#404 – Writing Dark(er) Romance with Amelia Wilde

0:07Hey, writers. You're listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. We're your hosts. I'm Vanessa Salemi, author engagement specialist. And I'm Rachel Wharton, author engagement manager for Kobo Writing Life. on today's episode we chatted with amelia wild who is a us today best-selling author of steamy contemporary romance and loves it a little too much she lives in michigan with her family and she spends most of her time typing furiously on an ipad and appreciating the natural splendor of her home state from where she likes it best inside we had so much fun chatting with amelia about her journey as an indie author from how she started her author career and how she's constantly a student of the craft, continuing to read books about it, learning about story structure, a lot of that knowledge she shares in this episode.

0:57We talked about how she loves writing series about brothers and their relationships and how she uses trilogies and larger series to tell their stories. She gave us some great insights into her newsletter, which she recently shifted the focus of, which was really interesting to learn about. There's just so much cool information about writing romance, darker romance, and writing series in here. We hope you listen, learn, and enjoy. All right. We are joined today by USA Today bestselling author Amelia Wild. Amelia, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Thank you guys so much for having me.

1:32Amelia Wilde: I'm so excited to talk about writing. And we are so excited to talk about you or talk to you, I guess, but also talk to you about you. Anyways, can you start us off by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself? I am a romance author by accident. I am from northern Michigan, and I didn't plan on being a romance author. I never read romance growing up. And the way that I became a romance author is that my husband said one time about 12 years ago, hey, I saw this Reddit post that said people were making money in Kindle Unlimited with short stories, you should write some. and so I did and I didn't make any money because they were like weird they were very weird short stories and I didn't know what I was doing and then a year later I had quit doing that because they weren't making any money and he said by the way I found another reddit post and it turns out that the one that I read was out of date it was like a year old when I read it and he said like people are making money writing full-length romances so you should do that and so I was like okay, I guess I'll give it a shot.

2:36Amelia Wilde: I wrote like kind of one starter romance and ended up meeting a bunch of great people who helped me figure out what I was doing. But then my second book that I had ever published, ever really written, Dirty Rich, actually people read it in KU. So that's how I became a romance author. I didn't intend on this career really ever, but it's worked out. And at what point did it kind of become like, oh, this is a suggestion from a Reddit post to something that you are now pursuing full time and I have to assume are at least enjoying on some level to keep doing it. So that happened like immediately. Like I had published this book that was it was not really anything.

3:17Amelia Wilde: It was not really right. But I happened to I mean, it's like a whole it's a whole series of coincidences. Basically, I had made, you know, a Facebook for my author pen name and I was trying to friend other authors because I had read that that's what you should do. and this author Willow Winters, you might have heard of her, messaged me and said, I think you're good at writing, but your cover is terrible. You need a different cover. And I was like, I still often think of that night because I was sitting in, my husband and I were living in this single wide trailer and it was like just crumbling around us.

3:50Amelia Wilde: We had no money. And I just thought like, you know, I didn't know who this person was. She could be anybody. I don't know if she's telling me the truth. And I just told her, like, I'm so desperate that I have to make this work. And she like, took me under her wing and told me about cover designers. I didn't know anything that there was this whole industry around romance in particular. And so the next book I wrote within like, I mean, it was like six weeks later, I had written Dirty Rich and published it. And that was crazy, because I didn't expect anyone to read it either. And at the time, I mean, it's like a different world now.

4:26Amelia Wilde: But at the time, we had this strategy where we would make the book free when it launched, which anybody who hears that now is going to be like, why would you ever do that? Well, because people would read it free. And then once it went to like paid, they would pay for it. And so Dirty Rich that month made like almost$9 ,000, which was like, that was like life changing money. So I was like, okay, I have to keep doing it. Like I didn't really have a choice. I guess I should learn how to do this because I don't know what else I'm going to do. So I don't know if that's like a very uplifting story, but it was like right away, I kind of had to decide to do that.

5:00I think it is because one thing we always say is how much other authors and writers help each other. And when you find a community, you find a community. So I think that's really cool that it started off with Willow Winters.

