta go. But my brother kept him and there were a couple of funny instances there. He has a pool and, did not know this, but now I do. Leo does know how to swim because he fell in. And uh,

Bless.

And so my brother guided him to the steps so he could get out. So it was kind of funny.

Love it. 

So that was my weekend folks. Kimberly?

My wife and I had something funny this morning happen. I drove her to the train very early in the morning and this Uber pulled up in front of us and kind of blocked us into the parking spot, while we were waiting and we actually saw the full moon, but it was really a man got out of the car, a gentleman. He was really, really busy and he reached in to get his briefcase and evidently, he was going commando because he mooned us like you cannot believe, moon.

Oh,

Oh, oh.

I was flipping out laughing and my wife was like, what? And I pointed, she said, oh my goodness, because you know, she doesn't swear or anything. And I was like, cackling. 

Man butt. 

It was so funny. Yeah.

Oh.

Oh Lord. He didn't care, but whatever. So moving on...

Wow. Wow. Okay. We go from, middle school plays…To men showing their booties.

To man butt. Yeah.

Oh boy. What a segue.

Uh, you gotta love it listeners. You gotta love it, listeners, always a laugh.

And I just wanted to say I have finally moved into the realm of learning how to make Instagram Reels, so you guys will be seeing them soon. You know, I have avoided it like the plague, but I'm starting on that. It's kind of actually fun. I always complain about, marketing, but I actually like doing those. 

Cool. 

Mm-hmm. They are fun.

Do we have any texts this week?

Yes, we had a couple texts from our regulars and the consensus is when it comes to, is a book finished for them, when they're reading it, they basically always want to hear more about the happily ever after. So the epilogues are fine, but they always want more, which is why they generally email you and say, when is a sequel? So.

Well, we had one email from CeeJay, which was kind of interesting on that. She said that she wrote, a like 70,000 word, just a, she did it like in two weeks, an idea she had and she said what ended up happening when she got through with those 70,000 words is it turned into a series and that ended up being the third book in the series. So sometimes you don't know if the book is done until you write the book. So that's what happened with that. That was pretty bizarre. 

I wanna add one more thing, can you see my t-shirt? 

Oh yeah. 

Retired. 

Yes. Retired.

I worked my whole life to get this shirt is the slogan on it. And one of our listeners actually sent this to me ' cause she knew I was retiring. So yes, thank you very much for that. It is a fun shirt and I'm wearing it out in public today.

Nice. 

That awesome.

So today we're talking about how do you know when your book is done? KC, you wanna start?

Sure. So, I'm actually a plotter. We've talked about that a few times. So I generally know when my book is wrapping up. I know the ending ahead of time and what the final chapters will say, but I don't really feel like the book is done, even when I've reached the ending until I'm proud of the story. So I have to be like, I'm really happy with what I've written and now I'm ready to, you know, edit it and get it out in the world. So that's how I can tell when I'm satisfied with what I've written.

Well, for me, a lot of times I am not a plotter, I'm a pantser. So for me, sometimes I will start a book and I will not know how it's gonna end. I will know what's gonna happen. I'll have a general idea of how it's gonna end, but I won't know the exact ending. And then as I go along and get to know the characters better and put them through this and that, then an ending will come to me. And for me though, that ending has to be, like you said, you have to be satisfied with it. If there's a good conclusion to the story. Then that's when I know it's done.

Yeah. And then for me, I always know the beginning, middle, and end of the book, before I even start so when I get to the end, I usually know at that point if it feels the way I thought it would. You know, like, did this end the way I thought it was when I started? And if it does, I usually go by my gut feeling and it's done.

Right. I should add on mine, all of my books have epilogues. So really, I look at it like I'm writing two endings to each story I write the first ending is the ending of actually what's going on in this instance with the characters. And then sometimes the epilogues are, a few months down the road. Sometimes they're a year, sometimes they're years. But then I've got another ending I have to do with that, and that's when you have a real satisfied sigh.

Yeah, I use epilogues too, and I agree that it's a great way to end it twice so you can wrap up a few loose ends when you are finished with the story. But people are gonna wanna know a little more. And I do that almost every time. It's very important. 

I, also know it's the end when my characters have evolved, so the ending has to feel satisfying for how I evolved or did a character arc for my main characters, and I have actually spent a lot of time on many of my books going back and adding more depth to the flaws, basically, of the character, especially in the beginning and their growth over the book. So I'll have the plot down, I'll have all the dialogue down, and I'll have a lot of the setting and everything down, but I wanna flesh out my characters and so I'm not ready for it to be finished until that character has gone through some sort of change.

