#244 – Melted Cold (How to write a Short Story Collection)

In this episode I speak all about my journey in writing: Melted Cold, my first Short Story Collection.  Listen to hear about how I came up with the ideas for each of the eight stories, what tips and tools I used for writing, editing and publishing. Who I used for cover design and who I used for editing.  Also find out my roll out strategy, my marketing strategy and much, much more.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] What up folks, what's going on? Welcome to the Spun Today podcast, the only podcast that is anchored in writing, but unlimited in scope. I'm your host Tony Ortiz, and I appreciate you listening. This is episode 244 of the Spun Today podcast. And in this episode,

I speak all about my journey in writing Melted Cold, my first short story collection.

Listen to hear about how I came up with the ideas for each of the eight stories within. This short story collection,

what tips and tools I use for writing. I'm going to tell you guys literally how I physically write, what I use, when I write, how I write

tips and tools that you can implement related to editing, publishing,

what I personally did for cover design.

I'm going to tell you guys about my rollout strategy and marketing strategy so that we can.

it down the line,

figure out what worked, what need, what didn't [00:01:00] work, what needs to be tweaked,

so on and so forth. So if you're interested in any of that type of stuff, if you're a writer yourself

and want to learn more about something that you may not know about yet, or maybe just reinforce some things that you do know about know about already, or if you just want to see a bit of a behind the scenes of how the sausage was made for. Melted cold, a short story collection, then definitely stick around.

But first I want to tell you guys about a way that you can help support this podcast. If you so choose, your support means a ton.

Not only does it motivate me, but it helps to free up my time to do more of what I love, which is

writing stories

and putting together these podcast episodes for you.

So whether it's something as simple as rating and reviewing this podcast, wherever it is that you're listening to it,

or whether it's taking part in the intro drop that I'm[00:02:00]

about to play for you, your support is very much so appreciated.

So listen to this way that you can help support the podcast. And then we'll jump right into the episode.

First up is the actual writing, the physical act of writing.

Where it all starts.

Most, if not all of the stories in this short story collection started out with free writing. If you guys have listened to the podcast in the past, that I'm a huge proponent of it.

My first book, actually, Make Way For You,

is a collection of free writing that just happens to have a bunch of different pieces that, 70 something pieces, that have that motivational kick in the ass through line. So, that I realized in retrospect was me talking to myself, trying to motivate myself to do something that I wanted to do, which is put together a book

and free writing itself. It's a tool that psychologists use

for their [00:03:00] patients

to help work through trauma and thoughts and just things that they're stuck on. For me, it's beneficial in that way and helping formulate thoughts and ideas.

It's definitely therapeutic and just from a creative perspective, it's,

it's freeing. It gives you the license to just write, the permission, if you will, to just write. Cause a lot of us, myself definitely included, suffer from imposter syndrome.

Sorry, let me try to say that without mumbling. Imposter syndrome.

And you often think , who the fuck am I to write? Who wants to read anything that I write?

And the short answer to that is

one, you're writing mainly for you, for your benefit. So do it for nothing else for that.

And two, that's all the permission you need.

You write because you want to write and you have a fucking story to tell.

And going back to the creative specifically, I'll sit down [00:04:00] with, it could be

a plot that I have in mind, the type of story I want to write or. Literally two words of dialogue that I think of and I'm , damn, that sounds dope. I want to write a story around literally that two sentence piece of dialogue. Then you just start free writing, , somebody says ABC line.

Who is he talking to? Okay, then this girl says XYZ back to him. And then where are they? And you just literally start writing. Write whatever comes to mind, anything and everything that comes to mind. You, you literally physically put pen to paper, which is what I do in these little notebooks and you start writing and writing and writing.

And as you write, you, it's kind of that,

I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.

Although I could be conflating multiple memories, but there's this concept of Michelangelo, I think said as quoted by Malcolm [00:05:00] Gladwell, if I do. I hope I have that recollection correct that it wasn't that he was chiseling statues out of stone. It was that

the statues already existed and he was chiseling the stone away from the statues. Similarly, in writing, I feel the story exists and with your pen, you're polishing it. Getting rid of all the weeds and all the crap around it. And the free writing allows you to sort through all that, all the noise, and get to where the story is.

And the more you write, , you go in different directions, the characters wind up speaking to each other, you might think you have an idea to go in a specific direction,

but your characters quite literally have minds of their own,

and might have a different idea for the story itself, and you just follow it through. You're just a vessel for the story to be told through. If it makes any sense, get in that mindset and just let the [00:06:00] writing flow.

So that's where I start. That's where I start on mostly all of my stories.

Then, and again, I do a physical pen and paper, right? Then once I have the framework and I'm , okay, I know what the story is. I see it now. I, I, I found my voice if you will. Or what I am trying to say with this story.

, if it even has that

layer of, I want to get a message across because sometimes I write shit that it's just , I just think this is a cool, entertaining story.

And I'm not necessarily making a point with the story itself, maybe, , little sub points or

getting my personal points of view across or points of view that I know exist in the zeitgeist, trying to let them live in certain spaces within a story. But sometimes the stories are just that, just entertainment,

and sometimes they are entertainment, but it always has, or not always, but some are entertainment, [00:07:00] but also have morals or again, points that I'm trying to get across. So, once I have that, and it doesn't necessarily mean that I write the story from beginning to end in free writing mode. It could be, , after a page or two, I'm , Oh, okay, I got it.