5:12Amelia Wilde: We're still friends still working together to this day. She is so smart and so, so wonderful. And it's like, I don't know, I'm I can't think about it too much because I'll get I'll cry because I'm like the fact that like this person you need this one person and like they happen to reach out to you for no reason it's like I feel like that happens all the time in romance so that's beautiful so if a reader has never picked up any of your books what's one hook you would say the way you write your books how would you get them I would say I mean in the beginning I did not always follow this process because I had to learn it while I was writing, which was, it's a little stressful to like learn how to do something when you're already doing it.

5:52Amelia Wilde: But now I would say that I write about like broken slash tortured rich men. And I write about families. So pretty much everything that I do is either a group of brothers or a group of friends who act like brothers. And I just love those, you know, those like kind of sweeping stories where they're all, they're all broken and tortured. So we get to have fun, you know, seeing what broke and tortured all of them. And it's usually the same thing. So like, that's you can you can kind of hang out with me indefinitely because I'll just have another person in the series. Like, that's all it is forever.

6:26So I know this is a audio only format. But for everybody who can't see the way Vanessa's face lit up and she nodded with like broken and tortured rich men, I think really just speaks to how captivating your books are when readers know what they want. That was the most beautiful reaction. And I wish this whole thing was being released on video. But as you've mentioned, you kind of picked up like writing and learned things along the way. So I'm curious how your writing process and how you approach each of your books has changed into what is now a like well-oiled writing machine.

7:02Amelia Wilde: Well, for one thing, I learned how to do it. So when I started, I did not know. I mean, we literally like, I feel like I've told the story a thousand times, but it never gets old to me. Like when he, he, my husband showed me that Reddit post, we drove to the nearest decent sized bookstore. Our town is super small. So we had like just a tiny bookstore. We drove to like a books a million. And I went into the romance aisle and just picked out like four books. I don't even know. I don't, I just picked, you know, based on the cover or whatever. And I couldn't really read, like, I couldn't really understand.

7:36Amelia Wilde: There was, there was shifter stuff going on. And I was like, this seems like a lot. for me to learn right now. And I read one that was like a billionaire romance. And that was all that I knew about writing. I didn't know about story structure. I didn't know about, I knew nothing. I mean, it's true that I really knew nothing. And so, I was kind of doing it based on that. And then after Dirty Rich Made Money, I went back to my friends and I was like, what do I do? And they were like, do another one in the series. So, I did another one in the series and And I still didn't know what I was doing. So I was doing this whole this whole first series of mine just like on the fly.

8:11Amelia Wilde: I didn't know that like, I didn't know that if you're going to do a series about a group of guys, you should introduce them all in the first book. So I would just introduce a guy in the new book and then just be like, oh, he's been here the whole time. So like it was a gradual process of like every time I wrote a book, I would try to research like, oh, what's another thing that you're supposed to do when you write a story? And I was, you know, reading all this stuff about, you know, like I can't remember this book. It was about stories. It was some book that a guy wrote about stories, but it wasn't the right kind of book.

8:42Amelia Wilde: I'll probably think of it like tonight, but it wasn't about romance. romance so it took me a while to find like stuff that applied to romance because in a romance I feel like the romance is that the main plot and everything else that happens you know is in service of pushing these people together but at the time I'm reading all these books and they're saying like oh this this outer action is super important and then you know if you have a romantic thing it's a subplot and that's not how I think about it anymore but I basically just spent 10 years learning how to do it. I actually can't remember what your question was.

9:17Amelia Wilde: How did I learn how to do it or how is it different? It was both because I am somebody who I'm constantly in awe of writers, especially of indie authors, because you're doing everything while also having the discipline to sit down and actually write a book, which is something I could never do. So I always like to know what the process looks like from like ideation to here is my book. Oh, okay. Well, I can be a little more specific about that. When I started writing, it feels like a million years ago, everybody was writing bad boys. And so, you know, my friend Willow was like, what kind of bad boy are you going to write?

