[From KMW: I’m taking a quick sabbatical this week. I’ll be back next Monday with a video/post/podcast about “The Three Most Structurally Important Characters in a Story.” Until then, I hope you enjoy this short post on an important topic!]

I have a little game I play when reading a book or watching a movie, especially a violent one. I try to predict if the author will be killing a character. More often than not, I’m right on the money, and it isn’t because I’m prescient or because I cheated and peeked ahead. It’s because character deaths are often formulaic.

Half the time, authors seem to axe characters for no other reason than the characters are likable and the authors want to wring a few honest tears from their readers. However, this isn’t really honest storytelling. Aside from the fact that readers may be righteously indignant over the unnecessary death of a favorite character, they’ll also resent being manipulated should they figure out what’s going on.

Of course, we could argue all of storytelling is manipulation since as authors we purposefully craft words and themes to guide our readers’ thoughts and emotions in the direction we want them to go. Readers accept and even embrace this. What they ask in return is that we manipulate them with style—and subtlety.

That means killing a character, like every other part of your story, must be organic. Character deaths must make sense within the context of the story, and they must move the plot forward.

Snuffing everybody’s favorite sidekick just because somebody’s gotta get hit by a random bullet and because he’s the character readers are most likely to sniffle over is a bad methodology. For a character’s death to work in a story—for it to resonate—it has to mean something. Unless your whole point is to illustrate random violence, make certain there’s a good reason this particular character has to die.

You have to compensate readers for the loss of a beloved personality. Not only will this make it more difficult for them to suspect the death beforehand, it will also allow the death to carry more emotional and thematic weight.

>>For more on how to do this, read “How to Successfully Kill a Character: The Checklist” (as featured on NPR)

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Are you killing a character in your story? What made you choose this character? Tell me in the comments!

The post Consider This Before Killing a Character appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

What are the pros and cons of selling direct and building an ecommerce business for your books? How can you use click testing on Meta to help refine your creative and book marketing ideas? Steve Pieper explains in this interview.

In the intro, The Hotsheet with Jane Friedman; 20 ways you should be using AI in publishing [PerfectBound]; Artificial Intelligence? No, Collective Intelligence [Ezra Klein with Holly Herndon]; AI may take our jobs, but not our creativity [Claire Silver on The TED AI Show].

Plus, De-Extinction of the Nephilim; my webinar on Discovery Writing as part of the Kickstarter – you can buy it in the bundle or just buy the ebook and get the webinar as an Add-On. Only available until 18 June at JFPenn.com/destiny; Writing modern thrillers based on ancient relics and historical places; Ancient Heroes Podcast;

Today’s show is sponsored by my patrons! Join my community and get access to extra videos on writing craft, author business, AI and behind the scenes info, plus an extra Q&A show a month where I answer Patron questions. It’s about the same as a black coffee a month! Join the community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn

Steve Pieper is a USA Today bestselling thriller author under the name Lars Emmerich. He’s also an entrepreneur and business consultant, specializing in digital marketing and selling direct with his course, AMMO, Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why more indie authors are embracing selling direct
• How the emergence of courses has helped mature the indie author market
• Differences in the process of selling a print book on Amazon vs. Shopify
• Cash flow management when selling direct
• When does it make sense for an author to start selling direct?
• Using click testing to test a book idea with your target audience
• Steve’s Click Testing and Direct Sales courses — If you’re interested, please consider using my affiliate link and supporting the show: www.TheCreativePenn.com/clicktesting

You can find Steve at AMMOauthor.com and his books at Lars.buzz.

Transcript of Interview with Steve Pieper

Joanna: Steve Pieper is a USA Today bestselling thriller author under the name Lars Emmerich. He’s also an entrepreneur and business consultant, specializing in digital marketing and selling direct with his course, AMMO, Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization. So welcome back to the show, Steve.

Steve: Thank you very much. It’s such a pleasure to be here, Jo.

Joanna: So you were last on the show in January 2023 when we went into your background. So we’re just going to jump into the topic today.

It seems like selling direct has gone mainstream in the author community since you were last here.

What do you think has happened to make authors embrace selling direct in a much bigger way over the last 18 months?

Steve: It’s a great question. I think a few things have combined to make it more mainstream, as you say. I think the first thing is that Amazon has effectively capped eBook sales prices at $9.99, and nobody’s capped the advertising expenses at any particular number.

So it becomes more and more important, as ad costs to generate interest in your books continue to increase along with everything else—aside from eBook prices—it’s more and more important to be able to track your metrics.

You want to be able to reach people who are purchasers, as opposed to people who are just nearly kind of curious.

Those things are made possible when you sell direct because your store knows exactly who purchases from you. You get their email address, you get their name, your store processes their credit card.

That information can be fed back to Meta, so Facebook and Instagram, to make your ads operate more efficiently and to bring you new purchasers more profitably. So I think that’s the first part of it.

I think the second part is that we’ve heard plenty of stories of some fairly high-profile authors having trouble with their Amazon accounts, often through no fault of their own.

Whenever you run a big enterprise, such as Amazon, you have to pay attention to the quality of the listings and the quality of the accounts. You also have to deal with people who are trying to abuse the accounts to make a quick buck.

The only way to do that at scale is algorithmically, which means the machines are making decisions about whose account to close and leave open. Often Amazon doesn’t even ask the authors what was happening, you just find that your account has been closed. So I think those things have combined to make direct sales a more viable option for people.

The third reason is that we’ve noticed, and this has been true since I first started selling directly in 2017 —

Whenever you advertise for your direct sales system, there’s this beautiful thing called a cross-channel effect.

This is where your book advertisements that point to your store so that people can purchase from you, they produce sales through your store, but they also get people excited who are diehard Amazon customers, for example.

So they might see your ad for your store, like what they see, but just prefer to buy from Amazon because of convenience or familiarity or whatever else.

So it’s kind of a two-for-one deal, and in some cases, like a three- or four-for-one kind of deal, depending on who you are, in terms of advertising dollars and sales that come in.

Joanna: Yes, just coming back on that Amazon cap on $9.99. At London Book Fair, I actually talk to an Amazon person, and said, “Look, it’s been capped at $9.99 for like forever. A while ago, it wasn’t that big a deal, but it is a real big deal now.”

I mean, I write nonfiction as well, and nonfiction, in particular, can take a lot higher prices on eBooks. So I agree with you that this is a bit of an issue. Do you think they’ll ever change that ebook cap? I mean, inflation is hitting everything, it seems, except eBook sales prices.

Steve: Exactly. I don’t know for the life of me why they haven’t yet. It seems in their best interest, as well, because they’re taking 30% of the sale price.

So I don’t know what economics they’re looking at, what data they have. I mean, I can’t imagine they have much data on sales performance above $9.99 because you earn half the royalty above $9.99. I can’t imagine many authors at all have chosen to take that route.

So I have no idea why they haven’t made those adjustments yet. I mean, I think it’s far more appropriate that if there were a cap at that royalty rate, it seems to me that it would be on par with what you typically see traditionally published eBooks priced at, like around $14.99.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. So that will be interesting if they ever change that. I guess they’re still trying to push people to subscription for eBooks.

I also wondered whether another thing that shifted is almost the maturity of the indie author market, and also the emergence of different ways to learn. I mean, your course has been around for a number of years now, but there are other people starting to teach.

[More on selling direct here.]

There are, I guess, even people like myself being more vocal about it, even though I sold my first PDF online in 2008, but it certainly wasn’t the way you do it. So do you think there’s also maybe this confidence? I mean, it was 2007 when the Kindle launched, so we’re at 15 years of an indie author market now.

Steve: I absolutely think the indie author market has matured.

I think in the beginning, the people who did really well in the early days of the Kindle, were those folks who had a catalogue and had their rights returned to them, or who had repurchased their rights.

They had a dozen or fifteen or so books to place on the platform, and they were midlist authors in sort of a traditionally published ecosystem. They found tremendous purchase in the new eBook ecosystem, and there were some really high-quality authors there.

I think what’s happened over the next, like you say, 15ish years in the meantime, is that many, if not most, really high-quality authors, they’re just not seeing much economic advantage to the traditionally published route. The royalty split is not attractive.

There’s a lot of authors who are in our community who are doing extremely well, who at one point were traditionally published, and their careers only began accelerating when they got their rights back and when they became their own business owner and their own business manager for their career.

Joanna: Let’s get into the benefits and the challenges of selling direct.

You mentioned the data that you get and the cross-channel effect, but what are some other things? What are some of the good things, and also some of the challenges?

Steve: So once you start getting into the advertisement game, and with sixty million titles available 24/7, 365, at least on Amazon and many other retailers, it’s really hard to have anyone discover your books unless you’re actively advertising.

Or if you’re spending a tremendous amount of effort to build a brand, a personal author brand, that also works. It tends to take three to five to seven years to do.

As soon as you get into that ecosystem, you are not just a writer, you are now an entrepreneur. You have to run a real business there. You have to pay very close attention to your cash flow and you need to be a professional about how you test and create your ads.

The other thing that happens is that as soon as you start spending real money to bring eyeballs to your books, it rapidly exposes any weaknesses in your product quality. The first inkling you might have that things aren’t quite right is that people just aren’t buying your books.

So what you find along the way is that you have to pay a good bit of attention to exactly how you’re presenting books, both on your Amazon product detail page, but also if you’re doing direct sales, on your Shopify pages and your sales pages leading to a Shopify purchase.

So it opens the door to business operations, and many authors just want to do the thing, we just want to write.

Again, in a world with sixty million books, it’s fine if you just want to write because you love writing, but —

If you have commercial aspirations, if you’d like to make a living or you’d like to make additional money on the side, it takes a more disciplined approach and more methodical approach.

That can certainly be a challenge for authors who are already busy, or sometimes holding down day jobs, and raising kids, and all of those things.

Joanna: So let’s come back on this. I feel like for many years, we did say that we were entrepreneurs. I certainly did. I have a book, Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur. So I did use the word entrepreneur.

When I look at now how to run a Shopify store and essentially an ecommerce business, I think, actually, we didn’t know what we were doing before. So just on that, the process flow of—let’s just take print, I think print is a really good example.

If you sell a print book on Amazon, compared to selling a print book on your Shopify store, what’s the difference?

Because I feel like a lot of people don’t understand the difference.

Steve: That’s a terrific question. So hidden behind the Amazon paperback purchase is also an Amazon logistics operation to print a copy of your book that is just sold.

Or you may have negotiated a wholesale order with a third-party printer and shipped those books to one of Amazon’s warehouses for them to fulfill and pick from the shelves and package and ship to your customer.

All of that’s happening behind the scenes if you are selling paperbacks on Amazon, but you have to actually understand how to do those things and set them up so that they function if you’re selling paperbacks from your Shopify store.

You should, especially now, we’ve already talked about the delta between book prices and how they’ve gone, compared to advertising costs and how they’ve gone. So depending on your genre, pretty much anything other than romance, you’d really need to be very serious about a paperback operation as well. So it opens a few different discussions.

There are print on demand services, and depending on where you’re at, they can make a great deal of sense logistically. They do tend to be quite expensive because they have to do all the logistical things, but also run their company, and provide profit for their shareholders, and all of those things.

So you can hook those up to your Shopify store. such that whenever an order comes in, they’re just fulfilled behind the scenes for you by a print on demand company.

The difficulty with that arrangement is that depending on your format size and your page count, your profit margins can be prohibitively thin, and it can be difficult to recoup costs.

The other way that folks go and the other things to think about is to negotiate a wholesale order to drive your per book cost down. That increases your gross profit per sale. So for every sale at a given price for your paperback, you make more money because your expenses are lower.

What that means is that you either have to fulfill that purchase yourself, meaning you have to pack and ship, and many of our authors do that. Or they’re also author assistants who will pack and ship on your behalf.

Then there are also third-party logistics companies that will warehouse your titles until sold, and then when they’re sold, they will pull them from their shelves in the warehouse and pack and ship them.

There’s a host of considerations that you suddenly have to think about if you’re selling directly to your readers.

It sounds scary, and it certainly can be. It really helps to have a few tools to help you calculate costs and make heads or tails of the process of finding the right source for your books at a good compromise between cost and quality, and also fulfillment time.

You have to look carefully at the prices in your genre to understand under what circumstances it’s likely to be profitable for you.

So as you mentioned, it’s suddenly a whole host of things that are really common to an ecommerce business, but have not been as common to the author world, especially the indie author business, over the last five-ish years.

Joanna: I think this is really important because I’ve had more and more emails recently saying —

“Oh, it’s really hard to sell a book on Amazon now. Oh, it’s really hard to sell direct. So what should I do?”

I’m like, you could try pitching traditional publishing. I think it’s really important that we emphasize that we are running this ecommerce business by selling direct.

If you do want to work with a traditional publisher, then there is a reason they get most of the money. It’s because they also have those logistics set up and all of that.

So I do feel like it’s a choice to go this way. I use Bookvault here in the UK, and they have great print prices. So I find that I actually can make more on selling a paperback than I even do on some of my eBooks, in terms of profits. I think this is very exciting.

[Click here to go to the interview with Alex from BookVault.]

So I guess I would say to encourage people is that once you get it set up—this is the other thing, isn’t it—once you get your head around this, you get it set up, it is just a sort of plug and play the next book.

I found there’s a lot of work upfront, and then the work is much less going forward.

Steve: That’s absolutely right. Once you’ve figured out how to get it uploaded to your store or to the service, then it’s pretty smooth sailing.

Bookvault.app has a tremendous reputation in the UK, and they’re in the process of expanding over into the US. What they’re finding over here is that they’re subject to the existing printing and shipping infrastructure in the United States, which leaves a lot to be desired.

The distances that have to be covered here in the US between customer locations and business locations, those change the economics quite a bit for those printing companies. So it’s a bit harder.

Here in the US, the print on demand company primarily, at least with a terrific Shopify interface, primarily is Lulu. I have been extremely happy with their quality. They are expensive, and it does eat into profit margins.

So Bookvault is a beautiful solution in the UK, currently. There’s not currently a beautiful solution, at my page count, in the US for print on demand. It’s doable, and a lot depends on the quality of your marketing assets.

A lot depends on your marketing assets in general. Like a terrific book is table stakes to be a professional author, and a terrific marketing system and process is also table stakes to be a successful indie author today, I believe.

Joanna: I kind of think it always has been, but certainly it’s just changed. The things that used to work more easily back in the day, now, as you say, are more expensive, or just things have changed, or there’s more books.

Let’s just talk about one of the very, very good things about selling direct, which is how fast you get the money.

This is such a big deal. I feel like people don’t understand it.

If you’re traditionally published, you might not get paid for months or sometimes years. As an indie author, you still only get paid 60 days later, 90 days later, sometimes longer depending on the contract and the system.

I have my Shopify set up to pay me every day. Now, I know some people don’t have that, they have it every week or whatever, but I really like making money every day.

So talk a bit about the cash flow with the print books. Because that’s also different in terms of when you get the money and who pays for things.