I got it. I know what I want to do. And sometimes it might be longer. It might be a lot more. Sometimes I have the, almost the entire story fleshed out and free writing. But whenever I have that aha moment, which inevitably comes,

I switch gears to a more practical approach, which is using writing tool on the computer. The tool that I personally use is Scribner, which I've

sung it praises many, many times and highly, highly recommend. Think of it as Microsoft Word on steroids if you've never seen it and has some really cool intuitive features where you can put it in cork board [00:08:00] mode, for example, and you have these little index cards on the screen that you write. On and you can rearrange, , with your mouth, , drag and drop and move them around and then you can switch it back to word doc mode and your story will be in the order in the word doc as you organized them within those index cards, for example.

And that's a cool tool. If you. I know for me, tell stories out of sequence sometimes, you're , Oh, I just thought of a dope scene, but I'm nowhere near that. That's something that's going to happen at the end. You can write that and just, , have that in an index card within Scrivener and then continue writing your story.

And then whenever you get to where, where that scene feels right, then you move that scene in. Something else that I love about Scrivener is that.

It's an application on the computer, but it also is, I have the application on my phone and literally, , I can be working [00:09:00] on

a story at night and the next day if I go into work, go into the office

on the train, I pick up on that story within the app on my phone and everything that I worked on the night before is exactly it.

And seamlessly there and then when I come back home and get back on the computer, whatever I roll on the train after I literally click one button to sync everything up it'll be on the computer app as well. So that's a, another dope feature of Scrivener,

which leads me to another point within the,

this

writing bucket. When do you write, how do you find time to write?

I'm married, so I have that relationship to maintain. I have two small children, one of which is in kindergarten.

So I have school related things and homework and projects and everything that comes along with obviously having [00:10:00] children. I

have a family. I have two elderly parents. I have a full time job, because writing and podcasting does not pay the bills. Maybe one day, right?

And a lot of those mandatory things that I know a lot of folks listening have as well. So when do you physically find the time to write? And the truth of the matter is that if you love it, or even if you it, even if you want to love it, you're going to have to carve out the time for it.

And don't be afraid to switch things up. I mean, I've gone from waking up. I have 530 in the morning every day for long stretches of time so I can write for an hour before my official quote unquote day actually begins

I've done the Flip of that and just write at begin writing at midnight 11 p. m. Until 2 in the morning Wake up the next day go to work. I've done[00:11:00]

A lot of writing on the subway, actually especially around my first novel, Fractal,

which is a time travel tale.

The bulk of that writing was done on Scrivener on the subway.

And you just find time an hour here and a half hour there, 50 minutes, two days later, and it builds up over time. So definitely add patience to that. Cause I'm definitely not a, as prolific a writer as I wish I could be.

For example, the eight stories within this book, the newest one,

which is A Night Out, the first story in the series

I completed, I would say six months ago, six months to a year, definitely less than a year ago. The oldest story, which I believe is Bully, the oldest story in the series, Bully.

Which was one of the first short stories that I actually wrote

once I started

taking writing more [00:12:00] seriously.

I wrote back in 2014, I want to say. 2014, 16, 2015 years ago. And all the other stories were written somewhere in between those two goal posts.

So patience is definitely part of the equation, especially when you're juggling a lot of other life things.

So then what do I do next? So I start with free writing, move over to Scrivener, get my writing done on there. What's next?

I wanted to start adding more structure, more of the science

to this story making thing.

And I think of stories, especially now as I've learned more about writing and,

and story making.

The heart of it is the art. The passion, the free writing, the, the intent

that I love,

but just as interesting and fascinating in a different way is the science of it. What do I mean by the science of it? I mean the structure

[00:13:00] of an actual story, the tropes,

the formula, if you will, that your story or that a captivating story should follow.

And again, I am no expert. Do not think I am know that I am not.

Writing to me any other type of art or passion is something that is going to be an ever evolving thing. Probably to the day I die, I'll never feel , Oh, I figured this out, I know how to do this. There's always going to be something new to learn, something new to tweak and implement and change and, and, evolve.

But I do want to share, from a practical perspective, what it is that I did, how I got this book from A to B, from A to Z, rather.

Although A to B is probably more fitting, right? I probably have a long way to go. But I definitely stand on the shoulders of much more knowledgeable folks that I cherry picked a lot of these ideas from and then made them my own. So, special shout out to Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn [00:14:00] Podcast

that I have learned and continue to learn so much from.

KM Weiland is another great resource. I feature her extensively within my

episode writing tips. When I do the free writing session episodes of this podcast, Steven Pressfield, of course, he's my I'm trying to think of a writing analogy that means ambassador of Kwan. Shout out to you if what movie that's from.

Sean Coyne and the story grid podcast. Which definitely gets you in the editing mindset, which is a whole different world that I got to explore more, more deeply with, with this book.

But again, these are folks that I was exposed to because I'm, I put myself in this position of wanting to write, wanting to learn about writing, seeking out podcasts and books and blogs about this stuff. And in doing so in wanting to get more structure around my, my stories, Again, I told you, a lot of these stories were just[00:15:00] free written from beginning to end instinctual, not knowing what a beginning hook is versus an inciting incident, not knowing that each story should have a midpoint and a climax and so on and so forth, but just writing a story off straight instinct.