9:55Amelia Wilde: And I was like, I don't even know what kinds there are. And she listed some. And she said billionaire is one of them. And I was like, I'll do that. And so when I started, I feel like I was really starting from like, what is the trope? You know, my second one was like about a prince and the third one I don't even know he had like some kind of dark secret he's like the prototype for all of the characters that come after because he had a dark secret but now I am much more focused on the character transformation first which is I feel like not always the best because I'll get really hooked on an idea or a character and then it's like well that isn't really a trope like we need to fit him into something where you can say what this book is about and people are going to know what you're talking about.

10:38Amelia Wilde: But at the beginning, it was definitely, I was just desperately trying to find tropes. So I just wrote trope first and then whatever I needed to do. And now I'm, I'm spending a lot of time on characters and families and wounds and lies and all of that. So that's how it's evolved. It is really amazing. You talking about like how over the last 10 years, you've tried things, you've changed things, like all of this kind of stuff has evolved, as you said. But one thing that is sort of consistent is indie publishing. So that's what you've done since the beginning. So what does indie publishing do for you that makes you not want to give it up?

11:14Amelia Wilde: I like to be in charge of what I'm doing, even though it's also the thing that I find most stressful. But like, I feel like, I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with trad pubs, so I don't really know what people are doing. But I feel like I feel like I don't really know how you would approach that if you approach a trad publisher, you know, as a person who is, for instance, like, I want to write about this type of guy, do you keep going back for the same thing? Or do you have to worry about, are people going to not like this? Or, I mean, I don't think a lot of trad publishers would, you know, give me the time of day if I said, listen, it's going to be 12 books about these brothers, they probably wouldn't believe me that I could get people to the end.

11:57Amelia Wilde: But like, that's what I want to do. So it lets me kind of choose how big I want those series to be and how much time I want to spend with the characters and all of that fun stuff. And I have to imagine that one of the challenges of being an indie author is the fact that you are wearing all of the hats. Like you are deciding on the length of your series. You're also deciding how to market it. What are some of the marketing things, like tips that you have picked up throughout your career and some that like newer indie authors might actually underestimate when it comes to their importance? Well, I'm really horrific at marketing.

12:33Amelia Wilde: I don't like it. I don't really understand it even after all this time. So I think probably the thing that I underestimated most when I was starting out is trying to be too different. Like I was really worried about like standing out and being different and like, how can I show people that I'm different? And when, you know, when you're when you're posting an ad on Facebook or when you're talking to people that you don't know, I think it's much less about being like saying how different you are and much more about saying like, you know, here's something that I can give you and here's the stuff that you can expect from it.

13:11Amelia Wilde: And then, you know, once you have somebody after a trilogy or you have somebody after book one and they're hooked on it, then you can kind of do other stuff that that maybe you don't use in your marketing as much. Like I wouldn't I probably wouldn't talk about all the stuff that I do for a series when I'm marketing because I just want people to know that they can be like comfortable with what I'm doing. So obviously you want some unique edge to yourself, but I think less of it than people might think at the beginning. And I'm wondering, now that so much time has passed since you've started writing, what does a successful book release look like to you?

13:46And has it changed from much earlier in your career?

13:49Amelia Wilde: I'm not a huge number one best selling author, but that's actually fine with me. I don't usually have a lot of big releases either. I'm kind of in, I'm in a place right now where I would be happy to have any release because I had this whole freak accident happened where I lost all the iron in my body like three years ago. And I didn't know about it for like two more years. So I was just progressively feeling like, I mean, if you feel so depressed, and you can't do anything, and you're getting more and more tired. And it's like, you know, you feel stupid, like I couldn't think of anything. And I would try to like, come up with my plots for my stories.

14:26Amelia Wilde: And it was like, nothing was there, which was like, this is really terrifying as an author who's supposed to come up with this. And suddenly I couldn't. But for me, it's not even when I'm going to start, I have a bunch of new series that I'm going to start. I'm not very concerned about the release themselves. I'm more concerned about, you know, the whole series, the series as a whole. So I don't, I mean, I don't really have big launches and I don't mind that. I just like it when there's, you know, there's nine books that people can read. That's pretty nice. And I'm curious when it comes to the series, because like you mentioned, you like to introduce the characters off the bat if you're doing a series of brothers.