Steve: Absolutely, it’s so important, so critical, not to have to carry your own advertising costs for two to three months. If you spend $1 today on an ad and it produces a purchase, you want that dollar back because your credit card company is going to ask for it when your credit card bill is due.

If you’re waiting that 60 to 90 day window for Amazon to issue their royalty payment to you for today’s sale, well, you have to float that cost.

So that either means that you can’t advertise to your full capacity, you can’t sell as many books as you would otherwise be able to sell, because you can’t afford personally to keep paying these ad costs without getting cash flow back.

So it’s a much slower ramp up to selling books at scale when you have to wait up to three months to get paid. Whereas if you buy your ads today, and today or tomorrow, like the next business day, that money shows up in your bank account.

I’m like you, I want I want that money deposited every single day. I love those deposits. I don’t like them sitting wherever they’re at, I like them in my account. So you can pay off that credit card bill for your advertisements every single month, and it just makes everything much healthier.

The other thing is that if you’re waiting for royalty payments to come in, and you’re purchasing your own copies of your paperbacks or your hard covers to sell, those orders come out of pocket while you’re waiting for those royalties to come back.

So again, it’s just a much slower and much less responsive scaling capacity. That’s important because there are seasons in an author’s year, and also in an author’s career, when you catch a bit of a flyer where there’s a lot of demand suddenly for what you’re offering.

It’s really important to be able to take advantage of that, but if you’re waiting around three months to get the cash available to purchase more books to sell to the people who want them right now, that’s a really frustrating position to be in.

The cash flow management in an author career is a thousand times easier when you make a sale today and the money shows up tomorrow in your account.

Joanna: Yes, and as you say, if you do hit some big thing, like I know someone who had a really massive day on TikTok, and say you get a thousand orders for your paperbacks through to your store today, you get that money, but you also have to pay the printer.

So one of the confusions that I feel people have is that at the moment, you don’t have to “pay” for Amazon to print your book if you go through KDP print because they take it out of the sales. So you never have to pay them out of your pocket.

Whereas when we’re selling direct, we’re paying for the printing, and then a customer pays us. So I feel like this is so important, this cashflow. If you’re doing a massive campaign, then just remember this cash flow management. When does the money come in? When does it go out? Again, once you get it sorted, you can manage it.

When in an author’s journey might they consider selling direct through your methods?

You’re mainly talking about Shopify, which is quite different to Kickstarter. Some people might be on Payhip, some people might sell at a local school, for example. So at what sort of points should authors consider this?

Steve: That’s a terrific question. The platform that you’re selling from, whether it’s Shopify, or Payhip, or Samcart, there’s a bunch of them out there, the considerations are quite similar.

What we’re seeing across our community, and we’re close to 1200 or 1300 authors strong in our community at the moment, and we have some folks who are doing really well and can generate a purchase of a bundle of their books for $6, $7, or $8 in advertising costs. Those tend to be outliers.

What we’re seeing on average, is that the average cost to bring in a new paying customer is between $12 and $20. That’s a range, it’s not like Author A gets good sales at $12, and Author B gets sales at $20. That’s a range that every author experiences throughout the week or day or month.

There’s a lot of fluctuation running any kind of business. You can tell this just by looking at your Amazon purchases back in the dashboard. Some day you sell more books than others, and it’s the same when you’re selling directly. So that $12 to $20 customer acquisition cost, it’s relatively agnostic to the advertising platform that you’re using.

We use Meta because they’re by far the best. I test these every year, spend thousands of dollars, and I have always wound up at the same place. Facebook and Instagram are where book buyers mostly are, at least from an ad perspective.

When you have to recoup a $12 to $20 customer acquisition cost, that dictates how you need to structure your business.

So you have to have enough products to sell to make that money back in profit, and then some, so that you keep selling for your store.

So if you’re a novelist, and you’re selling one or two titles so far, it’s really rare to do that profitably anywhere, including on Amazon, but it’s really rare to do it profitably if you’re selling directly due to those acquisition cost reasons as well.

The number of books that you have is important. Each of them have to be professional quality, professional grade.

They have to be so good that your readers know that they’re going to love them and tell their friends about them.

So that’s what you’re aiming for product quality-wise, and you need a bunch of products that way. So if you write in the romance genre, we typically see around eight to ten titles being sort of the price of entry for all the goodness that comes from selling directly to your readers.

In other genres where there are typically longer page counts and a slightly less voracious reader community, we see in the neighborhood of five to eight titles.

It’s useful to know too, like what’s a sustainable number of titles. A good metric for that is, I like to think of it in terms of looking across our community and asking myself, what’s the smallest number of titles that an author has had that they have used to sell over a million dollars’ worth of their books?

What’s magical about a million dollars? It’s just a nice milestone, but what it really tells you is that their setup is resilient. So it’s not like they have a good week, and then everything falls apart.

To sell a million dollars’ worth of your books, you’re in pretty rare air, which means that you have a system that is working really well for you. You have the right number of high-quality titles to work for you.

So if you are a novelist, the smallest number of titles that an author has used to sell over a million dollars of their books is eight.

If you’re a nonfiction author, this is an interesting one, the smallest number of titles that one of our nonfiction authors has used to sell over a million dollars’ worth of their books is three.

That’s a little bit misleading because it was one main title with a workbook and an associated poetry book. So it was like a suite of three products, but really the vanguard was led by that one individual title.

So I mention that just to give you a sense for what you can expect if you’re looking to build a sustainable business that produces enough cash flow to be really interesting and really worth your time. So those are good numbers I think to aim for. If you are topically on point in your nonfiction title, that can be done with a single title, but it’s really rare.

If you are a novelist, then I would be looking more toward five to eight as really the point when you can expect, if you’re doing a good job, testing your marketing assets and elements, and testing your books, and writing high quality professional titles, that’s when you can reasonably expect to start doing so profitably in a direct sales context.

Joanna: I’ll put a little caveat on this, which is if you have one or two books but you still want to do this, you just can’t do big paid ad spend.

If you’re building up your author brand slowly, you can sell direct just through driving your own traffic through building an email list, or if you have a podcast like I have had for many years.

This is how I’ve done it. I’ve moved platforms over the years as things have grown.

I do think that some people are just launching on either Kickstarter or through Shopify, and they don’t necessarily have to do a lot of ad spend, they don’t have to sell a lot of books. Your course and your system is for the very, very ambitious people who have more books.

That’s what we all want, but sometimes if people are starting out now, I wonder if going through building the store and learning the business can also be beneficial, even if they’re not expecting the massive sales. Just with the caveat that they’re not spending a ton on ads.

Steve: I believe that’s absolutely true. That’s what I mean by the brand building. Like if you’re building a brand through podcasts, and in emails, and newsletters, and appearances at conferences, and media appearances and such, that is absolutely effective. In fact, that’s ultimately where all of us need to end up if we really want to grow into a really recognized and successful brand.

I will say that there are certain elements that we teach that are quite important no matter where you are in your author career. So it’s not like you should wait to engage with paid ads until you have eight titles or five titles, it’s actually kind of tragic to do that.

The reason is that we tend to overestimate the quality and marketability of our own work. So one of the worst situations, and I see it, unfortunately, over and over again, where people come into the community with lots of titles, which need lots of work.

So the way around this is not to ask your friends if they like your work or not, to ask your family members if you’re going to be a star author, but to —

Test your ideas in front of total strangers who are known to read in your market.

This is different than sending a survey out to your email list. It’s different to asking people in person for feedback because they’re solving a different equation. They’re thinking about their relationship with you and your feelings.

So they’re not directly answering this question, “Would you buy this right now?” That’s the question. You can’t ask them directly, you just have to put things in front of them that give them the opportunity to show you, yes or no, how resonant, how effective, your messaging is.

So we do this, and the name of the process is called click testing.

[You can use my affiliate link for the course at www.TheCreativePenn.com/clicktesting]

Click testing has been used in about 75-plus different industries. It’s helped to drive over a billion dollars, including $200 million dollars per year in extra revenue.

Click testing is a way to test a number of your ideas very quickly, but also with high fidelity and a pretty high level of precision.

One of the things that we discovered—and this is like 800 authors, 6000 tests, 50,000 different individual testing elements—one of the really interesting things that we’ve discovered is that only about 5% of our ideas are good enough to move forward with profitably. So one idea out of twenty.

An idea might be a hook, or a tagline, or a title, or a subtitle. One idea might also be an image or a cover image.

So it’s extremely important to de-risk everything you’re doing, in my opinion, whether it’s advertising to bring traffic to existing titles that you have, or if you’re still building your catalogue and still writing, we found that it’s quite important to de-risk those future titles by testing your book ideas.

The process, again, that we use to do this is called click testing. It is the foundation of our direct sales program, which is aimed for people, like we talked about, who have a number of high quality titles and want to build a serious ecommerce business around them.

Click testing, on the other hand, benefits and has benefited authors selling anywhere from $0 per month, upwards of a couple million dollars per year. It’s actually quite a simple process that just involves running advertisements and treating them in a special way as experiments.

We run them for a brief period of time, and we have a very specific number of impressions that they’re shown for. That’s just like the number of people who get to see them.

Then we just look at the performance metrics of these little advertisements to guide us to give us an understanding of whether or not that particular idea is worth pursuing either as an advertisement, or even more importantly, worth pursuing at all to make a book out of or to include in your next book.

So the beginning of that process, the direct sales process, actually is click testing. It applies to pretty much anyone at most spots inside of your author career trajectories. Whether you’re already selling a lot of books, we’ve got folks who are multimillion dollar year sellers who have really dramatically improved their profit margins. So they took a lot more home.

Then we’ve got folks who were beginning who had financially successful titles through testing the ideas and the concepts. It’s not just the ideas and concepts, it’s also the specific words—as writers, we know this—but it’s also the specific words that we use.

So that’s a really important way to think, in my opinion. If you want to do this professionally, and if you want your work to be read, it’s really important to get midstream and early stream feedback on whether anybody might be interested in reading this book once you’re done with it.

Joanna: Yes, and I wanted to talk to you because I have been through the click testing module, and I’ve always been pretty resistant to this. I tried your course a while back, and it was a lot of data. So I’m not a massive data person, but I did this click testing process, and I actually found it quite fun.

I’ll tell you what’s different now, and this will help people listening, is ChatGPT. I basically was like, I can’t come up with fifteen different taglines, I just can’t. But ChatGPT can.

My brain can only think of one or two taglines, or maybe I can’t think of any. Maybe I can only write 70,000 words, I can’t put it all into like a tagline.

So I used ChatGPT to come up with a lot of the variants for the click testing. I put this on my email to you, but I changed the tagline for Spear of Destiny, which as we speak right now has just launched on Kickstarter. It’s already funded.

So I mean, who knows whether that tagline made all the difference, but I certainly changed it. When I did the click testing, and I put in whatever it was, fifteen different variants or however many it was, my one, the one I came up with originally, it performed like number eight or something out of the list.

So I switched it to the one that tested better, and I did that to a market that I normally sell to. So this is what’s interesting, this was a Kickstarter tagline. This was not necessarily a whole advertising campaign, but it really, really helped me.

I guess the other thing to say, because we talked before about the conversion ads which were more expensive.

These are click ads. So it doesn’t cost you that much to do these tests, does it?

Steve: No, not at all. In fact, we just run it at a relatively low budget of $30 per day. I recommend six tests. The number is six if you’re a novelist or a storyteller, or if you are a nonfiction author who solves problems for people.

So each of those tests last one to two-ish days at a $30 per day ad spend. So the whole thing is done in like two weeks. So maybe you’ve spent $200 to $300 to de-risk your title, or maybe you’ve spent $200 to $300 total, to arrive at a really high converting advertisement.

Like you mentioned, the things that you learn about what people like, they’re not just useful on the book itself or on the advertisement itself, they’re useful everywhere you’re interacting with your customers. So in your case, on the Kickstarter page. Also on your product detail page, whether that’s on your Amazon product page or on your Shopify product page.

Also, if you’re doing lead generation and getting people to sign up for your list, what you discover really resonates and really gets people excited to your click testing, guess what, it also gets them excited on the signup page.

Or if you’re bringing people to a sales page in a direct sales scenario for your bundle, or for a trilogy that you’re offering in paperback, or whatever, those elements really go a long way toward improving every aspect of your business.

You include them in your emails, you include them if you’re making videos, if you’re writing blog posts. It really is useful when you find beyond a shadow of a doubt the confluence of your particular voice and what you have to say, and also what resonates with your market.

It’s really nice when you feel good about the things you’re saying your market, and they really respond to it. So it’s a really cool tool that way.

Joanna: Yes, so because we’re talking about Meta here, we have to talk about what’s been going on recently. So we’re recording this at the end of May 2024, and the word in the author community in the last month has been the Metapocalypse, where—

Authors have seen a drop in revenue and effectiveness of Facebook ads. Is this the Metapocalypse?

Now, my personal thought is that Meta are rolling out a lot of AI tools, and they’re trying to make it easier on us, but these experiments have caused issues. A bit like any of these changes, it’s going to have an effect.

Some people have kind of freaked out, gone back into KU with their eBooks, wondering if it will ever come back. What are your thoughts on the short-term, but also the long-term, impact? What will change? What should authors be doing?

Steve: This is such a good question. I’ve been advertising online since 2003. Back then there wasn’t just one search engine, there were like six. So I was advertising on all of them. It was different business and different ecosystems, and they all sort of had their ups and downs.

Then the advent of, first, Facebook, and then Facebook and Instagram ads now under Meta. Those became a real player for us in like the 2015/2016 ballpark, maybe 2014 even. I look back, and about twice a year in some communities someplace, there is the Metapocalypse kind of meme that circulates.

It’s really important to understand that in any community of businesses, and authors are no different, at any given moment, we’ve got authors in our community who are having their best month ever.

Then we have authors in our community—same community, same month, same advertising platform—who are not having good months at all.

There’s this continuous up and down in any business, and ours is no different.

One of the things that sort of determines which industry takes up the meme, like the sky has fallen in Facebook land, is just which individuals are having a rough month.

If it’s somebody with a prominent platform and they’re writing about it, or it’s somebody who’s got a course on something and they’re having their turn in the barrel, as they say for a rough month, it can really feel like things are out of control and we need to make drastic changes.

So let me give you a resource that will stop this kind of anecdotal spread of information which may not be accurate. So there are a couple of analytics companies who connect to your Shopify store and they connect to all of the different ad platforms.

So they see every dollar that thousands upon thousands of ecommerce businesses are spending on every relevant ad platform. They see how much a click is costing, what are the click through rates, how much does it cost to bring in a new customer.

Since they have such a broad view across all the advertising platforms that are relevant to ecommerce and across so many different niche ecommerce stores, it actually gives you a real sense of what’s going on.

So the resource I’d like to point everybody to is Northbeam.io. So North like the direction, beam like laser beam, Northbeam.io. They have a Media Buyer Newsletter, and what they do is they send out their statistics monthly. So the main meme that the sky has fallen in Meta-land in the book world, that was on the strength of April’s results, for better and worse.