But as I learn more about. Again, the science of it and that these structural beats exist.

And how they are present in all stories and movies in different, cool and creative ways. I wanted to

make sure that my stories are not falling short in

relation to, to these things.

Now there are many different, if you, if you Google story structure or story structure spreadsheet, there are many different versions of the same type of thing. Some. [00:16:00] Very minimal, some very, very, very detailed.

I read a bunch and ultimately cherry picked the

parts of these different structures that I felt I could make my own, that I could implement, that made sense to me. And I'm sure as I, , continue to evolving and learning, I'll be able to implement even more into them. But this is what I started with. So I literally created my own Excel spreadsheet, which I'll probably Put out on my website for folks to download.

If they're interested, I actually have something else on my website

related to this topic, which is how to publish a book. It's a one page PDF. If anybody's interested, it's absolutely free. You can look at it on the website. You don't even have to put in your email address or anything that. You can download it. It's just a one page document, which I'm sure I'll update over time as well, but it's a one page PDF document that It tells you, okay, I wrote something, how do I, , put it for sale somewhere?[00:17:00]

 How do I get, how do I do that? So if folks want to check that out, go to sponsored. com forward slash other stuff.

So yeah, I'll probably wind up putting a blank version of this spreadsheet that I'm going to tell you about on the website there as well in case you're interested. But.

And again, these are definitely not things that I came up with.

These are things that I learned along the way from a lot, if not all of the folks that I mentioned earlier,

as well as some other contributors a post from the New York book editors website,

a short stories series on YouTube with a guest instructor named Mary Kowal,

et cetera, et cetera.

So for the purposes of this, I'm not going to get too in the weeds on the spreadsheet. I'm just going to tell you how it's laid out. And if you google each or any of the terms, you can get much more detail on it or, , feel free to hit me up

through my website. If you have any questions or on social media at spun today everywhere,

I'll be happy [00:18:00] to dive deeper if interested. But the way I laid it out was I put the title of each of the stories that I wanted to put in this book. Then I have a column called MICE QUOTIENT. M I C E, which is an acronym.

That stands for Milieu, Inquiry, Character, and Event. In the next column I have FOOLSCAP. Yes or no. FOOLSCAP is

a Sean Coyne and Steven Pressfield idea. I wanted to write down. Did I create a full scap for this specific story? Yes. No. Then I have a POV column. What is the point of view POV of this story? Is it a first person? Is it a first person? I'm omniscient. Is it a third person, et cetera.

Then I have a column called the beginning hook where I write down what the beginning hook is. I have the inciting incident. [00:19:00] That's the next column. Then I have the midpoint or second plot point column, a climax column. And again, each of these terms, climax, midpoint, inciting incident, et cetera. Google them.

There are many, many details on it. YouTube videos, et cetera. Then I have an ending resolution column where again, I write down, , a one sentence, , what is the ending resolution? A one sentence, what is the climax? What is the midpoint, et cetera.

And what this did for me, there's a couple more columns, but just to pause there for a second, what this did for me is I went back through all of these eight stories, which again, some of them I wrote back in 2014, 2016, whatever, when I have no idea of what the hell the structure is.

And I can see clearly here on the spreadsheet of, oh, shit, I don't have a, , second plot point in my bully story. So now that I'm going to put this out as a, , polished

work that I want, , people to , and I [00:20:00] want these stories to be legit, , stories that resonate with folks, I

have to fix that. I have to correct that. I have to go back into my story and, , add a couple scenes or rewrite a few scenes to make sure that I highlight a second plot point within it.

And that was super helpful, super valuable, and easy for me to see, , where the holes were in my, in my story or stories. Then a couple more columns. I have a column stating, it does my inciting incident tie out with my climax, meaning in stories. Once you start looking at them through this lens, whether it's a movie, a book, a TV show episode, et cetera.

There's an inciting incident, something some sort of call to action, something in the, , first third of the story, the first act of the story, something that happens to your main character that tells you, okay, that's what this [00:21:00] story or movie or whatever is going to be about.

A common example is, , someone's child gets kidnapped. Then, , the rest of the story is going to be trying to track down who kidnapped. the person's child and getting the child back. So, , the climax is going to be the resolution of the child being kidnapped. That story has to tie out.

So that's the inciting incident. The child gets kidnapped. The climax has to tie out with the inciting incident, meaning you have to find the child some way, shape or form, within the story, you have to satisfy that. So I asked myself,

Did my inciting incident that I wrote that on my spreadsheet, does it tie out with my climax that I wrote out on my spreadsheet? If the answer was no, then I again had to do some rewriting. I had to make sure those two things happen so that I have a satisfying story [00:22:00] satisfying to the reader.

So that definitely helped.

And my last three columns were Did I complete ProWritingAid, which is the next thing that I'm going to tell you guys about. Then I have a column called Edited, yes or no, and Published, yes or no.

But before I switch gears to the next part of,

more of the editing phase of putting a book together, let me tie out the writing with telling you guys what each of the stories within Melted Cold is about, and how they came to be. Now, I've done individual podcasts in the past for each of these stories,

I've put out audio book versions of these stories of the original versions of these stories, which can be found on my website, Spuntoday. com forward slash short stories, these short stories and others. But again, for the purposes of this book, I rewrote a lot of it. Many parts of these, of each of these stories.