I hear what you're saying. For me, those characters, I don't wanna leave anything hanging. I think is the way I wanna put it. So if I put something in there, they make a statement back in the beginning about something then, maybe that they're not sure about, then I'm gonna complete that somewhere during the book. I don't wanna leave my readers wondering anything. I want them to know, yes, these people are in love and this is the way you know they're gonna live happily ever after.

Yeah. And then going back to the epilogue, I do an epilogue, but I also always do a bonus chapter, but it's not like six months later or 10 months later, like you guys, it's usually just a continuation. So maybe the wedding in the book, you just see them marching down the aisle or something like that. It's a happily ever after. But then the bonus chapter might be more details of the actual wedding party or something like that. 

Mm-hmm. 

I'll say too, on my epilogues on series, for example, I'm writing a series right now. I'm in the third book of it. And, once, I finish the love story in this third book, I have to keep in mind that the epilogue for this book needs to also bring the series to an end. So, you know, there's a little bit, more. I like to bring all of the characters it's in because I want my readers to know, they're all still here, this is what's happening. And because like the readers, they wanna know what's happening down the road. Well, so do I.

Mm-hmm. And isn't it funny how even when you do what you just described, that they still wanna know even more.

Yeah. Yeah.

Even though you brought all the characters back in and you gave each couple or whatever the perfect ending with extra little spice or whatever, they wanna know more still?

Especially if you have kids involved, they'll wanna know what happened to those kids, you know, or what are those kids doing now? Or those type of things. Yeah, so I don't know. I just think it's a lot of fun, to be honest with you. That's why I do epilogues.

So how about from a more technical side? So, for me, it feels done when the editor sends it back to me and I put all those edits in, and then it's been proofread, then I feel safe. I feel like confident that after it's gone through all that processing, that it is ready to publish. So yes, I know it's done using a checklist as well.

Okay, so for me, once it comes back from the editor and I do those edits and everything. I feel like it's not quite ready because I have to send it off to the ARC team because I know there's still errors in there. I don't care how many times I read it. I'm gonna see some errors and so my ARC team is like my proofers, so it's not quite ready till I send it off to that ARC team.

Yeah, and I do the same thing. I do a lot of rounds with my editor, purposely, like we have a system that we do, and I like it that way because every time we're doing it, we each usually find something unique and different. So that's why my books take longer. I think for me too, I'm a slow writer and I take a lot of time doing the editing process.

And I also send it out to a couple beta readers too, and they always find things. I'm always amazed how they find things. Right. You've seen it a hundred times and you're like, how did they see that? How did I miss that? That's the worst, like an entire word is missing. How does that happen? 

Mm-hmm. 

Because of our brains. We, make the sentence sound correctly, you know, as we're reading them and everything. I know what you mean. I'll have maybe, let's say, a character's name is misspelled in there somewhere and I might have ten ARC team people that'll tell me about that, but then others will miss it. Then it'll come along and I'll have one ARC team member tell me about another word that's outta place or misspelled, and no one else catches it. 

Yeah. 

Here's an instance for you that I'm still not sure how it happened. The book that I'm about to publish in May. I hope it'll get there in May. At the end of my books, I always put a chapter or two of another book in there to entice the reader to try something else. So, I'm about to publish book two. So at the end of book two, I put the first chapter or two of book one in there in case they haven't read the first book. And then I put it into my formatting software, and there was an error in that book one, first chapter of one of the main characters names.

Oh boy. 

Mm-hmm.

How did that get through?

Yeah. 

Crazy. know, It's just crazy. So yeah, my book is not through when I get through with the editor because I've gotta send it to proofing and my ARC team does my proofing.

Yeah.

So, and then after that I get that back and I wait because there's several ARC team members and they all give me their corrections at different times, or there's suggestions, they will suggest to me, Hey, this doesn't really sound right. And once I get all of those done and I've read through it one more time. Maybe that's right before I hit publish for Amazon. Maybe that's when I think it's through.

So, have you ever been lured into making actual real changes to the story? Do you start tweaking when you do that last read through?

No.

No.

Because then you're... 

Hell, no. 

It's not a big change because then I'll be like, uh, maybe I need to let my editor look at this again. You know? It's so, no, I do not. I make the big changes through my editor.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But that's an easy lure. I've talked to quite a few people that, get sucked into, why I could do this chapter better, after it's pretty far down the road, and I would caution anyone not to do that. You, have to just let it go.