15:05And I know that we're going to touch on the writing of brothers in a moment. But how do you decide how long a series should be when you're setting that up?

15:15Amelia Wilde: Well, normally, I just like three trilogies. So I have a couple I have a couple series that are just there's three brothers and then a sister who like she's fine she's either a villain or she's fine but like she gets her own book um so when i start thinking about like oh if i'm gonna do a new series it's probably gonna be nine books it's probably gonna be three trilogies but i also have an idea like i have a a series starter on pre-order right now that's gonna be five books i know some people have really incredibly long series where it's like 20 books which seems like a lot to me to think about different entry points and all that.

15:52Amelia Wilde: So I'm usually either thinking like, oh, I'll do five standalones or I'll do three trilogies, which is just a thing that I picked out. It's not, there's no rule. There's, it's not a magic number. I just feel like that's a good number. But I feel like it does make you very unique in your books because a lot of the time it's a book per brother, let's say, but you do have this ability to make the trilogy and then each character is a different choice. So it is very unique, a very unique way of writing. I'm glad to hear that because I don't read, I still don't read a lot of romance. I read a lot of other stuff, but I just, I don't have a lot of time to read a lot of other romance.

16:30Amelia Wilde: So I don't really know if anybody else is doing that, but that's, that's how I have the most fun. Let's talk about the brothers. Okay. So what draws you to writing like brothers specifically as a part of a story world? and did you always want to write family-oriented stories? Like how did that kind of come across? I didn't write family-oriented stories in the beginning of my career, which I think was a mistake because I love to write about brothers and readers love to read about brothers, at least my readers. And that's one of those marketing things where you can be like, they have brothers and you don't have to say a lot more than that.

17:08Amelia Wilde: You can go into detail, but people know what that means usually to be brothers. Like they know the variety of situations that you're going to get into with the family. So I find that to be like a really easy way to just organize how people think about a series because it's just easier. I know I just said that, but that's easiest for me. It's easiest for me in terms of planning and planning their relationships. But I think it's also easiest to describe like this series is going to be about these brothers and this problem. And then readers can know what they're getting. And earlier you mentioned that like when you're writing a romance, the romance is the main plot, right?

17:48Like we are reading a romance for the romance. But when you add in the family dynamic of brothers and a potentially fine or evil sister, how do you balance the family dynamics with the romance plot?

18:03Amelia Wilde: So I actually have a specific way of doing this, because I don't want to deal with a bunch of different problems. I want to just focus on the same problem again and again. Because, again, I just think it's easiest. I'm not here to like make this hard for myself. But I also think it's way more fun to look at a problem, you know, from three to four to five, whatever different angles. So when I'm planning a series, it's never just that I'm like, there are brothers like you could have brothers anywhere. But I'm like, the thing about these brothers is that something terrible happened to them in the past.

18:38Amelia Wilde: And the same thing happened to all of them. So whatever this thing that's going to give them there, you know, they're going to have specific things that are that they're more tortured by. But there's an event or a person or something that was bad, which it sounds kind of mean. But that is usually what drives the current plot for me. Like whatever they're doing right now is ultimately a reaction to what happened to them in the past. And then they all know what happened. So they're dealing with it or, you know, coming back from it or doing all this stuff. So I think about, OK, what are these brothers?

19:12Amelia Wilde: How many brothers are there? Do they have a sister? And then what terrible thing happened to them? And it could be, I mean, there are so many options for what can happen. So that's great. And is it really fun getting to tackle this problem, even though the problem is something horrific that has happened to these characters? But is it fun to get to look at it from a different perspective? Or do you ever find yourself being like, oh, man, I do not actually know how this character is going to react? I always know because I'm not going to do a series if I don't have some idea. I mean, I probably don't have all the finer details because I get a lot of information, you know, when I start the when the first brother when I start writing his book, he is talking about his brothers and then I'm like, oh, this is way more specific.