They were professionally edited, so on and so forth, as we'll get into. But, or since rather, [00:23:00] I have taken deep dives on each of these stories. I'm just going to give you a high level, what they are about.

The first story is a night out.

The story idea for this one came from my brother, David. Shout out to David's Spun Today alum, who gave me a call one day and was , yo, I had a crazy ass dream. You should write a story about it. My first knee jerk reaction is , all right,

if I had a dollar for every time I. Heard that one. I probably wouldn't need the day job, but he starts telling me about his dream And I was like, oh shit, it actually does sound interesting and I jotted down Eight or ten bullet points literally

and that eventually, , I started working on on that story

in The ways that I mentioned earlier, start free writing then once I figure out what the story is and how I wanted to go and

get into it, , move to Scrivener, so on and so forth. Everything that I detailed up until now.

And because of that, actually, this short story is [00:24:00] dedicated to David, which he's probably finding out about now, unless

he already ordered the book, which is, if you haven't, David, order it. But the story is essentially about a group of friends. They go out for a celebratory night, and

The mysterious owner of this establishment

offers them some free cocktails in a private section of the place and

coerces them into murdering someone. Spoiler alert. And then the rest of the story is an Ocean's Eleven esque revenge story on them trying to find out, one, who the fuck this dude is. Who's this, , underboss, underbelly of the city.

mafioso type character and them trying to get vengeance on him for putting them through what he put them through.

And that's essentially the plot of the first story, a night out. The next story pencil case is based on a true [00:25:00] story of me as a kid going to work with my dad.

And I try to share some

life lessons that I've picked up on from my father.

And folks that he worked with just from being around them and learning by example.

The third story, Nostrand Ave is not based on a true story, but it was inspired by a couple of different events. One, I did witness in real life this, , I caught the very tail end of it. But this very raucous situation with. Some young teenage kids. I remember as a teenage girl in particular

at a train station one day, I was coming home from work, I'm getting off. There's mad cop cars.

There's more than a dozen cops in the train station itself. So I don't know what the fuck was going on before I got there. But they're taking this one girl away and she's flipping the fuck out. She's , get the fuck off me, screaming, crying, just .

A very , [00:26:00] holy shit, what the fuck happened situation

and me, the writer in me,

the gears just started turning and

, it's sadly not uncommon to also hear about stories of police brutality, which I don't think was the case here at least none that I saw, but to hear stories about police brutality and things like that, especially the stories

Tons of attention, whether online or, or on the media.

So that was definitely an influence or stories that for this specific story. And I try to explore it from both angles, from the side of a police officer, highlighting the fact that he's an inexperienced police officer and a hotheaded hormonal teen on the other side,

then the story bully.

Which again, was the first short story that I ever wrote

after, , being an adult and saying, , to myself that I wanted to be a writer.

This is also based on a true story [00:27:00] from elementary school and getting bullied, basically.

Ball and Chain. This one was one of the funnest stories for me to write. That

I wrote after reading Stephen King's own writing memoir. At the end of it, he has this call to action where he asked writers, , or folks reading the book that wanted to be writers

as a writing exercise to write a story that is typically

told in a certain way with certain characters with certain where there's a, usually a clear male character and a female character, for example, domestic violence, for example, it's usually the male committing domestic domestic violence on the female. I think that was an example in the call to action. I could be misremembering though, but the idea of the exercise was to flip the genders and try to tell the story, a compelling story that way.[00:28:00]

And

that's what I wound up writing with ball and chain, which is essentially a serial killer. Type story

that I always think about revisiting. I know I have at least one more story in me for , within that ball and chain world that that I created, maybe for the second collection of short stories that I ran,

but I really liked that story enough to, , could be its own standalone novel one day, but we'll see. Then you have chopper city, which is A story that came about literally from a dream that I, that I had

the beginnings of it, at least, , I had a dream, which is another writing writing tip. If, if you want to take this one which is to have a dream journal, , have a book next to your bed. I personally don't practice this as much as I want to, but I have in the past

where you have a, what's called the dream journal, literally a book [00:29:00] and a pen next to your bed. As soon as you wake up, just start writing, whether you remember your dream or not. And as you start writing, you'll start remembering shit. I feel I never dream, or at least I never remember my dreams. So I haven't really tried the, , just start writing to see if you remember your dream as you write.

But the times that I have remembered dreams that I think could be stories, I have written those down and Chopper City was one of them.

Lecture Hall. This was... An idea that I felt,

and sometimes still feel, that it's a story that I want to write, a full novel on, around the, , real estate crisis and crash of 08.

And this story was born from that seed of an idea, and I felt it wrapped up nicely within a short story, so it never became more than that.

Not that it needs to, but just highlighting that was my, , initial intent with that story.

And it's essentially a philosophical debate [00:30:00] between a professor and a student on what happened during the financial crisis of 08 and who was responsible and why.

And lastly, I wrap it up with the short story elevator, which was also based on true story, at least the beginnings of it again,

But someone that I bumped into

on my way to work one day, taking the elevator one day, someone I had never seen, never saw again, that I did not have a conversation with, but,

but did have a little elevator, small talk or whatever.