It was really interesting because the recent Northbeam media buyer newsletter, where you can see exactly what market share exists on like Meta vs Google vs YouTube vs TikTok, and you can see trends in whether it’s become more expensive or less expensive, more profitable or less profitable.

The April 2024 results were better than the April 2023 results. So from that perspective, there was no Metapocalypse this year, which is really interesting. You can see the difference between what happens socially and anecdotally.

You know, we talk to each other, but we don’t have the ability to see what’s actually happening from a numbers perspective. So when you fold in that data, it really helps you make more informed decisions.

So how would I use this differently? Like if that data came back and said, “Oh, my gosh, April 2024, it was 25% more expensive than it was in 2023. Things really are looking bleak,” I would consider making significant changes to my business, to the structure of it, to the strategy of it.

Given that it came back, actually, April 2024, was better than April 2023, numerically speaking, that’s different. Then my action is, okay, it sounds like I just need to work harder to test newer creative. Maybe test newer hooks, new images, things that are resonating now.

Culture moves at a pretty quick pace, so things that worked, they work for a shorter period of time now. Things are moving so quickly in media and culture, so it’s important to be able to make strategic decisions like that with actual information.

It’s not like pages and pages and reams and reams of data, it’s usually summarized just in one chart, and it fits on your phone. So I recommend that everybody who’s buying ads in the book world, subscribe to that Northbeam.io. I’m not affiliated with them, I just think they’re awesome. Northbeam.io, and it’s called the Media Buyer Newsletter. So that’ll keep you from making emotional knee jerk reactions that you could live to regret.

Joanna: I think it comes back to what we were saying at the beginning around being an entrepreneur and having a real business. The reality is, it’s not all up and to the right forever. Unfortunately, not everything is like that all the time.

It goes up and down and things change, and that’s part of the fun of it, too. I mean, if it was always the same, then it would be so boring. So this is certainly interesting, and as I said, I find the course great. You’re a great teacher, and you’ve recently redone the whole course.

Tell people a bit about the course and who it’s most suitable for.

Steve: Thank you, I appreciate that. So there are two programs, and the front door for everybody is click testing because I’ve just seen almost universally positive results in a whole bunch of different industries.

The reason that the results are positive is because you’re learning more about what your market wants, like what do the people actually want and respond to. So it doesn’t matter where you’re at.

If you’re working on that first book, you would definitely want some information that your market is excited about the idea that you’re spending so much time, and effort, and energy, and probably money and love, to produce.

Also, if you’re selling well, but would like to increase your profit margins, or you’d like to be able to advertise more aggressively to produce more sales, but to do that, you have to be able to advertise more effectively, click testing is for you also.

Like I say it’s, it’s helped people who have zero books and are making $0 per month, and it’s helped people who have many books and who are really big names, not just an indie community, but out in the author world.

It’s improved the number of books they’re able to sell and the profit margin they’re able to sell it at.

So that’s called Click Testing for Authors. That’s the introductory program. It’s the foundation for everything, and the reason it’s the foundation for everything that we do inside of our processes is because it teaches you what your customers like. That’s really important.

For a subset of folks who have the number and quality of titles that we spoke about earlier, there’s a follow-on program called Direct Sales for Authors. Those two modules together are inside of version four of AMMO.

Direct Sales for Authors really hones in on the nuts and bolts of setting up a direct sales system. It gives you a bunch of tools to help you calculate your paperback costs, for example.

That can be a hassle, so we put some spreadsheets together to do all that math for you because people who write aren’t always people who love to do math. So that’s taken care of for you.

We also walk you through the process of getting your assets to work profitably. It’s one thing to set everything up so that it functions, i.e. when you put your credit card in, a book comes out on the other end of that. That’s one thing, but getting that process to operate profitably is another thing entirely.

It’s a whole process in and of itself, and there’s some art and science to it. So we provide tools for that, for those folks who are interested in building a direct sales business and interested in doing so at an exciting scale based on the number of books that you have.

So there’s two programs. The first one is Click Testing for Authors. That’s for everybody under the sun who writes books, in my opinion.

Then the Direct Sales for Authors is a more focused program for those folks who are in a position to most immediately benefit from a serious direct sales effort.

Joanna: Fantastic. If people would like to use my affiliate link, I’m a happy affiliate. I have done the course, and I think it’s great. It is thecreativepenn.com/clicktesting, all one word.

Where else can people find it? I always like to give people the actual link because, of course, we don’t expect people to go through my affiliate. Also—

Tell people where your books are, as well.

Because you are a real author, and I think that’s really important.

Steve: Yes, thank you. So please do use Joanna’s affiliate link. Let’s support Jo’s podcast and your efforts in everything that you have done for our community for all these years.

If that’s not your thing, perfectly fine. AMMOauthor.com. A-M-M-O like Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization. AMMOauthor.com is sort of the front door. If you want to check out my trashy spy thrillers, they’re at Lars.buzz. L-A-R-S-dot-B-U-Z-Z.

Joanna: Or “zed, zed” if you are British.

Steve: Depending if you’re on the correct side of the pond or the incorrect side of the pond.

Joanna: Right. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steve. That was great.

Steve: Thank you so much, Jo. I really appreciate it.

The post Click Testing Ideas And Selling Direct With Steve Pieper first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the tropes of action adventure thrillers? How can you please readers and sell more books? J.F. Penn shares her own tips and also features excerpts from interviews with other thriller writers.

J.F. Penn is the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the ARKANE action-adventure thrillers, the Mapwalker fantasy adventures, and the Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers, as well as horror, travel memoir, and short stories.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Put your characters in difficult and dangerous situations
• Writing fight scenes
• Include a ticking clock and high stakes
• What is a MacGuffin and how is it used?
• Research into places and experiences
• Trust your writing instinct and have fun!
• Help your readers escape to exciting places
• Using quotes, and source citation
• Write a series

If you love action adventure thrillers, check out the ARKANE series by J.F. Penn. Spear of Destiny, book 13, is out now on Kickstarter with special edition signed exclusive cover hardbacks, plus paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook, and bundle deals in all formats.

You can find J.F. Penn at www.jfpenn.com, buy books direct at www.JFPennBooks.com, and read the blog or listen to the Books and Travel Podcast at BooksAndTravel.page.

7 Tips for Writing Action Adventure Thrillers with J.F. Penn

I’m an action adventure thriller fan from way back, but what are the hallmarks of the action adventure genre?

Clive Cussler said,

“Adventure is just putting characters in settings and locales that are unfamiliar to the reader and then as the writer, having fun with what happens.”

I’ve always loved adventure stories. As a child I read The Hardy Boys, and King Solomon’s Mines, and I remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books where you would flick to a new page as you made your choice of action.

I loved Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series and read a lot of marine biology books, as I thought I might be able to join NUMA or something like it. I was able to meet Clive before he died at Thrillerfest in New York in 2015 and have a selfie which really made my trip.

I discovered Wilbur Smith’s African and ancient Egyptian adventures, then Michael Crichton, Matthew Reilly, and James Rollins, who also combined the religious aspects I enjoyed into his books.

I love the Pendergast series from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, with its crossover into occult and supernatural. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code came out in 2003, and I jumped into that as soon as it launched. I had previously enjoyed Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, but wanted more action and a modern take on the religious themes.

In terms of TV and movies, I loved The A Team, James Bond, Indiana Jones and all the action movies Angelina Jolie did including Lara Croft, and of course, Nicholas Cage in his action movie era — Con Air, The Rock, and Face Off. I loved Arnie in End of Days, Keanu in Constantine, both a blend of action and religious thriller.

I have a Masters degree in Theology from the University of Oxford, and although I am not a Christian, I am fascinated by religious history, relics, conspiracy, and places in Europe and the Middle East in particular that have so much rich religious culture. I’m also glad to be able to use my degree in my books since it was pretty useless when I used to implement accounts payable systems as an IT consultant!

Adventure is generally a male dominated field, and that’s part of why I wanted to write an action adventure series with a strong female protagonist.

Morgan Sierra is my alter-ego, but she has a lot more practical fighting skills. Think Angelina in Mr & Mrs Smith and Salt, or Charlize Theron in The Old Guard. Morgan is most often joined by Jake Timber, her partner at ARKANE, a secret British agency investigating supernatural mysteries around the world.

I started writing the series in 2009 and Pentecost by Joanna Penn came out in 2011, which I later rewrote and rebranded to Stone of Fire in 2015. I did another rewrite in 2022.

I’ve written 13 ARKANE books and a short story across 13 years, during which I’ve written many other books of course, but my ARKANE adventures have to be inspired by real life, and they take a while to research and percolate before writing. They cannot be rushed! 

If you’d like to read more action adventure by indie authors, check out RD Brady, David Wood, Alan Baxter, J. Robert Kennedy, PJ Skinner, Ernest Dempsey, Nick Thacker, Avanti Centrae, and Kevin Tumlinson — and yes, several of the list are women. You can recognise us by our initials!

Right, let’s get into some tips for writing action adventure thrillers.

Tip 1: Put your characters in difficult and dangerous situations

Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher thriller series says,

“The three essential things are: Put the characters in danger early; keep the stakes high; and make sure the danger grows throughout the novel.”

Gillian Flynn, author and screenwriter of Gone Girl, said,

“I like writing about people who are flawed and human. It’s what I enjoy reading and what I enjoy writing. Thrillers are all about how you break somebody, in the best possible way.”

In 2011, I was writing the early books in the ARKANE series. Stone of Fire was just out, or Pentecost as it was back then before the rebrand, and Crypt of Bone was almost done.

I was still wrestling with writing fight scenes, and I was also slightly worried about writing violence and hard times for my characters. It’s strange to think that now because I love writing fight scenes, and in Spear of Destiny, Morgan Sierra has a particularly good fight with a mysterious soldier in the gorgeous State Library in Vienna. That was fun to write!

But back then, I was still early in my career, so I interviewed David Wood, author of the Dane Maddock Adventures about writing these kinds of scenes. You can find David at DavidWoodWeb.com.

“People expect that your main character is going to make it through to the end with some scars, and so you need to create suspense as to how they’re going to get there.

You need to make them care about the supporting cast and will the supporting cast survive, and also by making the challenges they face greater, you can show more parts of their abilities and their skills with those on display. This book has got more action throughout. I really wanted to develop the antagonist by making their role bigger and bringing them in from the start, I needed to bring them into conflict earlier on.

Now I don’t do gratuitous, gory things. I’m not Quentin Tarantino. We don’t have Kill Bill with the blood jetting out of the necks and things like that. So I try to have a purpose for it, but I think there also is an expectation in thrillers that there’s going to be a body count.

I think as long as you’re not a sicko person, it’s pretty easy to compartmentalize and just let your imagination run wild. I know as a kid I like to read about World War II, now that I’m older and I know about war and I’ve known people who have been killed in it, it’s not a glory thing anymore, but it’s still interesting. I think, people coming into conflict on that level is fascinating.

I listened to the Hardcore History podcast, which is a favorite, and the host, Dan Carlin did an amazing series on the Punic Wars, and he did such a powerful job of describing that hand to hand, eye to eye, chopping each other apart. And it makes you realize how horrific it is. But it’s also fascinating because you want, what does that feel like? How does your psyche react? How does your body react? And we wonder what we would do if we were ever faced with a life and death situation.”

Fight scenes are part of what readers expect in an action adventure thriller.

Personally, I expect a high body count in the thrillers I read. These are no cozy mystery or domestic thrillers where there might be a body or two. These have much higher stakes!

Fight scenes are also a staple of the genre, but writing a fight scene when you are not a fighter is a skill you need to learn.

I interviewed martial artist and multi-award-winning horror and thriller writer Alan Baxter back in 2011, in the early days of my ARKANE series. I asked him why readers love fight scenes, and in this clip he explains why:

“One part of it is escapism because most people have never had a fight. Generally, that’s a good thing because even people that do train fighting, it’s best if you don’t fight. When people fight, people get hurt. Horrible things can happen. I train fighters all the time, and the thing I’m always saying is the first defence, the first block, is to run away. Never fight unless you have to.

And so by reading about these things, we get to experience those things from that third person perspective of what’s going on. And I think it’s just a natural extension of fiction.

Most stories at their core are dealing in one way or another with conflict. If it’s a love story, it’s emotional conflict or if it’s a mystery, it’s a sort of cerebral conflict or whatever. But what makes an interesting story is conflict and challenges and tests for your characters in all sorts of shapes and forms. So of course, the most distilled version of that is actual physical conflict and people literally fighting against each other in a physical sense.

And of course, when you are writing action and you want all this fast paced mayhem going on, and people running into each other and having fisticuffs and jumping in cars and having car chases and blowing things up, that’s what gets our adrenaline going.

If we were going through that, our adrenaline would be drowning us, whereas we can read about someone else going through it and we can get that sort of vicarious ride by following them without any real threat to ourselves. So I think it’s just a natural extension of the general conflict in storytelling.”

In the interview, Alan gives lots of tips for writing fight scenes and you can also buy his book, Write the Fight Write: A Fiction Writer’s Resource for Creating Realistic, Convincing Fight Scenes. You can find Alan at www.alanbaxter.com.au.

Tip 2. Include a ticking clock

The ticking clock is a thriller trope. There is a deadline and a race against time which drives the pace of an adventure. Usually, the main characters have to stop the baddies from destroying the world, or save someone before it’s too late, or whatever the plot is, before the time runs out.

In Spear of Destiny, I have two ticking clocks. One is the countdown to the US election as my antagonist is military and a politician who intends to use the Spear to galvanise his campaign and summon a supernatural power to propel him to the White House.

The other ticking clock is more personal for Morgan. Her young niece, Gemma, is dying, because of a curse that should have affected Morgan. She will do anything to save Gemma and the Spear can be used for both healing and destruction. The stakes are both political on a country and global scale, but also much more personal and intimate.

Tip 3. Feature a MacGuffin

Action adventure thrillers in particular usually have a MacGuffin. It’s the thing that the characters are searching for, usually some kind of object of power, or historical importance. In Spear of Destiny, it is, you guessed it — the Spear of Destiny!

Morgan and Jake must recover the pieces from various locations around the world before the bad guys put them all together again and summon a great evil.

Your MacGuffin doesn’t have to be original. In fact, among action adventure writers, we often use the same objects because it’s so fun to write them. We often use the same places as well, but of course, we all have different characters and different adventures.

Tip 4: Research thoroughly. Details matter.

My ARKANE thrillers are mostly based on my travels, and many of my own experiences. One of the benefits of running a business as an author is that you can do tax-deductible business trips and that includes experiences for research, as long as they end up in a profitable book, of course!

Back in 2014, I interviewed multi-award-winning thriller and mystery author, David Morrell, who is most famous for his book First Blood, which became Rambo, although he has written many other books.

David has always been very generous and welcoming to indie authors, and he loves his research! Here’s an excerpt from the interview, where he talks about some particularly exciting experiences. You can find David at DavidMorrell.net.

“I did a novel called Testament, which was about a man on the run from a terrorist organization who’s forced to live in the mountains over a winter. And I heard about an organization called the National Outdoor Leadership School, which is based in Lander, Wyoming, in the United States, and basically takes groups into the mountains and teaches them how to survive up there.