19:56Amelia Wilde: But I try to think of types of ways that somebody would react. So usually if I'm going to have brothers, I'm going to have one who's like, he's the meanest. He's probably got an obvious injury or disability. I'm going to have one who's like really charming, who's trying to hold things together. and then I'm going to have one who is like a wild card and we don't really know what he's doing. He's crazy. You know, he's getting arrested or he's like sailing off on his pirate ship or whatever. So I have those three kinds of characters. And then it's like, well, what happened? What happened to all of them?

20:30Amelia Wilde: They might have been like this before the terrible thing happened, but now they're really like this and they have to deal with it together. I am so bad at remembering the question. How did I? No, that was perfect. Okay. Yeah. I was kind of like, how do you tackle the different perspectives? Which leads me into my next question, which is, do you have a favorite archetype to write from? Like, do you prefer the bad boy or the wild card? Or do you love them all equally? I'm not here to make you pick your favorite child. I mean, professionally, I love them all equally. But when I started writing trilogies, I did a billionaire series that was based on Greek mythology.

21:06Amelia Wilde: And I once again, I didn't really know what I was doing with the trilogy. So I keep trying to go back and rewrite it. And I have to be like, stop, because people love him. My favorite archetype is what I call the Hades archetype. He's so mean. He's so mean. He's so angry. He's actually like very sweet on the inside, but he's just an asshole. He just he hates everybody, even though he really loves them. But I love I love those ones. Those are my favorite ones to write. But I mean, depending on which one I'm writing, I'm like, well, now he's my favorite. So if you're asking me right now, I'm like, yeah, he's my favorite.

21:44Amelia Wilde: But when I'm writing the other ones, I'm like, oh, yeah, look at his brothers are so cute. And I think this gives you such a cool opportunity to work on the darker side of these characters, which leads me to my question about dark romance. So your books definitely bore a lot in that dark romance line. So what does the dark romance allow you to explore that lighter romance maybe doesn't? I think, I mean, yeah, my books are not, I mean, I've learned over the years that some people are writing way darker stuff than me. Like, I don't, I don't really like a lot of like blood and gore and stuff. I'm not, I don't really like a lot of scary stuff happening.

22:21Amelia Wilde: Like I have written a couple of scary things and I'm like, oh my God, I'm keeping myself up at night. But those things, I think calling it a little bit darker or like I think a lot of billionaire that's not maybe marketed as sweet or like, you know, small town. For me, it lets me get into like when something really, really terrible happens. And like, can we look at the terrible thing? Can we remember the terrible thing? And then can we see how it's affecting these these people years on? I feel like that's that's tougher to do if you're trying to keep your books lighter and sweeter. And I kind of want to I kind of want to get into that.

22:56And do you find it harder to find the readers that have the expectations of a little bit darker? Because I know that if somebody is expecting a sweet rom-com and they come to dark romance, they're not necessarily happy or quiet about it. So I'm curious how you find the readers that are looking for something that does explore darker themes.

23:18Amelia Wilde: I mean, I don't know if I have been the best at that, but I have quite a few people on my mailing list. When I advertise, I'm more likely to say this is a dark romance. I'm mostly saying this is a billionaire romance. And also he's mean, like he's really mean. And that seems to tell people that like, oh, the rest of this is probably not going to be super fluffy. So that's how I find that. I mean, when I find people, that's how I find people. I don't know how anybody else is doing it. If anybody else has a better tip of how to be like, it's not that dark, but it's not super light either. I would be open to hearing about it.

23:53I think being honest off the top makes a lot of sense because I mean, over the past, like, I was going to say a couple of years since the pandemic, but it has been more than a couple. The passing of time continues to elude me. But since like book talk really took off, I find that readers are getting more and more specific into what they like so like for me personally I feel like being honest off the top me like hey it's a little darker but it's I'm not going to be having somebody you know kidnapped and tortured in the basement yeah yet they're not

24:26Amelia Wilde: going to be kidnapped in the basement my thing is I like it if the heroine she's like no don't be mean to me or whatever but she's actually actually likes it I don't like to write like I'm not into being like, oh, I captured, you know, I captured a woman and tortured her and she hates it. Like, that's not fun for me. She thinks he's hot. She's into it. That's obviously a fantasy scenario. But that's the sort of line for me where I'm like, the heroine should be still enjoying herself. I mean, I guess maybe I could try that on an ad. But, you know, that's that's the darkness line for me. And I can speak as somebody who does love your books.