But after meeting that person, or, , if you can call it meeting or encountering or whatever that person, I did have the idea for this story, immediately after, and before even going into my cubicle or whatever at work, Where I used to work at. I right there in the elevator vestibule, started jotting down on my phone the ideas for this story that eventually became elevator.[00:31:00]

And those are the eight stories within my brand new short story collection melted cold available now links in the episode description below. Now let's circle back to the last three columns in this, Story structure spreadsheet of mine pro writing aid. Yes or no. So after I had my spreadsheet filled out, the next thing that I did was run all of my stories through a program called pro writing aid.

Now this is a writing tool and others it exists. Another popular one is called Grammarly. I use pro writing aid where you can upload Your writing into it and it doesn't even have to be creative writing. You can do it for emails for work. That's one way that they pitch this. But what it does essentially is

go through your writing [00:32:00] and

run a few different types of checks on your writing, spelling errors, grammar corrections, , where you have commas, where you shouldn't and vice versa, places where you need to add commas, where a colon is appropriate, where quotes are appropriate.

It highlights where you, , if you repeat, if you're too repetitive, that's another thing that it does. And you can pick and choose what you want it to do for your

piece of writing. And it was really, really helpful in that way. It helps, helps you polish up your writing to move on to the next phase, whether it's to use a professional editor, or even if you want to just stop there, it's a fairly inexpensive service. That I highly recommend and that I'm going to continue using with my writing.

The way I look at it, it's one, it, it teaches me like, Oh, you're supposed to put a comma before, , , first person reference [00:33:00] and someone's name or something that. You start picking up on those patterns and it starts cleaning up your, your writing from the first go moving forward.

But you also in.

This case I got my book professionally edited, which I'm going to get to next. I didn't want to hand my editor

a bunch of words on a page

filled with crap. I wanted to polish it and clean it up and make it as pristine as I possibly could. So that one editing wouldn't be as expensive.

And two, I see it as, , this is a reflection of me. I want to be the best writer that I can be. And this is a step towards that. If anyone listening is interested in checking out pro writing aid, I do have an affiliate link on my support page on my website, spun today. com forward slash support.

And it's also linked to in the episode notes. If you're interested, definitely check it out. I highly recommend it.

[00:34:00] Now let's switch gears to the next phase. So after I did that, so I have all my stories written. I have my structure points and beats that I, , want to make sure that I hone in on filled out on my spreadsheet.

So I know my stories have what I feel I need them to have. I ran them all through ProWritingAid. So the majority of my spelling errors and grammar errors and repetitive phrases, etc. are all taken care of.

Then I moved on to the scary world of editing.

Which definitely turned out not to be scary at all,

but to again, a novice writer who has never had anything professionally edited before. It was

a scary leap in some ways.

, it's a much larger financial investment. It's just something that usually doesn't make a return on, on the investment.

, it's cliche to say, but if you

get into writing, you definitely [00:35:00] don't do it for the money. As they say,

and it's again, uncharted territory all over again. You have to figure out this editing world. Now, again, I do research. I listen to podcasts with editors, interviews of editors.

I listening to a podcast the story grid podcast, which is literally a podcast all about editing. Every single episode is all about editing and writing. So I picked up, , tips and tricks there and implemented it into my own writing along the way. But I had never done it. So I started off with

trying to find an editor. What do you do? Go on Google, search for editors. I went through my social media, my Instagram at spun today, Twitter at spun today. And I have a few editors that follow me or that I follow. I checked out their websites.

, most [00:36:00] editors will have books that they've worked on. They'll walk you through their engagement process. Meaning, , what they want you to send them.

Which is usually something an excerpt of your story. 2, 500 words or some of them might be 5, 000 words. Some might be 500 words, , whatever it is that they want to see a sample of your writing. They let what their cost is, which is usually a per word cost.

Some of them have flat fees. , you read reviews,

you can search books that you , see who edited those books, then check out those editors websites. I did some of that. And a great resource is again, Joanna Penn. And her website, she has a editor section of her website with editors that she's worked with or that she's vetted in the past. I went through those and I picked out, I want to say maybe five or [00:37:00] six that I reached out to, I sent samples to.

And then you get the sobering realization that this isn't just a, Oh, I'm paying them. So whoever I send this to, they're, of course, they're going to want to edit my work. Some of them definitely don't and are pretty much the same for me.

Some of them were

folks that I just didn't really vibe with. , I sent an email and got a response,

 A two or three sentence response 10 minutes later with a cause and say, yeah, I'll do it here. We'll just kind of felt , well, that's it. , the vibe was kind of off there, the, I don't know, the care or

interest or lack thereof, kind of shown through.

And it, , it's someone that you're going to have a relationship with at least for the body of work that you're reaching out to them on. So you want a good vibe, a good working relationship to be there, , it's like a coworker.

So I weeded a few folks out that way.

[00:38:00] And then there were two editors that I whittled it down to that I was , I can work with either one of these.

They were very close, just in terms of, of cost, which is another thing, by the way of course, to, to factor in, make sure they're within your budget.

And then I moved forward with both of them in terms of getting a sample edits. So the 2, 500 words or whatever it is that they asked for, for you to send, they edit those as , a complete edit of this is what I can do for you, for your entire book of work, which one you learn from as a writer, just from that, just from those example edits, let's say right there, you choose to, I don't want to use either one of you.