And so, prior to writing Testament, I went and I lived above timberline in the Rocky Mountains for thirty days. And the graduation exercise — I remember this so vividly. There’s a mantra: You can go three minutes without air, three hours without heat, three days without water, and three weeks without food.

So they took our food away and then they showed us the map, and it was on the other side of the continental divide. Three days from now, we’ll pick you up over here. So you had to know how to use a compass and a map. We kept our canteen, but we didn’t have any food and basically for three days, there were five of us in this particular group, and so we just kept going and kept going, and I lost twenty-five pounds. So I did that. That was one of an exciting thing.

I went to the Bill Scott Raceway in West Virginia where people go to learn how to drive in emergency situations, and so for five days I learned how to car fight, how to ram through barricades, and at fifty miles an hour we were doing all this stuff. And the movies have it all wrong, but it was a glorious time. I never had so much fun doing all this car fighting on this raceway. And I used that in a novel called The Protector because it occurred to me that car chases in the movies are fake and I hardly ever see them in novels. So I thought, well, why not do a car chase in a novel that’s authentic in the way a professional would really do it?

And I think the one that really transports me the most. I was doing a novel called The Shimmer, which is about mysterious lights that appear in West Texas and have been for since like 1889. And they’re real. I’ve seen them. They’re very strange. And the government or the military for a time tried to investigate them using aircraft.

And so I knew that the novel, if it was going to be realistic, would have to use aircraft. And then I thought, well, what do I know about aircraft? And I’m not gonna fake that. It’s like, if you’re writing about guns, it helps to go out and shoot one just so you know what it’s like. And so I went, I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I went down to the local, , airport and found a place that taught flying. So I started paying flying classes and I liked it so much, and I eventually became a private pilot. So I have my license, which has the Wright brothers on it and it’s very cool. I’ve had a lot of fun doing the research.”

Trust your writing instinct and have fun

I love that David mentions fun in that last segment, because research trips to interesting places are part of why I write my ARKANE thrillers. They give me an excuse to travel and delve into some really fascinating history and culture, and it’s one of my favourite parts of being an author.

It’s great to find author friends who enjoy the same fascinations, and I’ve interviewed multi-award-winning author Rebecca Cantrell multiple times over the years.

We actually first met in Berlin when I was on a research trip to visit the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum which I included in End of Days, and we have also been at Thrillerfest in New York and at a conference in Oregon together. We both have an international mindset and we always geek out about cool places we have traveled to and written about.

In terms of action adventure, Rebecca has the award-winning Joe Tesla series of thrillers which begins with The World Beneath. I also particularly love her supernatural thrillers, co-written with James Rollins, which start with The Blood Gospel.

This is an excerpt from an interview in 2016 about writing award-winning books where Rebecca talks about trusting your instinct when you feel something about a place, and the importance of having fun. 

“For the Joe Tesla stuff, which is set in the subway under New York, there’s a lot of urban explorers who go down there with cameras and they just film themselves walking through the tunnels and what’s going on. And so you get to see all these hidden places and even ten years ago, unless you happened to be in New York, you’d never ever see that material.

There’s so many places that seem kind of magical, where you go there and just like, ‘Ooh, this place has some kind of energy or some kind of story inherent in it.’ And I think that writers pick up on that and you’re like, okay, there’s something about this moment and this place that strikes you, and it strikes every writer differently, but I think there are certain places that just resonate a lot.

I think that you need to trust your instinct and then really do the research and immerse yourself in it. It’s okay to have fun. It’s okay to go someplace that you think is fascinating and wander around and sit in.

Like I had a book that I was going to set in Venice and I happened to be in Venice and I didn’t write that book until years later, but I sat in a cafe in Venice on St. Mark Square, and I drank hot chocolate in this little cafe that had been around since the 1700s, and it was real chocolate that they melted in the milk. And that feels completely indulgent because it was nothing but fun. It was fantastic hot chocolate and the setting was gorgeous, and you know, you can’t take a bad picture of Venice.

I’m not sure you can sit anywhere in Venice that isn’t just beautiful, but as a writer, it’s okay to have fun. It’s okay to enjoy those moments, and it’s okay to really indulge your senses because that’s where the gold is. Those specific moments that you love and you connect with will connect with the readers, and that took me a long time to really believe.

And I think I was working with James Rollins on something and I was like, so I think this, but is that dumb? And he is like, no, I found that if I think it’s cool, other people think it’s cool. And I think that’s true trust. Trust the readers and trust yourself. Have fun. If you have fun, it’ll show.”

Tip 5: Help your readers escape into an exciting setting

Action adventure thrillers are about escaping your current situation and delving into a fast-paced adventure for a time. Setting is a huge part of that and action adventure is usually about a realistic present day setting used as part of the plot, although there are also adventure categories under Fantasy as well, and my Mapwalker thrillers fit there.

My ARKANE thrillers are all modern day, real-world settings. Spear of Destiny opens in Vienna, and also has scenes in Nuremberg, Oxford, and Washington, D.C.

Nick Thacker also writes similar adventures in his Harvey Bennett series and other books. I interviewed Nick about writing action adventure in 2020, and here’s an excerpt about escape and setting.

“People go to these types of books and movies for the ability to not quite go to a completely fantastical world, that this isn’t fantasy adventure, but to go into a different place of the world that they know. And it just seems like a lot of readers are going to our work because they want to escape to another place that they may not have been or somewhere that they’ve been, but have not discovered enough.

But it’s those little details that I think really capture the realism of a setting. We’re writing fiction obviously, but since it is set in a world that people know, it’s important to get that stuff right.

When I started writing this stuff and really nailed down my brand, what I wanted to do, I have what I call a formula, and I’m putting finger quotes because I know formula is a bad word to a lot of writers. But my formula, if you will, is essentially taking some prototypical technology and giving it to a really bad person or organization and then dropping the whole thing into an exotic location, and the good guys have to go find the bad guys.

I mean, all of my books are essentially that, and I try to put in the history, some of the cyber tech thriller type stuff, the elements of those books that I know like Dan Brown’s and Clive Cussler, James Rollins. And so it’s that combination of it all, but the setting is really key. I try to put the book somewhere that I’ve never been or that I would want to go, that I think my readers would also enjoy experiencing.”

To go deeper into place and my fascination with cathedrals, as well as thrillers, I also loved Sanctus by Simon Toyne when it was published in 2011, the same year Stone of Fire came out. I love strong settings, and Simon’s city of Ruin fascinated me.

In this excerpt from our interview in 2014, Simon talks about how he found inspiration for Ruin after arriving in France after a stormy crossing from England across the channel.

“We drove an hour inland, and an hour inland from Dieppe is Rouen and the storm had blown out and dawn was starting to lighten the sky. And I saw the silhouette of Rouen Cathedral up on the hill, and it’s a very weird cathedral Rouen cathedral. It’s got this kind of like hypodermic syringe of a needle of a spire. It pierces the sky and these kind of bits, it’s very gothic and weird. It’s almost like a spider. It’s a strange thing.

And when I saw it, this quote just popped into my head that I’d read years ago and always liked. And kind of carried around with me in, in that sort of way, like picking up a shiny thing and putting it in your pocket.

And the quote is the one that’s the beginning of Sanctus, which is the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “A man is a God in ruins,” and there was something about that quote. The image of the cathedral and the play on words of Rouen ruin that just planted the seed.”

Tip 6. Use quotes for inspiration but be careful with attribution

It’s also a common practice amongst thriller writers to include quotes at the beginning of novels as Simon did there, ‘A man is a god in ruins.’

Many of my ARKANE thrillers include biblical quotes since the series is often about a religious conspiracy of some kind. Spear of Destiny has an extended quote from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus:

“The soldiers put on him a crown of thorns and he was scourged and received condemnation from Pilate, and he was crucified at the place of a skull and two thieves with him, and they gave him vinegar to drink with gall, and Longinus the soldier pierced his side with a spear.”

But there was also a quote I found that became quite pivotal in the story,

“He who does not carry demonic seeds within him will never give birth to a new world.”

This is a quote from Magic: History, Theory and Practice by Ernst Schertel, and it was underlined in Hitler’s personal copy of the book. Adolf Hitler was of course an Austrian, and although he was rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the early 1900s, he remained in the city painting and selling his work. While he was there, he studied the Holy Lance, the Spear of Destiny, and learned about the occult, which is all woven into the history behind the relic and the modern day thriller.

As a practical note, whenever I find quotes, I note them down in my journal — always in quotation marks with the source, and I also put them in my Things app (or you can use whatever software you find helpful). I review these lists for inspiration at different times, and move them into the Scrivener project per book when it becomes time to write.

Always note your sources! If I use a direct quote in the text, I will have a character weave in the source, and I also include an Author’s Note in all my books expanding on my research with an explanation and a bibliography.

If you’re concerned about accidental plagiarism or copyright violations by inadvertently forgetting to cite your sources, have a listen to the interview I did with Vikki Carter, The Author’s Librarian back in 2021, where we discuss research techniques, proper ways to use citations, and more.

Tip 7. Write a series

Action adventure readers love a long-running series, so plan for that by making sure you have an episodic structure for the book, and a team for the protagonist to work alongside.

• Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt NUMA series has 27 books, some of which have continued after his death.
• Indie author Ernest Dempsey has 23 books in his Sean Wyatt archaeological thriller series.
• James Rollins Sigma series has 18 books, with the latest, Arkangel, coming out August 2024, and yes, I have pre-ordered as this is one of my must read series.
• Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series has 24 books, with the latest, A Death in Cornwall, out in July 2024, which again, I have pre-ordered!

My ARKANE series has 13 books — Spear of Destiny is lucky book 13.

Each book can be read as a stand-alone, which is also a common aspect of action adventure thrillers.

My main character Morgan Sierra joins the ARKANE secret British government agency and mainly works alongside Jake Timber, another agent, but various books feature other characters.

Martin Klein, my super geek character modelled on Q from Bond, is popular and even has a stand-alone story, Soldiers of God where he is the protagonist, so you can expand your series into extra material based on secondary and side characters.

In 2021, I interviewed Sara Rosett about writing a series. Sara writes cozy mystery and historical mystery, and she has a book, How to Write a Series, that might be useful whatever genre you write. In this clip, she talks about reasons why writing a series is such a good idea.

“Readers love a series. If you can get your readers hooked in on book one, then book two and three on down the road is an easier sell perhaps than a standalone because your readers are familiar with the characters in the world. If they enjoy the experience, they want to return to that same world again.

Then there’s some financial stability with writing a series. If you know that book one made a certain amount of money, then maybe book two and three may not be that exact amount, but you can predict a little bit.

And not always, but sometimes, writing a familiar series and characters can be a little bit easier and it can go faster because you already know the world. You’re not world-building with each book.

Then, there’s marketing reasons for promotion that make a series a good thing to have. You can save time, you can focus on book one in your marketing, and then you’re not trying to run ads to all the books in your catalog, you can focus on one and hopefully as readers come into that book one, if they like it, they’ll continue on.”

If you enjoy action adventure thrillers, you might enjoy Spear of Destiny!

Available now in all the usual editions plus a special hardback, silver foil, signed edition with an exclusive cover. There’s also a webinar on discovery writing if you’d like to join me for that, and I won’t be selling the replay, so that is also exclusive to the Kickstarter. Check it out at www.jfpenn.com/destiny

A cursed bloodline. An ancient weapon. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.

When a mysterious relic is stolen from a museum in Vienna, ARKANE agents Morgan Sierra and Jake Timber embark on a deadly race against time to recover the legendary Spear of Destiny — the holy lance that pierced the side of Christ.

As they follow clues through Nazi ruins, Tibetan temples, and Washington, DC’s greatest monuments, they uncover a sinister plot that threatens to unleash an unstoppable darkness upon the world.

But Morgan also carries a curse in her veins, a shadow placed upon her that now threatens her niece’s life. To save her, Morgan must find the Spear and unlock its fabled healing powers. Standing in her way is the fanatical Jericho Command and their elite leader, Gabriel, a man both blessed and burdened by strange powers and a mysterious past.

From the ashes of World War II to the mystical peaks of Tibet, from ancient crypts to the hallowed halls of the Library of Congress and the Capitol, Morgan and Jake must brave every danger, solve each puzzle, and face down enemies both human and demonic in their quest to find the Spear before its terrible power is unleashed.

Time is running out and the fate of the world hangs in the balance — will Morgan and Jake prevail or will the forces of darkness triumph?

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn comes a gripping and explosive thriller that delves deep into the heart of an ancient mystery and a chilling supernatural evil. An unputdownable story of supernatural suspense, Spear of Destiny is a rollercoaster ride into the dark legends of the past and the shocking evils of the present, with only a cursed relic lying between salvation and damnation.

Spear of Destiny is book 13 in the ARKANE action adventure thriller series. It can be read or listened to as a stand-alone story even if you have never read another in the series. There are also binge-worthy bundles available in the Add-Ons so you can read or listen in order if you prefer.

Check it out now at: www.jfpenn.com/destiny and the link will redirect after the Kickstarter is finished. The book will be out in the usual formats in September 2024.

The post 7 Tips For Writing Action Adventure Thrillers With J.F. Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you adopt the seasons of nature in your writing? How can you allow periods of rest as well as abundance? Jacqueline Suskin explores these ideas and more in this interview.

In the intro, thoughts on children’s book publishing [Always Take Notes Podcast]; how to market a memoir as an indie author [ALLi]; A desperate quest. A holy relic. A race against time. Spear of Destiny is live on Kickstarter!; What is Kickstarter and why am I launching there?, I’m on the Wordslinger Podcast talking about marketing later books in a series.

Book cover designer Stuart Bache on AI for book covers [Brave New Bookshelf]; OpenAI signs licensing deals with The Atlantic, Vox Media, and NewsCorp [OpenAI]

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Jacqueline Suskin is a poet, author, speaker, and creative consultant. Her latest book is A Year In Practice: Seasonal Rituals And Prompts To Awaken Cycles Of Creative Expression.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Writing a poem quickly, live and in person, or order
• Choosing the poems that go into a collection and knowing when it’s finished
• The physical beauty of layout on the page
• Embracing the seasons of life and creativity
• Trust emergence
• Choosing the “easeful” path for your next project
• Celebrating our creative accomplishments while continuing our journey
• Practices to help us slow down
• ‘The veil is thin’ and how it manifests in our work

You can find Jacqueline at JacquelineSuskin.com.

Transcript of Interview with Jacqueline Suskin

Joanna: Jacqueline Suskin is a poet, author, speaker, and creative consultant. Her latest book is A Year In Practice: Seasonal Rituals And Prompts To Awaken Cycles Of Creative Expression. So welcome to the show, Jacqueline.

Jacqueline: Thanks so much for having me.

Joanna: I’m excited to talk to you today. First up, just—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing poetry and books.

Jacqueline: I’ve been writing ever since I was a little kid. I feel like I’m one of those people who just sort of knew at a young age that words were the world I wanted to live in.