25:04I see it as a perfect balance between the two. You have very nuanced characters, but it's not light and fluffy. So it's a very good mix. And I think it comes across in your covers and your blurbs. So I think it's going well. Thank God. Well, and you mentioned your mailing list, and I'd love to talk about it just a little bit because with all of the many authors that we have had the privilege of chatting with both on the podcast and off, mailing lists and newsletters comes up time and time again as something that's very important in the indie author sphere. So I'm curious how you leverage your mailing list and if you have a newsletter and what it looks like.

25:42Amelia Wilde: I do have a newsletter. It used to be a lot bigger. I wish I hadn't cut it down when I did, but I did. And I have actually changed completely the way I think about my newsletter in the last, I want to say, two years. It might have been last summer. Last summer, I don't even remember. I think I read a book about email marketing. And I'm on a couple of lists of people who are great at it. And now I can't remember her name. My blurb lady, when I can't write a blurb, her name is Jessie. And she has a really, really good newsletter. And last summer, I was reading, you know, about marketing. And it was basically like, stop thinking of this as a newsletter.

26:19Amelia Wilde: Just think of this like you're talking to people, which I've heard many times before. And I was like, I don't know how to do that. If I'm emailing them once a week. So last summer, I started emailing them every day. I try to email my list. I mean, August has not been great because it's back to we have to do all this back to school stuff. But I usually email them every day. And I don't it's not a formatting. It's not formatted like a newsletter. I'm not worried about like, my book section or what I'm doing, because I'm just doing stuff. You know, most of the time, I'm not I'm not sitting like with a book.

26:52Amelia Wilde: So I don't want to be locked into that. I'm talking about the people mowing their lawn that annoy me, you know, in my neighborhood, or like we went to the beach, or I'm thinking about this, or I'm doing this. And I actually love to do it this way. Because when I try, I mean, for years, I would, you know, I try to email them once a week, or I would try to email them once a month. And people said, don't email them because they won't like you. But then every time I had to do it once a week, It was like I dread it all week. And then I have to think of how to do this thing every week or every month, which is even worse.

27:24Amelia Wilde: And now I'm just talking to, you know, 15 ,000 of my friends who want to know what's going on with me. And I'm putting links to the book in there. So it's I don't I'm not doing a big push of once a month. Hey, like buy my books. I have a pretty deep backlist so I can put a different link, you know, and it's fun for me because sometimes the topic doesn't match up really with a book. And then I have to find a way to be like, and now segue to the book, which I think is funny. And people write me back about stuff. And, you know, we have these conversations. So that's how I think of it now. And that's I mean, I don't think it's for everybody, but it's it's easier for me to do something every day than it is for me to do something once a month.

28:06That's really interesting. And it's also like I kind of like the idea of shifting the marketing perspective and also allowing readers into getting to know you a little bit more and almost like marketing yourself alongside your books. And has the response to your newsletter really changed since you started doing that?

28:25Amelia Wilde: I just get a lot more replies. Like I don't I'm not inundated with replies unless I you know, if I sometimes I'll last fall, I did a thing where I was like, share your recipes and I'll make a recipe book. And I didn't make the recipe book yet. But people were sharing their recipes. And then one time I did one that was like a spirit week or something. And they all had like, you know, that takes longer. Like people have fun with those little email events, but I normally don't do them. And then I get, you know, one or two replies. Sometimes I don't get any. Sometimes I'll be like, if you really want this, I need 10 people to reply, which is obviously I'm lying.