Mm-hmm.

And you know, I think that probably happens when you're a new writer. Because we probably all went through that and see now all of us are going, no, no, don't do it. Well, we know because...

No, effing way.

Yeah. Don't do it now. So, you evolve and you learn.

Or if someone, one of your ARC readers or beta readers brings up something, you're like, yeah, no. You just stomp on it like so quick. You're like, yeah, good point, but no.

Yeah. They're not gonna do that. No.

So, one other thing I do that makes me feel like the book is actually done, done is before I hit publish on Amazon, I will send away for an author copy and it says not for resale. And when I get that copy, I go through it and read everything all over again. And once in a while I'll find one or two small things, but once I have that paper copy in my hand, I know it's definitely done. And then I'm okay to hit publish on Amazon.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. One thing that happened to me, and I can't remember if I thought about it really hard, I could probably come up with a book, but I remember I had an idea for the ending and everything, and I got to the end and I wrote it and everything, and I just wasn't necessarily pleased. Has that happened to y'all?

I went back through and did my rereads before going to the editor, and I was like, this ending does not have the punch I want it to. And so I just took a day or so and took a breath and waited for another idea to come or how I could punch that ending up a little bit and did that instead before I sent it off. So sometimes you may think the book is done, but maybe not.

Maybe you get a better idea or something.

Yeah, exactly. I just wondered if that had happened to y'all. When I was, making notes for this episode, I thought, I do remember that happening at one time, and I was like, no, this is not the way I want this to end. I've got to come up with something better. 

Mm-hmm. 

You're allowed to do that, listeners, because you are the author. So don't rush yourself. Give yourself a chance to make it the way you want it.

Yes, definitely, go back if you have an idea before you send to the editor. If you have a big idea, take the time. I know it's really tempting to be like, screw it or fuck it... 

Yeah, I'm sick of this. 

I'm sick of this story and I don't wanna make any more changes, but if your instinct tells you that this character needs to be written with more emphasis, or even if you've included an animal and you realize that animal's not in there enough, things like that. Yes, go back and make those changes. I know it's heartbreaking a little bit to have to go back and add maybe a couple thousand or more words, but it does make for a better story.

Yes. And as you say that I have an animal in this. Series and I wanted the animal to be in every book. You're exactly right, because I went back in the book that I'm writing right now, and I said, wait a minute, Annabel is not in here. I've got to put her in there. And so, yeah, it's not as hard as you think it is.

And then there's always the big step, the most frightening step of all, and that is hitting the publish button on Amazon. On the KDP dashboard, there's actually a button that says Publish and you would be surprised sometimes I, when the very beginning, I actually had to circle the room a few times before I get up the nerve to actually push it out into the world. So yeah, that is when it's really done. 

Yes. Because once you do that, then it's stuck in there for two or three days until the publishing date, before it actually goes out. And here's what's happened to me, once or twice. You're thinking, let me get that on in there and get it done so I can quit stressing about this. And you hit that publish button. And then maybe not even an hour later, you get an email from an ARC reader. It says, "Hey, sorry I couldn't get this to you earlier, but here are my corrections." And you start going through their list and you're going, check, I've got that one, got that, misspelling got that one. Oh shit.

No. And so you go back in your copy to look and see and you're like, ah, thank God it's corrected. Or sometimes it's dammit, so you have to wait till it's published. Correct the document and re-upload it. So, I mean it does happen.

And the readers, that are listening, when you hit publish it will say this book is now locked while we review it for 72 hours. So you might have got that edit like you just said afterwards, and then you have to wait three days to come. 

And you're locked. Mm-hmm.

It's stressful.

It hasn't happened very often, but it has happened before.

Totally.

And then you wait. And you wait. And you wait till it's out there, and then you're like, oh, somebody review it. Please, please, please. Okay. All right. Sorry. That's how you know when it's done. When you're waiting for reviews.

And you're hitting refresh every fifty seconds.

Uhhuh. 

Exactly. When you get that first sale and that first review. I guess that's really what it's done. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's it for this week. Next week we're talking about writing book blurbs that sell. Do we have a question of the week?

I'm sure you've heard this question before, but I would always like more input is how important to you as a reader is the book blurb? So when you go and look for a book online, how many of you actually read the book blurb and think, no, I'm not gonna read that based on the blurb. 

Good question.

Hmm. That is a good question.

Well, that's it for this week. Thanks for listening. 

Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next week.

Have a great week. 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.