I didn’t really know what that meant for a long time. I didn’t know I was writing poems. Then the older I got, the more I was familiarized with that world, and I thought, oh, I’ve just always been a poet. So I ended up going to university to study poetry, and getting a degree in poetry, and then just continued to follow that.

It’s really led me to some pretty incredible places, including this project that I’ve done for a long time called Poem Store, where for about 12 years, my only job was to take my typewriter around to public places and write poems for people on the spot.

So I really got this sort of direct connection with the way that everyday people connect with poetry. That has definitely illuminated my path as a writer.

Joanna: That is so crazy. I mean, what possessed you to do that? How did you make that a living? I mean, I have seen some people do that. As an introvert who just doesn’t really want to speak to people in general, I just find that utterly terrifying.

Tell us a bit more about Poem Store.

Jacqueline: I mean, honestly, it happened by chance. I just met someone in Oakland who was doing that, and he found out I was a poet, and he invited me to come try it with him.

I had just purchased a typewriter, which was so strange, everything kind of aligned magically like that. That was in 2009. I did that as an experiment just to see if I could, and then I just realized almost immediately how special it was.

It was the perfect combination of my two skills. One is writing and the other is to connect deeply with people. So I just let myself follow it and see how far I could take it. I had no idea it would become my full-time job.

That was very clear, after about a year of doing it at farmer’s markets and just kind of continuing the experiment, I was like, I think this is more than an experiment, I think this is something I should probably really give myself over to. Once I did that, it definitely took root and grew into a huge project.

I’ve written over 40,000 poems with Poem Store. I don’t really do it in public anymore because I just kind of got burnt out.

It was a very young person’s world to do that in. I had a lot of energy then, and now I’m a little older, and I feel a little more protective of my energy.

In the midst of all of that, that’s how I got books published, that’s how I met people. It was a really connective way to be part of the community and bring poetry to all types of different people.

Joanna: Wow, 40,000 poems. That’s kind of incredible. On that, I mean, this is a very interesting thing, and I think goes to the heart of creativity.

I do know quite a lot of poets, and some poets insist that it takes a very, very long time to be happy with a poem and put it out in the world. You were basically doing a connection, and then a fast creative publishing type process.

How do you connect so deeply and so quickly, and then turn that into creativity in a finished product in a short amount of time? I know you’re not doing that anymore, but—

How did you change that mindset of “it must take forever to do a poem” to going so quickly?

Jacqueline: Well, I like to hold both sides of it. I still, even throughout that whole process, wrote books. Those poems did take a lot of time, and craft, and working with an editor.

The painstaking, beautiful longevity of a single poem being on the editing board is something I’m still really familiar with and love a lot. Then I also think there’s this freedom in just being able to have this poetic conversation with another person, which is basically what I was doing with Poem Store.

These poems that I would make in the moment, they’re very spontaneous. so they’re including that person’s energy, and there’s also a mystery there. Like I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to write, and I didn’t really know what I did write until I would read them the poem when I was finished.

Just yesterday, I work in a lot of schools now and just visit kids and show them what it’s like to be a poet, teach them about poetry, and I brought my typewriter to class yesterday.

There’s something really magical that happens when someone has a typewriter, and I think that that was also a big part of it.

There was like this deep lore of how is this person being so vulnerable out here in the world writing poetry, but then also, wow, this machine from the past, this is sort of like a time travel opportunity.

Joanna: I imagine some of those kids have never even seen a typewriter.

Jacqueline: Yes, and there’s something about allowing oneself to be free creatively like that. Like those poems had nothing to do with my ego, right? Like, I’ll never see them again. I didn’t keep copies of them. Every once in a while, I would take photographs of ones that I really loved or something like that.

There was something so special about releasing that sense of control, and the need for perfection, and the need for such a clear certain outcome, that I think is actually really nice to apply to art making.

Although I really do value the craft and the focus and will continue to write books in that way for the rest of my life, I also will always allow myself to slip into that more improvisational sense of writing.

I mean, honestly, even just yesterday, it was a reminder that my imagination is this thing that’s always growing and changing, and there’s new language to uncover. It feels like a challenge in a playful way.I like, especially as being someone who is a writer for my profession, making any kind of outlet I can for that playfulness in my work.

Joanna: I love that. Well, let’s talk about the books of poetry, the collections. I’m also fascinated with this, in that you have to choose poems to go into a collection, which are usually themed in some way. I own quite a lot of these collections of poems.

How do you choose the poems that go into a collection? How do you know when it’s finished?

As in, okay, I am happy that this represents whatever that particular point in time is. It seems like quite a nebulous process.

Jacqueline: The choosing is really a fun process. I think, for me, what will happen when I know a book is coming into focus, is I will spend my time reviewing what I’ve been writing over the last year or two years in my journals, and I’ll see a pattern or a theme.

For example, I made a trilogy of books about my time living in California, and each book in the trilogy is about a certain place that I lived.

What allowed me to choose those poems was that I saw this beautiful kind of exploration of place, and I thought, “Oh, I have an entire books worth of poems about my time living in Northern California. Oh, I have an entire books worth of poems about my time living in Los Angeles, and then another for Joshua Tree.”

I could see this theme. So then I went back in and added to it.

I thought about my core memories of those places and patched in what I thought was missing.

With all my books, it’s been a similar process of sort of noticing that either there’s a theme building up, or there’s a collection of poems that are based on place or a certain time in my life. So that’s kind of how the choosing happens with this reflection process.

Then there’s how to know when a poem is done. I work a lot with clients one-on-one who are trying to create books or trying to polish their poetry.

I always say, you really do need to work with someone else at some point in the process, so that they can say to you, “Yes, this makes sense. This is clear. This is getting across the point you’re trying to get across.”

You need to have that reflection of another reader, someone else’s eyes on it, to give you the sense of closure that you might need.

Not every poem is like that. Some poems, randomly you’ll write something that’s just like, “Pow! That is done. That is good. I love it. That’s very clear,” but I think that’s very rare.

Joanna: I love that. So I also wonder about your poetry, and in fact, your books in general, because you have poems in this book A Year In Practice. I tend to read poetry from a physical book, sometimes I’ll get an audio or maybe watch a video of a poet performing, but I’m one of those people who appreciates the physical layout of a poem.

That’s often a place where people play with physical layout and the beauty of words on a page, as opposed to the beauty of the words. Do you know what I mean?

How do you incorporate physical beauty in the layout words on the page, or is that less important to you than just the words?

Jacqueline: I do love that. I love when people appreciate that because that is a big part of the craft. Deciding where to break a line, deciding what space goes between which stanza. I think for my work, a lot of times I’ll be creating something that the line breaks are giving the pause and the cadence to the poem.

So I’m a huge fan of reading poetry aloud. Like every time I read a book of poems, I will read the poems out loud because I feel like there’s a lyrical song-like quality to poetry, there’s a rhythm.

The lines, and the way they break, and the way that the words appear on the page offer that. There’s spaciousness around certain words.

I think for my work with the typewritten poems, then there’s another quality of this kind of tactile, visual expression with the mistakes that I leave in, or just when the typewriter skips a beat, or when I go over a spelling mistake with just a few Xs, because on my typewriter, there’s no way to backspace or amend mistakes.

I think that things like that give a different life to poems. Especially, if a poem is just a block on the page as like a narrative or prose narrative—which I do write poems like that a lot—I think it’s definitely still an invitation to kind of slow down.

I think that’s the difference a lot of times between just straight up prose or narrative fiction or something, is that you get this chance to have space around the words that are usually delivering something very, very macro, very large, as a condensed space, and as few words as possible, honestly.

Joanna: Let’s get into A Year In Practice. It’s a great book, I really enjoyed it. Of course, people can listen to this whenever because it does have all the seasons in it.

How should we consider the seasons as they relate to a calendar year, specific writing projects, and also times in our lives?

How might they overlay each other?

Jacqueline: When I was creating this book, I looked to the earth for many things. A lot of my life revolves around my connection with the planet. Especially as a creative person, as a writer, as a professional artist, I feel like a lot of times what I’m searching for, what I’m honing in on, is some sort of a methodology that allows me to have a consistent routine.

That changes throughout the seasons of my life, depending on what’s happening in my life, what other work I’m doing, where I live, what personal things are happening in my world.

This project started many years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles the seasons are very subtle. You have to really be paying close attention to understand that there even are seasons, and what they’re telling you is even more subtle.

So I think for a poet, that’s actually an incredible invitation because I think subtlety is something that I love to lean into and kind of see what is really under the current of this. What small hints and arrows am I missing if I just kind of rushed through this? Subtlety asks you to look closer and slow down.

So I really learned about the seasons in a new way when I was living in Los Angeles, and this book kind of came out of that. I was like, okay, in the winter, I need to give myself some kind of space to slow down and turn inward a little bit.

Even if you’re living somewhere where there isn’t snow, or there isn’t actual cold weather to deal with that kind of forces you to be in hermit mode, you need to give yourself that because your human body kind of requires that.

There’s not a lot of space for that in our society. I did an interview with someone once about the book, and they were like—

“Basically, your book is suggesting that we rest a lot.”

I think that’s a big part of the creative practice that can easily get overlooked because we’re really concerned with product and outcome. It does feel really good to finish something or to fully indulge in creativity and let yourself be really fervent with whatever your ideas are.

I also think that noticing the season at hand and reeling it in for winter allows you to then move into spring where there is this charge, and there is a charge of energy that you can carefully and slowly approach so that you don’t get burned out.

Then you go into summertime, and that’s a major time of togetherness. Like that’s when we’re together, when we’re sharing our work, when we’re taking in work, but in a group. I imagine always in the summer, it’s like when you’re allowed to fully be out.

You’re not having one foot in the door and one foot out, like you might be in spring. That care then kind of translates into the fall where you start harvesting and gathering again for your winter introversion or for your winter seclusion period. So there’s a lot of energy in fall for noting:

What will I need in my creative cave? What can I do for myself now? What can I finish now before I kind of start to turn off a little?

So I love winter, and I feel that winter is a really appropriate time for creative gestation. Then the seasons that follow, there’s a lot of choice that’s involved.

You made these choices to turn inward and to focus and to kind of calm and take your foot off the pedal a little bit, but then when you come back into action in spring, it isn’t like you just then slam on the gas. The truth is, is that winter kind of starts and stops for a long time, and spring is very moody. That really affects our creative practice. It really affects our ability to show up for our ideas that maybe we’ve been brewing during the wintertime.

Joanna: In the bigger level, I was thinking as I was reading the book, there are different phases of our life. So you mentioned that your Poem Store, you’re not doing that anymore, that was like a phase of life that you have now moved on from.

We all have the seasons, that sort of macro level. So for me, for example, the perimenopause years were like a winter, in that I really struggled to do a lot. I needed, or I should have, given myself more grace and more time, but it really felt like a winter.

I’ve come through that now, and I feel like I’m really in a spring, like a reinvention. That’s sort of a number of years over different parts of our lives that sort of mirror, I guess do you find that they do mirror the annual sense?

Jacqueline: Yes, and I really like considering the seasons of our lives. I think the main thesis for this book is just:

How can we remember what the energetic quality of this season is and then apply that during our life whenever we need it?

So sometimes we need a winter, we need to go inward, we need to rest and recuperate. That might happen in the middle of summer. I think it’s more of learning this gift of this language that the seasons offer.

The earth is just saying like, “Here, this is what all the other animals and all the other plants are doing right now. You’re a part of that, maybe you could consider doing that also.”

Then thinking how that applies to the greater practice of just living and kind of knowing, okay, I’ve memorized what goes on during this time of year for myself, or I’ve memorized what it feels like to sort of downshift. How do I apply that?

I’ve done the work of memorizing it, so it’s almost like now I can flip the switch. I can make the choice and say that’s the energy I need right now. That doesn’t really happen unless we give ourselves over to learning it and practicing it.

That’s, I think, why I wanted to have the word “practice” in the title of the book, and to consider practice not just being creative practice and artistic practice, but truly the practice of living and engaging with life in a healthy and beneficial way that might be forgotten very easily, because there’s so many things in our daily lives that steer us away from that.

Joanna: So as we’re recording this, we’re coming into spring. I was telling you before we started recording that the sun is out here in the UK, and it feels like, yay, spring has finally arrived.

I love in the book, you have this poem called “Emergence,” and I actually have on my wall, I have a little card that says, “Trust emergence,” which I feel reminds me that something will emerge. Even if the garden has been bare in the winter, something will start to sprout. So can you talk a bit about that?

Why does the word “emergence” call to you?

How can people understand that that will happen? I think it’s really hard, hence why I’ve got it on my wall to remind myself.

Jacqueline: I think this really does just circle around the theme and the thesis of the book of this remembering, even this concept of emergence and that something will emerge, something new will happen.

How incredible is it to see the flowers and the perennials all pop out of the ground every year? It’s never something that I’m not in awe of. It always almost shocks me.

I think there’s something in that that’s change is the written law of the universe. It will always be happening.

We will always be shifting and growing and changing, something different will always emerge. That’s the nature of life.

We forget that. We get stuck in these feelings that nothing will change, that things are the way they are. I think that that’s partially just what it is to be human. I think we get caught in our minds. We get caught in a feeling. We get caught in our bodies.

We forget that, yes, like something new will come, and that as it does emerge, the way we respond to it, the way we notice it, the way we meet it, and what we do with it, and the pace that we do all of that with it, really matters.

So I think, again, that memorizing. Well, how do you approach emergence? How do you keep yourself in line with the fact that that will come? What will you do before it does?

I love using the metaphor of the plant world because I think that the plant world is so reliable in this way, where if something emerges too soon from its cave of growth, from its safe underworld below the soil, it might get killed in the frost.

That’s what happens every spring, there are these frosts that happen, where winter kind of makes its last stand. If we’re not careful, coming out into the world after our moments of inward retreat, we could have that experience as well. We could get a little burned. We could get burnt out.

Some idea that we bring to the surface too soon before we’re really ready could then get kind of snuffed out a little bit by the fervent energy of spring, and then things get lost. I think that’s kind of what I think of when I think of emergence.

Joanna: You mentioned fervent energy there, which I love, because I feel that is the energy right now as we’re talking. Everything’s growing, and it’s a bit mad out in the flowerbeds.

This is a problem that authors have is that often there are so many ideas. There are some people who struggle to find ideas, but many of us, I’m sure you included, have so many ideas. I don’t know which one to focus on. I wondered, since you do so many different creative things, how do you know—

When all these things are springing up and emerging, how do you choose your next project?

Whether it’s a collection of poems, or a full-length book, or all the other things you do?

Jacqueline: I’ll try to stay in the logical realm with this because, for the most part, I actually think that that’s a very intuitive experience. When I choose a project, it’s usually because some kind of door opens. There is some pathway that is easeful, and I noticed that.

I think logically and practically what that looks like usually is like, okay, I’m feeling my way into a new project, there’s probably a few at once that I’ve been thinking of, and all winter I’ve been brewing these ideas.