You can take what you learned from there, which again, cost you nothing at this point and try yourself to implement them. Or those tips or editing

updates that were made

and implement them to the writing yourself. But these two editors that were neck and neck, essentially the

[00:39:00] attention to detail and how elaborate the, or not elaborate, that's the wrong word, but how

deep the feedback was that I got from one of the editors versus the other. That's what put them over at the end.

And I'm glad to say that I chose

a company called the pro book editor. And I worked with the managing editor, Debra Hartman and had a fantastic experience. I'm 100 percent going to work with the pro book editor and Debra in the future.

Everything was so professional, so. Seamless and easy.

The feedback that you get is not preachy at all. It's not, I know as a writer where we, another element at least for me, and I know for many other writers, it's I don't want anybody touching my shit, , I don't want this is my writing. I came up with this idea, this is [00:40:00] mine. , I, I wrote it this way, it's this way for a reason, , there's a control freak element to, , being a writer or a creative in general, I feel.

So there's some tension there with letting someone into, , your world.

But editors, a good editor, as I learned it through this process, knows where that line is and their goal is to enhance what you've already written

and give you suggestions. Okay. And ideas and

highlight things that they know work.

And the goal is definitely not to change anything that you've written.

And of course they apply the, , technical expertise of

line editing and grammar and proofreading. So on and so forth.

And you definitely come out of the experience, I know I did, as a better, stronger writer.

And hopefully when you folks. I do order my book melted cold, a collection of short stories

[00:41:00] that extra level of care and polish will shine through.

So shout out once again to the pro book editor and Debra Hartman.

Oh, let me circle back to that. The title of the book, the title is melted cold and it's something that my son Aiden literally said one day when I was changing him. He said, yada, yada, yada, something, something, something it's melted cold. And when he said it just stood out so much, I was , that's a, that's such a dope name.

And I wrote it down on my phone. I don't know for what, but when I hear things that I , I write them down, whether it's a line of dialogue or something someone says. And ultimately I decided to make it the title of this short story collection. And it's fitting, I kind of back engineered it fitting,

but it's a fitting title name in that

these are two words that don't really go together, but kind of work, [00:42:00] melted cold. It's kind of oxymoronic, but the, each of the stories within this short story collection are all, , different kind of genres and one story has nothing to do with the other. They're told in different ways. So each of these stories don't go together, but are together within the short story collection.

So it's kind of fitting in that way. Oh, and it adds a tip from my editor. I worked in the title of the, the book into one of the stories,

which again, it was super tough because just from a creative perspective, it was super tough to figure out how to do. Cause it's already two words that don't go together. So imagine trying to fit them into a story that already exists. And you're trying to think of clever ways to write them, write these two words

next to each other within the story and, , make it a coherent sentence, basically. So [00:43:00] I think I did an okay job with it. Let me know what you guys think. Once you find which story the title is actually within.

So now what?

You wrote a story,

you went through making sure your structure is on point,

you polished it up yourself as best as you could with editing tools ProWritingAid. You got it professionally edited. What's next? The covered design. Now I've spoken about covered design in the past.

I use professional covered design for my novel Fractal. I did not use professional covered design for my first book, Make Way for You. And after using the service that I used, I loved it and will likely continue to use it until and if I ever have a bad experience with it. But I use a service called 99designs, which I learned from Tim Ferriss, who used it on his first, I don't think it was his first book, but it was his first New York Times bestseller, I [00:44:00] believe, which is the four hour work week.

The original cover design for the 4 hour work week was created with 99 designs.

And the way it works essentially is that you pick a tier of service that you want. And each tier offers different things more designers or

a higher caliber of designer.

, with more experience for example. So on and so forth. And the way it works is that you create a profile within their, their website, 99 designs and super easy, super intuitive, very

straightforward. And you create a profile, you tell them the, the title of your book, the genre that it's in, the ideas that you have you can upload other book covers that you that you want your book cover to look similar to. You can tell them what colors to use and get as detailed as you want.

And what happens is [00:45:00] that all these

graphic designers that are part of the 99 designs ecosystem,

they duke it out for the opportunity to design your book cover and based on your proposal, all the things that you jotted down that you wanted for your book cover. They start sending you ideas and you start seeing your scattered thoughts when it comes to cover design come to life, which is really cool.

And you really get to, it's from again, from a creative perspective, it's, it's super interesting to me because you get to see other people's interpretations of what you told them that you wanted. And some of them are way different in a way that's , what the fuck, how did you get that from this? And some of them are way different in a, Oh shit, that's what I should do kind of way.

And this is my, again, [00:46:00] my second goal around actually my third goal around using 99 designs cause I actually use 99 designs as well to redo the spun today logo.

So fractal, use it for the spun today logo and now for melted cold. And you have a lot of time to work with. You get dozens and dozens of different designs, you get the designs, you have 10 days to, , each of the designs, go back to the designer, say, yo, I this. I like that color scheme. I what you did with this picture, but I don't like that.

Can you try, , changing the font up a little bit, , X, Y, Z, give whatever feedback you want. And , you straight up reject other ones that you don't . And after a 10 day period, you select five, your top five. Okay. five or six or seven, something like that, that you really .