29:00Amelia Wilde: Like if I email them about it, I'm going to do the thing anyway. I already decided to. But, you know, I want to like get their thoughts, get their interests. If I ask for advice, you know, I have a lot of like older ladies on my list. So sometimes I have a problem and I'm like, what do you guys do about this problem? And they are they're very willing to share their advice with me. So, I mean, I really did write one earlier this week because there were lawnmowers all day. And somebody emailed me and just said, I'm with you. I hate those lawnmowers. And I was like, yeah, I think it should. Like, that's a noise violation.

29:34Amelia Wilde: Like, why is my muffler when I'm 19, my muffler in my car is broken and I'm getting pulled over? But in my neighborhood, you can run this leaf blower for eight hours. Like, how is that appropriate? I'm trying not to get too fired up, but I get replies like that. So it's more of a conversation than just constantly telling people stuff and just out into the wild. It seems like a very authentic way to talk to your readers, which is great and amazing. And one thing I'm really hearing from you is like the community aspect of it, whether it's with other authors or with your readers, which is great. And with that, we know you do a lot of author collaboration.

30:13So you work on a lot of books with other people. Can you walk us through the process of that and how you still protect your own voice while you're creating something that is shared?

30:24Amelia Wilde: Yes. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention this one that I'm going to be working on. but I have noticed that a lot of, of those collaborations are, you know, they have a, a strong theme or like a strong, like shared space, but then the rest of it is up to me or whoever. So I'm, I don't know if we're allowed to announce it, so I won't like announce it too much, but I'm, I'm in one, I'm going to be part of one soon. That's like a dark mafia theme, but it's like, we have these shared locations that everybody can know about to kind of bring the series together. But otherwise, you know, the heat levels up to you, the darkness levels up to you.

31:01Amelia Wilde: So I feel like a lot of those, you know, the ones that that I want to be part of leave room for me to do, you know, whatever I'm going to do, but still being in this world. And I just kind of I'm always just kind of doing whatever I want to do. So I don't know, maybe there's other ones that don't work as well. But I usually find myself, you know, as part of stuff that lets me keep my own voice. Does it present a different challenge when the parameters of the book, even if it's just something like here is the world, here is the subgenre, does that present a new challenge or is it kind of fun to let somebody else dictate where your story is going to take place?

31:42Amelia Wilde: I personally, I love rules. I think people need to just embrace rules instead of thinking that they're like a prison or whatever rules help me get everything done because if I didn't have if I didn't understand I've spent like the last three years when I couldn't really write as much I have spent a lot of time trying to understand and getting a better understanding of story structure and character transformation how those things go together I love the rules I don't mind that at all for me a fun challenge is you know I think this one doesn't I don't think we have to have anything in a certain location.

32:18Amelia Wilde: So for me, the challenge of that, if I'm going to write a standalone for this, I'm like, well, how can this standalone set up for a series that I'm already going to do? And then how can this hero or whatever heroes or hero or heroine be part of this world that I'm going to do? So whoever's reading this gets led into, you know, my future plan. So I actually, I think that's a fun challenge. And I think everybody should have more rules and just do more things with rules because I think they would honestly find it a lot easier to get stuff done. You had mentioned previously that you don't read a lot of romance and you read a lot of other kind of stuff.

32:55Is there a genre that you would like to actually write in the future?

32:59Amelia Wilde: I really would like to do fantasy or romanticy. And I have some plans for stuff like that. But I am nervous about the world building. Like, and my husband's like, what are you talking about? Like you do all this kind of stuff anyway. It's not even different from what you normally do. And I'm like, but you know, there's, there's dragons or whatever. Like, I don't, I don't know why I have, I have trouble imagining it. Cause I feel like once I was doing it, once I started doing it, it would be fine. But I recently got really into, I spent like three months at the beginning of this year reading the realm of the elderlings series by Robin Hobb.

33:34Amelia Wilde: I don't know if either of you have read that, but you should if you haven't. And I was like, oh, I would love to I would love to do a series like this. It's not really it's not really romantic, though. It's just fantasy. And she spends like nine books in the viewpoint of like one character. And he just like he just messes. I love him. He messes everything up. He's so dumb. He's so in denial about everything. And I'm like, I would love to do that. That just seems like so much fun to me. But I don't know if I would have the time to like build out. I would be trying to get them to fall in love. So I don't know.