Then something will happen where I’ll say, oh, okay, this is the easy way forward with this, and it’s inspiring to me, and it’s easeful. So that’s the thing I follow. Then sometimes that peters out, and then I turned to the next thing.

So I think having your clear ideas of: what are the things that would make you feel great? What are the things that would inspire you? What are the things that you feel energetically pulled to do? Then also, what ease comes with those things?

Like if you choose a project, and then suddenly the next day, you notice that there’s a grant proposal that just opened up that’s in the same vein as that project, to me, that’s a practical sign to try and put my effort in that direction.

I think following those practical signs is also very much like what the Earth does. When a plant is growing up and out of the soil, it’s like, I’m going to lean toward the sun, and I’m going to make this easier on myself. I’m not going to grow in a direction that would make my growing harder. So I think that that’s how I focus on things like that.

I let myself intuitively move towards what’s easeful.

It’s hard enough in the world to make a living in any way, so I think that if your artistic practice is your daily job, then there’s a lot that rides on the ease of what you choose.

Joanna: That’s interesting. I’m also intuitive. We actually talk about intuition quite a lot on this show, so I’m glad you said that. I do feel when I want to tackle a project, like this is ready now, it does emerge. It comes out. Some books, like one I’m writing at the moment, it’s been years in germination—since we’re staying with that metaphor.

Let’s come on to summer because you use the word “celebration” in the summer section. This is something I, and many authors, struggle with. In fact, someone asked me the other day in an interview, “What’s the favorite book you’ve written?” I was like, “The next book. It’s always the next book.” So I wondered, what do you feel about this?

How do we celebrate what we have done, our past, as well as just moving onto the next thing?

Jacqueline: I think that’s really interesting. I love the books that I’ve written.

I feel that there are some books that I’ve written because they were more of like a prompt. They were more of something that was almost like requested of me, either to continue my career moving forward or just to get something out of my brain that I knew was almost like taking up space.

I think that I don’t judge the reasons why I make things, as opposed to just looking back and being like, “This is a good book.” I still feel that way, and I actually feel that way about all of my work.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have a favorite, but I do feel this sense of letting myself just enjoy the successes I’ve had, and the fact that I’ve written eight books and created over 40,000 poems in the world.

I love to feel that actually anything that comes after all of that is just like a cherry on top. I’ve already done all of this work that I’m really proud of. I kind of let myself live in that way, instead of feeling this push and rush to be more or make more.

I haven’t written a bestselling book, but that doesn’t make me feel badly about myself. It’s more like, well, but I have written eight really great books that I am proud of. So there’s something about this comparison that can happen in the world of artistry that I try to steer away from, and just sort of look at the facts.

I actually have in my book Every Day Is a Poem, which is all about cultivating a poetic mindset and the practice of poetry, I talk a lot about reflecting on one’s life, and thinking of all of the skills that we have, and all of the things that we have done, and all of our accomplishments, but on a really simple level.

I love to consider all of the experiences that I’ve had, all the places I’ve gone, the friendships that I’ve nurtured, just the simplicity of being like, well, you know, I’ve enjoyed cutting a cold apple on a really hot day with a beautiful sharp knife. That feels like an accomplishment to me.

So if I’m reflecting, I’m just like, wow, I’ve done a lot. I’ve experienced a lot in this life. Instead of thinking that that’s exceptional or special, I think that every human could do that. It’s just about reframing the way you see your life.

Joanna: I think I always just feel like I have so many ideas and so many books I want to write. It’s like once one is done and out in the world, and I’ve released it, and now it kind of belongs to everyone else, I’m just excited about the next one.

I think I struggle, like many people, with the idea of rest. There’s always more to create.

Jacqueline: Yes, and I mean, I feel that way too. I have many projects that I’d like to complete in my lifetime. I think there’s something to be said about—and this has definitely helped me—about just practicing patience with all of that.

I’ve had periods in my life where I have had a book come out every single year. Now for the past few years, that’s been a little different.

I think at first, even like downshifting from my experience with Poem Store, which was just constant output, constantly creating and seeing this completed poem go off into the hands of a stranger over and over again, it really sped things up for me.

I think over the last few years, I’ve been practicing just slowness.

I have the word “SLOW” written in huge letters right above my desk, just reminding me that great masterpieces take a really long time, sometimes a lifetime.

I think the Earth really shows us that also. A Year In Practice is kind of revolving around that same idea of your whole life, and all of the seasons of your life, and what you create, it’s all adding up to be this great masterpiece.

It’s not just like a book that’s published in your hand. It’s also just like every moment by the end of your life adds up to be this really incredible artwork. Especially if you approach it that way, especially if you try to practice living your life artfully, then I don’t think there really are mistakes to be made.

Joanna: Just coming back to that word “slow” because it’s so interesting that you have that. I mean, I’ve got loads of things written next to my desk on all my little bits of papers and quotes and things. I do not have slow.

I do have, “Create a body of work I’m proud of,” which I think that resonates with what you’re saying.

What are some practices that can help us slow down? Particularly in this world, a lot of authors now, we have to be on social media, we have to do things to keep our profile up so that people can find our books because it’s pretty noisy out there.

What are your suggestions for slowing down?

Jacqueline: I think there’s something in the creative practice that tells me, don’t grasp, don’t rush. So if I’m working on something, even just a single poem, if I’m working on anything creative, I will check in with myself and be like, am I rushing? Am I grasping at something here?

Or does this feel playful? Does this feel like I’m tending to a deeper emotion? That doesn’t mean I won’t end up writing really quickly on the page some great burst of inspiration, it just sort of allows me to review where I’m at internally.

I do think that that’s probably my greatest advice is just that rushing through anything, it can easily feel like, oh, I’m just following the blaze of inspiration. If you look closer sometimes, if you just review the feeling, you might be like, oh, actually, no, I’m just trying to push through towards an outcome.

I don’t think creativity really likes that. I think our imaginations are running rampant all the time, and if we slow down to tap into them, there’s a lot there, but I don’t think it requires us to be on the same pace as it.

We can grab maybe one piece of that, and then slowly nurture it and take our time with it. As opposed to feeling this sense of, I’ve got to rush and collect every little idea or image or concept that I have.

I think I heard an interview once with Tom Waits, where he was talking about where he was driving in the car. He would always think the muse is coming to him in these moments where he’s like on the highway in his car, and he’d say, “Muse, don’t come to me now, I’d have to pull over on the side of the road.”

There’s something about that—I might be misquoting it—but there was something about that that really struck me when I was younger. Number one, if I have an idea in the middle of the night, I’m going to turn the light on and write it down in my notebook.

Then I think over the last couple years of practicing slowness, I’ve thought a lot about just letting poems kind of pass through me and not feeling so pressed to document everything.

That has actually released me from that feeling of pressure. You can have a really brilliant idea, and it can just be a brilliant idea that kind of moves through your body. That’s it, and that’s how it lives in the world, and it doesn’t become something. There’s a great freedom in accepting that, I think.

Joanna: In social media there’s this sort of thing, if you don’t take a picture of it and post it, it doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen. It’s similar. We don’t need to share everything. Not everything needs to be documented. So I like that kind of letting go.

Let’s come to autumn. In the book, it’s so interesting, you do use this phrase, “when the veil is thin.” I use that phrase pretty much in all my novels, in my memoir, as I feel this in certain places, and certain times, spiritual places, different times of year.

What do you mean by the veil being thin? How does it manifest in your work?

Jacqueline: Well, I think specifically in autumn, there’s a sensation of being very close to death, because everything is losing its vibrance. All of the green is gone, the leaves are falling, everything is starting to go to sleep. So beyond the veil is winter, is the period of rest, is like the inner cave.

I think that when we’re kind of hovering before going fully in there, there might be this opportunity to receive some information.

So I think receiving information in these moments where we feel close to death, or close to our hibernation mode, that maybe our minds are a little bit slower, maybe we’re just starting to slow down, and so we’re able to receive something on a different level than just this daily grind of like mental reception.

It’s actually like, oh, maybe there’s something that’s a little bit quieter that’s talking to you that wants to share information with you. I’m speaking of that in a planetary sense.

Though I also think as the Earth is calming and turning down, and maybe there’s a lot of gathering happening, like if you think of all the squirrels preparing for winter, and they’re doing this great method of gathering all their food and preparing, there’s a sense of us doing that also.

I think as artists, and just as people, we’re preparing for this inward turn that comes with that time of year. If we allow ourselves to look at that, there might be this great information download that happens then.

I think when I’m thinking of the veil being thin, I’m thinking of that quietness and that chance for this sort of exploration of something a little more spiritual or unseen that we don’t necessarily have time for or that we overlook in other moments of the year.

Joanna: Have you experienced that in any particular places?

Jacqueline: Yes. As I said, I’m an ecstatic Earth worshipper. So for me, all of that information usually comes from being in places that are less populated by humans, or being in the forest, or even just being in the park.

I think being in the natural world and having that chance to downshift into that quietness, I think that is when I typically will receive either intuitive information or my imagination kind of comes into a different play.

I’ve had a lot of spiritual experiences, and I think the veil can be thin no matter what the time of year is. I just think that sometimes in the fall, it’s a little bit more potent.

Joanna: Of course, with the various festivals that happen, Day of the Dead, it is a time of year when that is really focused on a lot more, this acknowledgement of death and the closeness of this other world that perhaps we don’t live in every day, and certainly don’t think about in the spring when we’re just running around in the sun.

Jacqueline: Absolutely.

Joanna: So what’s next for you? You have all these different things. You’ve got the various poetry collections and books.

What will you focus on next?

Jacqueline: Well, I have a book of poems that’s finished that I’m just kind of trying to figure out who the publisher will be. So I’ll probably start putting my energy into that. I’m really excited about that book. Then I have another idea for a book.

I’m about to move into this house that my husband and I have been restoring for the last few years. That will be a big shift in my life. I’ll have a new studio space, and that always gives a lot of creative information. So I’m definitely gearing up for that.

Joanna: Oh, yes, moving house. That’s a big one, isn’t it? That really does change the energy.

Jacqueline: Yes, a new season for sure. A definite new season of my life. I’m about to turn 40. In November, I’ll be 40. So there’s a lot of big changes happening.

I always know that creatively, for me, space has a lot to do with what I create. That means like mental space, physical space. I think that I’m looking forward to that next chapter of having just a more grounded space and being able to settle into my home that I’ll live in for the foreseeable future.

Joanna: Where can people find you and your books online?

Jacqueline: I have a website, JacquelineSuskin.com. I also have a Substack, if you look my name up on Substack. I do a lot of writing on there.

I’m on Instagram. @JSuskin is my Instagram. I try to keep all those things updated and put out a newsletter every month. So that’s a good way to find me.

My books are anywhere you want to find a book, you can find my books for the most part.

Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jacqueline. That was really interesting.

Jacqueline: Thanks for having me.

The post The Seasons Of Writing With Jacqueline Suskin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In May 2024, I was interviewed for the Ancient Heroes Podcast about my inspiration for writing modern thrillers based on ancient relics, historical places and artifacts, as well as tips for writing a series and why Kickstarter is important for established and new authors alike.

You can listen below or on Spotify, Apple, or your favourite podcast app.

In this episode of Ancient Heroes, host Patrick Garvey welcomes award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn. Known for her thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, and travel memoir, Penn introduces her latest novel, Spear of Destiny.

The discussion covers Penn’s background in theology, influences from authors like Clive Cussler and Dan Brown, and her journey from a corporate job to becoming a full-time writer. Penn delves into the research and travel that fuel her novels, sharing insights on the historical and modern elements she incorporates into her stories.

They also discuss the role of Kickstarter in publishing, allowing for special editions and closer reader interaction. The episode is an insightful exploration of combining history, mythology, and thriller writing.

• How Jo got into writing thrillers and some of her inspirations
• The inspiration behind Spear of Destiny
• Book research and travel for writing
• The importance of series in a writing career
• Incorporating modern archaeology and technology, including AI and de-extinction
• Why Kickstarter is important for established authors and new authors like.

You can find Jo’s Spear of Destiny Kickstarter here, and Patrick’s The Heir of Achilles Kickstarter here. Both books will be on all the usual platforms later this year.

Transcript of the interview

Patrick: Hi everyone. Welcome to Ancient Heroes. Today. I’m so excited to have J.F. Penn on the program. She’s the award-winning New York Times and USA today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror and travel memoir. She also writes nonfiction for authors as Joanna Penn and is the host of The Creative Penn Podcast.

Her upcoming novel is Spear of Destiny, which when this podcast airs, it’ll be available on Kickstarter. So Joanna, it’s so great to have you on. We have all these common things happening with us in our journeys through history and writing. So it’s awesome to meet you today and to be able to talk to you.

J.F. Penn: Thanks for having me on the show, Patrick, and yes, it seems like we share a lot of influences with The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones and action adventure and archeology and travel. So I’m really excited to talk to you today.

Patrick: I should tell listeners I initially discovered Joanna through her podcast at The Creative Penn, which is geared toward authors as I was writing, and then when I discovered her fiction writing, I realized it was in a very similar genre to what I’ve been working on. And I dove right into that.

I read Tomb of Relics, which is part of the ARKANE series, which we’ll talk about, and it was just absolutely perfect. I loved it. And now, yeah it’s awesome to talk to you.

Can you tell us about your background and how you got into writing thrillers, but with so much rooted in history and mythology?

J.F. Penn: Probably like many readers of this genre, I grew up with Clive Cussler, and read a lot of the Dirk Pitt series.

And I also always loved the James Bond movies. Even the old ones. I always liked the action adventure fast paced things, but there were never enough with female main characters. I knew I was always going to write that.

But early on I did a degree in theology, so I have a Master’s in Theology from the University of Oxford. People might tell from my accent, I’m British. And that degree, I’m so fascinated with religion, religious history, I love architecture, I love sculpture, and so all of that just started to come into my world.

And then I started a real job, like most of us, I started implementing accounts payable into large corporates.

I had a classic corporate job, and I got to my mid thirties and I just hated it. I was like, what am I doing with my life?

And I looked at what I really enjoyed doing. I really enjoyed reading. I enjoyed traveling, and I enjoyed writing. And I was like, do you know what, maybe I could make a career as a writer. What was amazing is around this time when I was questioning what I wanted to do, the Dan Brown books were really big. Another author called James Rollins. Crichton’s books. I love Michael Crichton. He used to weave his travels into his writing.

When Dan Brown’s books became popular, I was like, ‘oh my goodness, you can actually write religious conspiracy thriller and bring in history and art, and all of this stuff and culture.’ And I thought maybe I’ll give that a go.

I wrote the first book, Stone of Fire in 2009, and then published in 2011. It was originally called Pentecost and it’s now Stone of Fire. I rebranded later on.

But it’s so interesting because I feel like action adventure thrillers are a perennial interest. People would say it’s not very trendy, but I think people like us who love this stuff, we will continue to love this stuff and read this stuff, right?