And then you get another five or 10 days to work with those and, , continue fine tuning and tweaking. And

then you pick a top three and then you pick a finalist. And when you pick the finalist, that's the essentially the cover you [00:47:00] wind up with, but you again, have another, , five or 10 days with the finalists to change things up, see different color schemes

and help mold their idea. of what your cover will be. Then at the end, you essentially let them know the, , all the dimensions that you need, the size of the book, that you're gonna put out, if it's paperback if it's digital, obviously it's a straightforward one size fits all. But you can do, for example, I did paperback, which is available now.

And it's five inches by eight inches, I believe. And I also did a hardcover. It's my first hardcover. That's five and a half inches by eight and a half inches. So you gotta give the designer those dimensions, so

they give you back the correct files. And you always have, , an open line of communication. , afterwards, I actually, after I got the files, and, , the copyright and all that good stuff, because you own the... [00:48:00] The design at the end,

the files that he sent me

and actually, let me give him a shout out. The cover was designed by Noel Selon, S E L L O N, Noel Selon, the files that he gave me were off by one of the sides by , I don't know, 0. 0555 centimeters or whatever the fuck. So I reached out to him, this was like a month or two after through again 99design website and let him know he adjusted it, sent it back.

 Literally, I did, I was expecting not to hear back from him anytime soon and I would have to chase him. But he literally within 20 minutes, hit me back up and said, Oh yeah, I'll definitely take care of that. And then re sent the correct size. And you can also ask for extra shit, which I did, a square version of the design version of the design without the words on it for the back cover in case I decide to, , update the verbiage down the [00:49:00] line

for the back blurb, which I'm going to go to next and let how I came up with that,

YouTube banner so on and so forth, you can ask them for all these different cuts and designs and stuff.

Of the design that you're paying for and you just send over all the files at the end. It's a really dope service. 99 designs. Definitely check it out. I highly recommend it.

Now, something you have to do to, for, especially for physical copies of, of books that have a back cover is come up

with a back blurb, a

Enticing summary, if you will, of what your book is about. So that when folks pick it up, read the back of it, say, Oh yeah, this does sound interesting. Let me read it.

What I did for to come up with that was I took a page out of a tip that I heard humble the poet say on

a brilliant idiots podcast. And he writes, and he said that one thing that he started doing with his writing In terms of promoting it [00:50:00] was use chat, GBT and AI to come up with sales copy,

, short summaries that he can take and run it through chat, GBT and use the outputs of to put on Instagram, Twitter, social media to help sell his book. And the way you do that is

You interact with chat, GBT, AI, , go chat, gbt. com. I think it's open AI or something that. Dot com, but just Google chat, GBT. It's free to use the one specific tier of it. You could pay for additional functionality, but I didn't. And I've used chat, GBT in the past, just out of intrigue.

And, , what is this AI thing that everybody keeps talking about? And it's pretty dope. But I definitely took that tip from humble the poet to help with my back blurb. And what I did essentially was I wrote a, a paragraph [00:51:00] or not a paragraph, probably a three, yeah, I guess a paragraph, three or four, two to two to four sentences for each of the eight stories of what it's about.

And then I, , typed it chat GPT and I, and I say,

I forget the exact terminology, but something to the effect of you are, and by you , telling chat GPT, the mindset that I want it to be in. And I say, you are

a book publisher and

have a task to come up with

a 500 word or less conversation. Sales pitch for

purchasing a book

that has a story about

this. And then I'll, , paste in the, , three or four sentences that I wrote about my own short story saying, , a night out is about a group of friends that go out to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I feed that into chat GPT and then it comes back with, , [00:52:00] 500 words or less on, on whatever.

Okay. Then I tell it, okay, take out the references to X, Y, and Z and give me a hundred word version of that. And then you play with it back and forth like that. You cherry, , you start picking out, okay, I the way it phrased this. I the way it phrased that. And then I did that for each of my eight stories and came up with the back blurb that

you can see now in the back of Melted Cold. And it's also the same verbiage that I used

within the sales description for on Amazon, for example, and on my website.

And the dope thing is, again, it's something that you can always look back on, update over time, changes you see fit, but it's definitely a helpful

tool to incorporate for, for this purpose. Let me read you the back blurb. Yeah. Melted Cold. Dive [00:53:00] into Melted Cold, where each story becomes a mirror reflecting our deepest desires, fears, and dreams. Witness characters confronting hard truths and grappling with their inner demons. In the seedy underbelly of the city, vengeance takes center stage in A Night Out.

Pencil Case offers an insightful exploration of work ethic and values through a young protagonist's eyes. On the streets of Nostrand Ave, a hot headed teen's fate collides with an inexperienced cop's. Bully unearths scars from a troubling past, while Ball and Chain chills with a sinister force that leaves a trail of fear and bloodshed in its wake.

Amidst the bustling metropolis of Chopper City, a cataclysmic terror attack reshapes lives.

In the riveting debate of Lecture Hall... Ideologies clash [00:54:00] as finance and personal ethics collide. In the serendipitous encounter of Elevator, two souls have a brief connection that offers profound insights into the significance of the smallest moments. This multifaceted collection weaves resilience, redemption, and human connection in an unforgettable journey that lingers long after the final page.

Thank you, ChatGBT. But yeah, definitely don't take that as a

quick copy and paste type of thing that you can do a chat GPT and come up with that blurb took a lot of back and forth. A lot of me writing and telling it, , to read reword things and how I want things to sound and then using the eventual output as a framework and then rewriting a lot of it.