I think I always wanted to be an archeologist in another life. But I did ancient history as part of theology, obviously. And that’s how it started. I did leave my job in 2011, so I’ve been a full-time creator author, entrepreneur since then. And I’ve written around 45 books over the last 15 years, and I love it. It’s just fantastic and I’m sure we’ll get into traveling for book research which is just so much fun.

Patrick: Yes. So I definitely want to talk to you about traveling, and I have the same thought about archeology. I talk to so many archeologists and historians and whatnot to the show.

I sometimes wonder, wait, is this a sign that maybe I should be an archeologist? But it’s actually great to just not be an archeologist, but be able to talk to them about what they’re studying and their specialties and things like that. Yeah, and you’ve probably experienced some of that too with you’re not necessarily having to focus on a super niche subject.

You can look at the broad range of things and find things that are interesting and just explore it.

J.F. Penn: Yes, and I think probably the reality is that the day job of an archeologist is not that sexy. And the books we write are around these exciting things that people discover. And I think the day job of an archeologist, like the day job of a writer, there’s a lot of days when it’s not super exciting. You’re just doing the work.

So I think we get the good side, but I certainly enjoy the research as I know you do around getting to know this stuff. But I get excited about the pinnacle of discovery as opposed to, I don’t want to do the day job of going with a toothbrush over some dirt.

Patrick: Let’s talk about Spear of Destiny. I started to read the early copy just yesterday. So I haven’t gotten through a ton of it yet, but I’m loving it already.

What is the Spear of Destiny and why did you choose this subject?

J.F. Penn: So the Spear of Destiny is the spear of Longinus who was the centurion who pierced the side of Christ on the cross according to the gospels and also the apocryphal gospels, some of the books that are not in the Bible for Protestants, but are in some of the other Bibles. The Gospel of Nicodemus actually names this Roman Centurion, Longinus.

And then there’s basically a patchy history as there is with most religious relics. Is it the Spear that the Emperor Constantine held up at the battles that he won? Did it help other famous people win battles like Barbarossa is named and Charlemagne, these people who supposedly had the spear and won great battles.

But why I got into it? I love religious relics. I love having an echo into religious history and places, but I also think it’s amazing that there’s about four or five different spears that are supposedly the Spear of Destiny.

But the one in Vienna, which I actually went to visit and go and see actually is originally a Roman spear. It is a gladius and then over the years they’ve added wire and gold and other things, and copper, so it looks more ornate. But underneath it all, it is a Roman spear and there is a nail in it, supposedly from the cross.

But why I got into this was I wanted to go to Vienna. So I went looking for something interesting that was in Vienna, and I found the spear.

And then I discovered that Adolf Hitler, who was of course Austrian, during his early years, he got rejected from the art school there. But he spent his time in Vienna selling his watercolor paintings on the streets, and he used to go and look at this spear. He knew the myths that the person who controlled that spear would have military might and power.

And one of the first things he did when he took power in Germany in the 1930s was he took the spear back to Germany. And I just thought, oh my goodness, that is absolutely crazy. I have to know more about this.

And then the other weird thing is that he lost control of the spear. Within the last days of the war, just before he committed suicide. So the myth of the spear and the history of it, I just thought, oh, this is too interesting.

Patrick: I love that. That’s great. And there’s this great parallel here with. Raiders of the Lost Ark which is the gold standard in this genre in some ways in storytelling and I don’t know a ton about Christian religious relics.

We’ve heard of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail and things like that. I got really excited when you’re bringing in this new relic that I’d never heard of, but that has this historic, interesting historical story behind it. That’s really compelling. That’s a great basis. That’s going to suck someone like me in right away.

J.F. Penn: Yes. And then I guess what we both do as well is turn this into a modern story. ’cause all my books are modern. They just have these links back into history as yours do. And most of everything I write comes from truth. I find historical evidence and books and things about this.

But for this one I proposed that they split the real spear into several pieces and then hid them in different places. And then looked at some of the historical evidence for where the Nazis had various trips and research trips.

For example, they went to Tibet and I didn’t really know they went to Tibet, and I really looked into some of what happened over there in the 1930a and things that are fascinating that we didn’t necessarily know about but that we can bring into the present day.

But I will tell you, I have written my ark of the covenant book, that is Ark of Blood, which is book three in the ARKANE series.

And I gotta tell you, since you are just starting in this series, you’ll probably write an Ark of the Covenant book. It is one of those things that we all do.

Patrick: That’s great. And I’ve already brought it up in multiple conversations with archeologists and some, like talking about it and others say, I haven’t looked into that. It’s not something real archeologists really are as interested in. But there is a great mythology behind that as well.

Let’s talk about traveling a little bit. You mentioned that you went to Vienna. It sounds like your research process and idea development process involves you going to some of these places and really immersing yourself in what’s going on there and what these museums and different places and cathedrals are like, and things like that.

Can you talk about the importance of travel for research and how you approach it?

J.F. Penn: Obviously you can do a lot of research online, and I realized that a lot of people can’t travel around doing this stuff. I’m very lucky to be here in the UK, close to Europe, and so I went over to Vienna and I find that even though I had a plan, the plan was to go visit the Spear of Destiny in the Hofburg Museum where it is, but that I would also go to some other places and see what emerges.

I have actually on my wall here, it says “Trust emergence,” because sometimes you don’t necessarily know what the story’s going to be. So I went and saw the Spear of Destiny. It was crazy. There was no one else there. There was the tooth of John the Baptist. There were all these crazy things in the museum, and I was like, okay, this is weird.

But then what was very interesting is that I walked out of that museum, turned a corner, and there is this incredible library, the State Library of Austria in Vienna, it is just nearby. And so I went in there on a whim because I was passing and it was incredible.

And I just had to set a scene there and there’s a fight scene where the spear is taken. And I was like, okay. Wow. I never would’ve known that if I hadn’t gone there. And the other interesting thing is that I also wanted to bring in Washington D.C. So one of the other modern parallels is the rise of the right wing in the USA.

One of the characters in the book is a general who wants the spear, so he can use it as part of his campaign for the presidency of the USA, which, of course, has many parallels with your political system right now.

But I was in Washington, DC a few years ago and I went to the Library of Congress, which is fantastic, and wandered around there, and I was like, I have to use this in a story.

I don’t know what though, and what was amazing — I mentioned Tibet before —is that the rushes, the raw footage, of the Nazis in Tibet is in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. as well as Hitler’s own personal book collection, which includes books on magic and the occult. And I was like, oh, wow. That is such a great coincidence, more like serendipity. Its synchronicity, as Carl Jung would say, but just super exciting.

I was able to link Vienna, Tibet, Washington, D.C. as well as some other places because things actually did happen that way. This is part of why I love to travel for book research.

Obviously I just love to travel and I take a lot of photos which are useful obviously to put on social media, but also I actually have color photos of things like the Spear of Destiny and some of the other research that goes into it.

And I always write an Author’s Note as well because a lot of my readers like us enjoy Googling after they’ve read the book. They want to know what’s based on fact, and I think that’s another hallmark of our genre is that we just love the research.

I’d probably say 80% of my books, I have actually gone to places and done real research. But some of it, obviously I can’t. For example, End of Days opens in a snake handling church in the Appalachian Mountains in the USA where people hold snakes in the name of God. And I didn’t go to one of those.

Patrick: Yeah. Wow. That makes sense. So this is involving ancient religious relics, world War II history and modern day thriller. So that’s a good three things that are going to attract a lot of readers.

J.F. Penn: Let me ask you, because of course you have done an amazing trip to Greece. So tell us about that and what you found there that you’re weaving into your novel?

Patrick: That’s a great question. I do have an extensive travelogue on the AncientHeroes.net website of a road trip that my wife and I made through Greece.

Now, I had already written most of the draft of The Heir of Achilles, which will be coming out later toward the end of the summer when I went. But I thought that would help me flesh it out and get an idea of some of these places in real life and improve some of the descriptions.

And it ended up that when we traveled north, we went through Thessaloniki and I ended up adding an entire part of the book set in Thessaloniki that really rounded out some of the kind of the plot and storyline and things like that and added some more action. And it did end up having a major impact, but I didn’t really know that at the time.

I had to work with an editor. It’s the first time I’ve written a fiction book like this, and so I had to do a lot of work with a professional editor to make sure I was hitting the right notes.

And I really love the idea behind the book, but actually executing it, as is a whole ‘nother story and it’s a craft. And I was playing catch up on some of those things, and especially Thessaloniki and the Royal Tombs of the Macedonians, outside of Thessaloniki really helped round out the second act of the book.

And so it did absolutely make an impact, and then there’s other places where I haven’t visited where I am researching online. The Sakkara Necropolis in Egypt is a good example. I would love to go there, but it just wasn’t practically possible for me to, in the last few years. And I have talked to historians about it. I have looked at a lot of different things online, and hopefully it has that sense of realism. It’s based on actual research. I do wonder, since I haven’t actually been there a little bit, what it’s actually mixing and matching these things is tricky sometimes.

J.F. Penn: I would say most of the readers haven’t been there either. And I think that’s what we’ve got to remember. Neither of us are actually writing historical fiction. And people get very upset with that. So if you’re setting a book in ancient Egypt. In Sakara back in the day, you would have to get the dress right and the language and all of that, whereas we are writing a modern books that call back to that.

I do feel like it is important to avoid stereotypes when you are writing other cultures.

So for example, I wrote a book called Destroyer of Worlds, which is mostly set in India, and I’ve traveled to India several times. I love India. But I actually had an Indian reader read the book because I was aware that perhaps I might come up with some stereotypes about people who live in Mumbai.

And so she read it and she did find one thing that the taxi was the wrong type of color. But I think this is a tip for you and anyone you know, if you want to write a book is you can find people often in our own audiences who are experts in these areas. So that’s always a good thing to do.

But I guess what’s fun is that you and I, we love our research. And I know I probably do too much research. I can end up reading so many books.

We’re very lucky, obviously to have TV channels. We can watch documentaries like that snake handling church, I mentioned, I wrote that scene based on a two hour documentary, but it wasn’t even a documentary, it was just a video of a snake handling church on YouTube. It was their religious service. I watched hours of these churches until I was able to get into the vibe of the character who was at attending one of these churches.

I think that’s part of why we do this job is that we want to learn, and we want to share our learnings, but in a fun way, like in an action adventure thriller.

And so people listening, you don’t have to get serious about the research. You can just enjoy the adventure. But if you want to go further, then we hope, I guess that the truth is underneath.

Patrick: Absolutely. And I feel like it’s our job as the authors to make sure it’s a fun, thrilling, and you almost don’t even notice how much you’re learning here or there, or, it’s never meant to get bogged down in the research. And that’s what, in my earliest drafts before I had any professional help, figuring out how to take three pages of research and backstory and that ends up being one or two lines in the actual book.

It was a long process, but I understood that it had to go through that so the reader is enjoying the experience, and the story keeps moving along. And you’re just immersed in this world and you don’t feel like it’s an academic kind of thing learning about this stuff.

J.F. Penn: Yes. Although I think, again, we can balance that because we have an author voice and our author voice, for me, certainly I go deeper in some areas, into some of the history, some of the culture, some of the religious aspects I write partly to think about the deeper questions of life.

We both mentioned Dan Brown, we like his books but he needs editing around the history and going a little bit over the top with his description and all of that. But I do think there is a balance. I totally agree with you.

It is a thriller, so it has to move at a fast pace, but also the rich background brings our author voice, which our readers love.

It takes a few books to get to that point. It was probably book five when I was like, oh, okay, this is how I write. I actually write deeper in terms of mythology and religion and history and culture, and that’s what I love.

Not everyone is our reader. I think that’s really important. But over time, we get to understand what we love, what they love and we write for them.

Patrick: Wow. You mentioned that you had written a previous book that related to the Arc of the Covenant.

What other historical relics or historical events or things like that have been inspiration for this thriller series?

J.F. Penn: We mentioned the Ark of the Covenant, and I traveled to Egypt and I was going tell you, the temple at Abu Simbel, which is at the very south of Egypt on the border of Sudan. That is just stunning. And I went there over 15 years ago now, more than that, 20 years ago I was there. It’s 13th century, BCE, Pharaoh Rameses II.

And I was there thinking, I have to write something here, and I wasn’t even a writer at the time. And then I was like, what can I write in ancient Egypt? That calls back to ancient Egypt. I know. The Ark of the Covenant!

The first one in the ARKANE series, Stone of Fire. It was originally called Pentecost and was about the bones of the apostles, and I think you’ve actually had someone on this podcast talking about that time after the death of Jesus and before the church.

The apostles died around Europe and the Middle East, and even in India and a lot of the bones are in churches. You can question whether or not they are the actual bones of the actual apostles, but places like Santiago de Compostela in Spain have been a pilgrimage site for a thousand years. And there are other places like Iran. I haven’t been to Iran. I would love to go to Iran, but there are political issues, obviously.

But also, I know you’ve had people on the show talking about Jerusalem. I write a lot about Jerusalem. I spent quite a lot of time there in the 90s, I worked on both sides of the conflict for peace — which clearly didn’t work out. But I write a lot about Jerusalem. I think it is one of the most dense cities in terms of blood and history and culture and different religions.

So yes, End of Days is about the serpent at the end of days. I write a lot about it also in Gates of Hell. All of my ARKANE books are rooted in Christian mythology and myth, except for Destroyer of Worlds, which is set in India and is a little bit different. I think we are inspired by our interests.

You mentioned how hard it is to write a novel. We wouldn’t be able to get through writing a novel unless we were so fascinated by the topic that we were willing to keep doing that.

Otherwise, we’d just travel places, take some photos, and be done with it.

Patrick: Absolutely.

J.F. Penn: Have you got ideas for later books in your series?

Patrick: That’s a good question, and a couple of people have posed that to me. I have very rudimentary ideas, but I’m really focused this summer, just going through this process for the first time. I’m really gonna be focused on the book launch. I think once the book is out there and I can start getting some reactions and feedback and things like that from this audience and others.

I do have a general idea of a next direction but I’m also very interested in the biblical archeology and biblical history. This keeps coming up on the podcast as I’m looking for subjects and different things. And there’s always that element too that I haven’t explored as much.

That’s one of the reasons I’m excited about Spear of Destiny. So we’ll see. But really nothing solid, but the first book, The Heir of Achilles, does definitely set up for future installments and there is definitely room for that. And I know that’s really at the end of the day, building a series where someone can follow a set of characters or a primary character through different adventures is really the blueprint for a successful career, so to speak, in this area.

J.F. Penn: Yes, and Spear of Destiny is book 13 in my own ARKANE series, although they can all be read as standalone. These kind of thrillers, generally you can read them as standalones as you say, the same characters or some of the same characters go through the series. This is what readers want and we are those readers. You and I are those readers.

I think if Dan Brown hadn’t been as successful as he had been like he doesn’t need to write any more books. He occasionally puts one out, but the bigger series, someone like Steve Berry, I think he’s on 20 plus books. James Rollins is on loads of books. Some of these series are, go on for, I think J. Robert Kennedy’s series is like on 40 plus books in his series. [Click here for a list of 20 action adventure thriller series you can binge right now.]

So there’s lots of us in this genre who love reading series and also writing them, and you are right, as a career, as an income, having a series is really good because if readers enjoy them, then they’ll keep coming back.

But again, we get into other things. I’ve written some crime, some fantasy, some horror, memoir. We get into other things as as our interest changes.

But it’s interesting you mentioned Belize. Tree of Life is inspired by the Portuguese Empire and the search for the Garden of Eden, and that ends up in my research. I didn’t really realize how big the Portuguese Empire was in Latin America. I know Belize is Central America, that kind of area. It was like, wow, this is so interesting.

So even though Tree of Life starts in Europe, it ends up in the far east, in Macau and it ends up in Latin America. And so it, it just is incredible how many countries are linked together by history and by these different objects that we can weave into stories.

I would also say to you, don’t be afraid of using the same themes as other authors. Like I said about the Ark of the Covenant, it’s a bit of a rite of passage because we all end up doing it, but we all have different characters and we all have different stories. So I don’t ever think there’s an issue. It’s like the same writing prompt that you give to people. People will always write different things and we bring different things to these stories.

Patrick: Absolutely. And I think more quality authors in this area only builds up the genre for everyone. It’s less about a competitive thing. Is someone gonna pick this book or that book? If they like this genre and this kind of storytelling and subject matter, they’re probably gonna read any of the top books in that genre over time. And I definitely yeah, agree with that.

J.F. Penn:

This is one of the most wonderful and difficult things of being an author. It might take you months or years to write a book. Someone will finish it within a day. And they’ll be like, where’s the next one?

And this is, I think what’s so fascinating you have the more books you have, even I’m doing bundles as part of my Kickstarter, where you can get the entire series, all the books, but still, 13 books, in a couple of weeks, if you read one a day and then you’re done. And it’s taken me more than a decade to write.

So I think that’s what’s so magical about our books and especially fiction. I find this very interesting, and especially I guess based on history and religion, is that we are writing things that don’t age based on things that are old and but people can pick up a book now that I wrote a decade ago, or Clive Cussler wrote 30 years ago, and it’s still fun and interesting. So that’s what I hope for my career anyway.

Patrick: That’s great. And I know that there are historians out there that don’t like focusing so much on certain relics or supernatural things and some of these ideas, but I also know that there’s a lot of historians that know that this stuff brings people in. It’s a gateway for people that may not have a, a lot of historical background, that they learn a little bit about something and they’re drawn into that subject matter.

If it weren’t for The Raiders of the Lost Ark or something like that. I may not have ever started looking into some of these biblical archeology. And then as you get further into it, you start learning the real history behind this stuff and the influence and so I do think it also helps just get people interested in history.

J.F. Penn: Yes, I think so. You hadn’t heard of the Spear of Destiny, and I had heard of it, but I did certainly didn’t know that there was one of them in the museum in Vienna. And it’s so funny ’cause I actually have talked to a lot of people about things to see in Vienna and nobody had mentioned the Spear of Destiny.

It’s a bit like, so I live in Bath in the UK and when I say I live in Bath, people think Bridgerton, which has a lot of things set in Bath or they think Jane Austen. But actually Frankenstein was written here. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Bath here in the UK.

There are 2000-year-old Roman baths here with these cursed tablets that people used to throw in, bringing curses down on people. And I’m like, this is such a dark city. People think it’s all light and happy, but it’s super dark.

[Click here for my podcast episode on Druids, Freemasons, and Frankenstein. The Darker Side of Bath, England.]

And so this is what I try and bring as well. There’s so much ‘click-baity’ stuff around what a place is. It’s meant to be a certain way, whereas I’m very interested in the darker side of history. I think that’s what I try and bring.

When I went to Vienna, it’s funny that I really ended up on what is a really dark phase in the history of Austria and the history of Europe, and yet the Spear of Destiny itself has this fascinating history.

Our aim is to bring a different perspective, and this is my challenge every time.

With the Ark of the Covenant, again, my challenge was, how do I make this different? You can’t write Indiana Jones again. You can’t write the same things that other people have written.

You have to know the genre well enough so that you then write something different. And to me, that’s the creative challenge.

How is my book going to be different to someone else’s book? What can you find in the historical research that spins it in a different direction?

And that’s why as a reader, I keep coming back to the genre because I’m fascinated by what someone else is going to think about in terms of that clue or that place.

One of my books is One Day in Budapest and people actually use that to go around Budapest.

Even though it’s a thriller, they actually use it to go and look at like The Holy Right. Which is this thousand year old mummified hand in the basilica. And things like that, which most people don’t know about until they read like books like ours.

Patrick: Awesome. I know you also integrate modern archeology and archeological methods and things like that into your books. Can you talk a little bit about how you learn about this stuff and how you incorporate it?

J.F. Penn: I am super fascinated with the use of AI in archaeology. I have a Q, like a James Bond Q character, with all the gadgets and things.

There was a Vatican digital scanning project that is still going on, scanning the archives of the Vatican, and this character was part of that project and discovered this ancient book and that led to the story in Soldiers of God.

But that I was like, oh my goodness, if you go and scan the stuff in the Vatican Secret Archives, what are you going to find? That’s really cool.

And then for this book Spear of Destiny, while I was writing it, it’s at ScrollPrize.org and basically there were these scrolls that they found in Herculaneum, which was buried with Pompeii back in 79 A D, and that buried them and they were carbonized. So these completely black sausages essentially, which are these rolled up scrolls that had been burnt so badly.

When they tried to unroll them, they just crumbled to dust, so they haven’t been unrolled for 2000 years. And then this prize was set up to use AI scanning technology to see into the scrolls.

So they would scan it and then use this cool technology and they’ve actually managed it. So I had to use that in the book. They found some really cool things by starting to read these scrolls that they’re on the second phase as we record this in May, 2024. They’re just discovering new things about it.

There is some other stuff with climate change as well and satellite imagery, they’re now being able to see things in different places. So they recently found some pyramids in the Amazon and also in Egypt, like new sites that haven’t been found before.

Another one that I’ve just written about is the genetic sequencing that they’re doing. They find these ancient things and then they’re bringing them back. There’s this company called Colossal Labs, which I kid you not, is a de-extinction lab for bringing back the wooly mammoth and the thylacine, which is the Tasmanian tiger. I used it as the inspiration for De-Extinction of the Nephilim.

They’re actually doing this. And of course they’re not bringing back the dinosaurs, but what is next? So I try and weave these modern technologies into the books as techniques for my characters to find out more and as the next thing.

Patrick: That’s awesome. Yes. That does sound like something like you would see in a Michael Crichton novel, Jurassic Park. And he has been a big influence on me just reading something where you go, we’re not quite there yet, maybe with some of the stuff in his books, but you go, this seems like it could be possible or it could be on the horizon, and then making a believable, fun story about it where you’re also learning some stuff.

So definitely, he had a big influence on me growing up that it was even possible to write a novel like that. It was just, that was like the epitome of a fun read. When you’re going, not only is it not only the character’s interesting and the story is interesting, but there’s also this premise behind it that is like blowing my mind, and so anyway, yeah he’s great.

J.F. Penn: I agree with you. And in fact, Jurassic Park is now what, over 30 years old or something, right? The book has a lot more about chaos theory, whereas in the movie, there’s just that one moment with the drop on the back of the hand, but in the book, he does go into chaos theory much more.

And again, I take that as encouragement for us that readers want more than just the action. They want more than just the thriller stuff. Now that is important because that’s our genre, but the other stuff, the relationships between the people, the historical stuff, the interesting things, people want that as well.

If you read a Michael Crichton book, it’s a lot more scientifically and historically dense than the movie adaptation. So I think we have to remember that you can put this stuff in the books. You just have to do it with a gentle hand, or some sprinkling as opposed to info dumps. The fun to me is getting into that and then trying to weave it into a story as opposed to, as you said, we’re not writing an essay, we’re not writing a nonfiction book.

Patrick: And I think that will especially appeal to listeners of this podcast who also have such an interest in nonfiction and learning, so having this blending of things is very interesting to me.

Tell us a little about your Kickstarter campaign and what you’re going to have going on for Spear of Destiny.

J.F. Penn: So I have a special edition which has silver foil on the covers.

Patrick: It looks beautiful for people listening. It looks beautiful. I can see that the shine on the text and everything through the screen.

J.F. Penn: Oh, good. Yes, I think one of the interesting things about Kickstarter for both authors and readers is that we can offer these premium products that are very hard to do otherwise.

When we publish and most people will buy a paperback in a book, in a bookstore or online. They’ll listen to an ebook read an ebook, or get an audiobook. And we don’t get to do really special stuff, but with Kickstarter we can do silver foil. This has got like a ribbon. It’s got custom end papers.

It’s got all the things that as a geeky author who loves books, like I’m just a bibliophile. I love books, and I wanted to make a beautiful book. I can also do signed first editions. This cover is a different cover. So there’ll be a separate cover once it comes out on Amazon and all of that kind of thing.

I’m doing basically an exclusive edition for Kickstarter, and the whole point is to do something amazing for my readers, but also to be able to offer bundles. So that’s the other thing is that people can buy the whole series in ebook audiobook print, which they can’t do anywhere else. You cannot buy that bundle anywhere else.

I’ve got a class on Discovery Writing.

I’ve got all kinds of different things and yes, so it’s great for readers. If people don’t know Kickstarter, we should say it is not a begging platform. It is a crowdfunding platform. Where essentially you are pre-ordering something really cool from a creator that you want to support.

You get the special edition early as well, so you might get it months before it’s available on the other stores.

It also means as a writer, as well as doing cool stuff, I also get the money more quickly, and that enables me to continue to do this as a job.

I’m sure people appreciate it’s a tough business being a creator. And so anything where we can do amazing things for our readers, but also make a higher royalty rate and receive money within weeks as opposed to months or even years, which is what happens to some authors, then Kickstarter is just fantastic.

And even if people don’t want either your book or my book, go to Kickstarter.com, look in the publishing category and you’ll find a ton of really interesting books so you can support creators you love, but you can also find new creators. And I buy on Kickstarter all the time from people I might even never have heard of, but I really want their sort of cool books and merchandise. Why are you doing Kickstarter?

Patrick: One of the reasons that I think some of the same reasons I don’t have as much experience with the creation of the books themselves and I’m going through basically Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, trying to keep it as simple as possible, being this is my first time through, but I thought that the Kickstarter would be a great chance to raise some awareness about the book to another audience of people that are interested in Kickstarter stuff and do a really cool video and a kind of a book trailer, but also for signed copies and things like that.

As a self-publishing author, I didn’t want to just put it up on Amazon and it just disappear into the ether of the millions of other things that are available on Amazon.

It’s been a long journey. I’ve invested a lot of resources into it and I wanted to have a sense of, okay, if family and friends want to get a signed copy or a hardcover edition or something like that, I’m gonna do some custom bookmarks and, little things like that to just make it more fun.

And the people that are fans of me. I don’t have the following yet that you have as an author, but people that are fans of me personally or just wanna support the project, have a few more options to get something cool. I thought, you know what people had already been asking me about it and wanted to support.

And so I thought this would be a great way and like you said, to raise a little bit more money too because it is expensive to basically be the project manager for your book and do it at a professional level that would be the equivalent of a traditional publisher.

It is expensive to do it out of pocket, so this allows you to raise a little more money, hopefully, and get it a little more quickly and, help with an audio book down the road, stuff like that. I wasn’t sure about it. I was on the fence for a while. I, but then, I thought let’s give it a try. I think it will be at a bare minimum, a good way to raise a little more awareness. So that’s my thinking.

J.F. Penn: Yes, I totally agree with you. And I feel like it enables us to just put a bit more effort in and it’s only for a few weeks.

It is hard to market a book. There are thousands of books coming out every single day.

As you said, it’s a way to spend a couple of weeks really focusing and then, you know for sure people can get the book later, when in fact, whenever you are listening to this, people listening, you can, my book’s going to be out later on in the year. You can usually get the books later, but they won’t be that special edition.

It won’t be that signed edition for me. It won’t be the silver foil and all that. So yeah, I think it is very good. I also think there’s more and more writing things that we can do when we have the opportunity to do that kind of pre-order. As you say, you get more money and you can work with other creatives.

I’ve got a designer who I work with. I didn’t design the book, my designer, JD Smith Design does that. I’ve got an audio book narrator, Veronica Giguere. There is an audiobook in my Kickstarter. It’s an investment. Obviously an editor, that kind of thing.

What I love about being an independent creative is the ecosystem we have of working with each other.

And hopefully some of the people who want to join my Kickstarter will have a look at yours and vice versa. I think that is a very cool thing. If people are interested, it’s at JFPenn.com/destiny. Where can people find yours?

Patrick: Okay, so they can find it at AncientHeroes.net or by going to Kickstarter and looking up The Heir of Achilles. I’m still at the pre-launch campaign right now, so you can sign up and just get notified once it launches. But when this podcast first comes out, your book, Joanna, will already be available to start making pledges and stuff and securing a copy or two hopefully.

J.F. Penn: Yes. I was going to tell you actually, I was listening to your podcast on Spotify, and it has the transcription and they spell AIR, but we should tell people it’s HEIR, right?

Patrick: Oh, that’s great you said that. I haven’t looked at the transcription, but I did have someone that I mentioned the title to say jokingly, I think, but confirming the spelling and I’ve been looking at it in text more than I’ve been actually talking about it so far, so I do need to keep that in mind. I appreciate that.

J.F. Penn: It is really interesting the things that come up over time, around what people assume our books are about. But I wanted to make that clear to people because I know when it’s audio only, it can be a bit confusing.

Patrick: That’s great. I really appreciate that. You’re doing a much better job of marketing my own book than I am.

J.F. Penn: I’ve been doing this a long time, Patrick!

Patrick: Those are the kind of tips that I need. Okay. I’ll remind listeners that today we’ve been talking to J.F. Penn, who is an author of thriller novels and many other kinds of books about her upcoming novel, Spear of Destiny.

And I would also just add, I really just want to say thank you as well for everything that you’ve done for authors through your podcast for authors, The Creative Penn and your books and other resources. It’s really amazing to have established successful authors producing things to help other people like myself who are just getting into it.

And it’s almost like I’m talking to you right now and I’m almost taking it for granted how much guidance and things that I’ve already soaked in from listening to your podcast over the last year or so. So I just wanna say thank you and I know a lot of other authors feel the same way.

J.F. Penn: Oh thank you. It’s all about paying it forward as well. So you are starting now and you’ll be doing interviews and helping other people and that again, that’s what I love about this industry. We can all help each other and I hope there’s some other people listening who want to write in our genre and together we’ll just bring it back. Everyone will want to read Action Adventure thrillers.

Thanks so much for having me, Patrick. That was great fun.

Patrick: Thanks a lot for coming on Joanna, and hopefully we’ll talk again someday soon. And good luck with the campaign. I can’t wait to finish Spear of Destiny.

The post Writing Modern Thrillers Based On Ancient Relics and Historical Places. J.F. Penn On The Ancient Heroes Podcast first appeared on The Creative Penn.