But again, it gives you a great starting point [00:55:00] and is a strong tool that, again, you, your strength, which is definitely not my strength. Your strength may not be sales may not be selling.

And that's where something this at least for me definitely come comes in handy.

And I'm also going to plan on, or I plan on using it in exactly the same way as home of the poet mentioned. Where he, , he'll take a chapter or a section from one of his books, put it into chat GPT and say, reword this in a, or give me a summary of this passage

in 30 words or less

that will make people want to read it, read the entire passage or the entire book, for example, or want to buy my book, , X, Y, and Z. And then use that for promotional posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. So I'm definitely going to use it in that way as [00:56:00] well.

Which kind of segues me into the final

aspect of writing a book. Or final phase, final in air quotes.

Which is the marketing of it.

So I definitely plan to be more thoughtful and structured with

All the free stuff, , more consistent rather with all the free stuff, again, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,

consistency is definitely key with gaining traction there.

I'm definitely going to do some spike ads, which worked for me in the past with both of my books, previous books.

And spike ads, for those of you who don't know, are services that

you use, that you purchase.

That have large platforms, large

network of readership or subscribers, for example, and you pay them to promote your book. One service that I've used in the past and again, have had success with is

written [00:57:00] word media and specifically their free booksy deals and bargain booksy deals. Bargain booksy

was not as much engagement as the free booksy. But free booksy is essentially you drop your price down to zero, which you can through Amazon, for example,

For a promotional period of, , two days, three days, five days, whatever you choose up to five days. And during that time

you pay for one of these spike ads and they blast their readership of , depending on the genre, they have different counts, but a guaranteed readership of a hundred thousand people and, , 65, 000 people, so on and so forth. And they blast your book out to them on a given days. And you can literally track on your end because you can see the folks that the number of folks that download your book or purchase your book.[00:58:00]

And you can see the downloads or sales or whatever spike during those days, hence the term spike ads. So I'm definitely going to do those again, which I've done in the past. But with this one, again, I want to be more structured, more consistent writers Joanna Penn, for example, they'll do, do these either on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis and just keep it going.

Not just a, a one and done type of situation, which is what I essentially did with my older books. I think I tried each version once, but again, consistency.

And I'm also going to try this go around. They have a stacked option which is the free book C or the bargain book C bargain book C is by the way, you drop instead of dropping your book down to zero, you drop it down to 99 cents or something like that. So I guess you get less engagement, but you still get , cause it's easier for folks to download a free book versus downloading a 99 cent book.

But you definitely get [00:59:00] a lot more hits and you see, you see a spike for those as well. And the idea is that you get from these folks that download the book either for free or, or, or at a discount,

you wind up getting

Reviews, the more reviews, the better reviews, the more momentum you build, and the more books you can potentially sell. But they have this a stacked option, which is not just a free book C or the bargain book C, but also stacked with another service called the fussy librarian, which has its own outlet and its own, , separate readership of an additional, , 30, 40, 50, 000 people.

I'm definitely gonna try that stacked bundle version, this go around,

Facebook ads. I'm going to implement as well. I dabbled in them in the past. They did okay for me. Amazon ads I had never done. But within the writing [01:00:00] world, I've heard have been successful for folks. So I'm probably going to give that a shot as well. And yeah, I'll see what else I come up with or I learned about and, , definitely keep you, you guys posted on what works, what worked, what didn't feel free to reach out to me. Let me know what has worked for you or what hasn't worked for you.

But another part of promotion would be this podcast, this episode, for example, the purpose of it isn't solely promotion. Obviously

it's to share with you guys, my listeners, , continue to

lay out this writing journey that I've been on over the past

decade or so that I've been sharing with you fine folks. Spun Today, the podcast actually is going to be nine years old this Friday, September 29th, the day after tomorrow as of this recording. Time fucking flies. But yeah, one of the reasons of [01:01:00] starting this podcast. Is and was, was and is for me to document this writing journey and be able to have something to look back on to see what I've learned, how I've learned, how I've grown and in sharing it in this type of forum, allow folks listening in to, , skip steps where they want to, or look out for pitfalls and mistakes that I've made and maybe learn something that You can take away and implement for yourselves.

So that's one of the main purposes of the pod, but it also doubles up serendipitously in being able to be in and of itself a promotion for this book that I wrote melted cold. Hopefully some of you folks listening will purchase it. You can find all the links to do so at spun today. com forward slash books.

I will link to it directly in the episode [01:02:00] notes,

and I'm definitely looking forward to finding out what you all thought of it. So definitely hit me up on social media at spun today on everything. And yeah, that is the story of how melted cold came to be.

Thank you all very much for listening. Please stick around for a few more minutes. You can listen to a few ways you can help support this podcast. If you so choose, your support means a ton.

The best and primary way I want you to help support this specific episode in particular is by purchasing melted cold, a collection of short stories, which is available now

links can be found in the episode notes as well as at spun today. com forward slash books. I'd really appreciate a five star review.

If you are able to purchase it, then you can hit me up privately and let me know what you really thought about it.

Digital ebook available, paperbacks available, hardcovers available, and audio book is coming soon.

Melted [01:03:00] cold, a collection of short stories. Peace.