34:07Amelia Wilde: We'll see. And so it's I don't know. I find it I don't know if like refreshing is the right word, but I think it's cool that somebody who has written as many books as you have, who has like you found your voice in a certain genre and you're still a little trepidatious about trying something new. I feel like that's really like I don't know. It's nice to know that authors who know what they're doing are still aware of the rules of other genres and curious about it, but a little trepidatious. I really think you have to be. I always, you know, it's weird talking to people who haven't written very long because they're like, oh, you know everything.

34:44Amelia Wilde: And I'm like, no, I know everything when it's done. I'm done. And now that I'm starting something, I don't know anything and I have to relearn all this stuff. So I'm always looking for like, hey, can you explain to me as a beginner what you think story structure is? Because I'll go through and I'll be like, oh, OK, I now understand it even better. So I think it's really important to be like to be studying that other stuff and into that other stuff, even if, you know, even if I never get around to a fantasy epic series. I believe in you. Someday. And you've mentioned a couple of times that you had to take some time off from writing, but you spent that time studying the craft, studying story structure.

35:23And I'm just wondering if there's something like really random or weird that you learned that you're excited to implement as you take on your next writing projects.

35:34Amelia Wilde: Well, I don't think it's very random because I did it purposefully. But I mean, I got really, really into when I started trying to figure out like, you know, I don't want to start over with the process of how do I come up with an idea? How do I come up with the plot every time? I just want to have a process where this is what I do every time. And the thing that I've kind of come to over all this time is a combination of like, I use Michael Hague's six stage plot structure for the internal transformation because it's like this, you know, it's transformation between the false self and the true self.

36:10Amelia Wilde: but for like the plot events I read this book I think it's by K.M. Weyland called I never get this title right it's like advanced plot structure and it is about circular structure in stories and I also read this at the same time as this other this is this unrelated thing this guy named John Granger and you're gonna think that I'm joking but his name really is John Granger he wrote this book about the plot of Harry Potter and how it's a circuit. The whole thing is a circular structure, the whole seven book series, but each book is also a circular structure. And then there's like these triangles of like three books that fit together within the structure.

36:52Amelia Wilde: And when I read that, I was like, okay, well, I want to be able to do this for my own series because, you know, they're not going to go to Hogwarts, obviously, but like the way that those books bring you like, Like, you know, every book he goes to Hogwarts and he comes back, like everything is a perfect, you're hitting these same beats every time. So like a lot of the time in the Harry Potter books, I won't talk about this too much. You'll get like, oh, here's the Christmas scene. You know, like here's the Easter holidays. Like there are these kind of like capstone moments that repeat in all of the books.

37:25Amelia Wilde: And I'm like, that for me is a great way to organize a series and then be hitting those similar kinds of plot beats without necessarily repeating yourself, which I did by accident in the Hill Brothers series. So like birthdays are a big deal for them. The anniversary of their parents' death is a big deal for them. That keeps like recurring throughout the series. And the more times you can come back to that from a different point of view, I mean, it just, I think it makes it so much easier to know because I'm always like, what is going to happen? You know, and then people are like, well, they're going to fall in love.

37:56Amelia Wilde: And I'm like, right. But like, what are they doing? what are we doing while we're falling in love are we at the cemetery you know are we on a ship like what do we have to do more than once so um that circular structure idea where you know k.m. wayland does a really good job of explaining this i think where and this was the first time of course i'd been writing for like eight years before i even knew this and she was talking about how these major beats in a story like you know the 25 turn the 50 and 75 they actually have an arc so like like the midpoint will have a plot revelation and then a moment of truth.

38:32Amelia Wilde: And, you know, the 25 % turn has a key event and then like actually passing through that threshold. Same thing with the 75%. So I'm like, this is so great for me because I finally learned to see all of these things as a giant mirror. So I'm looking at the 25 % and 75 % turns. How do these actually become a mirror on either side of the midpoint? And like, how are we going to go back to the same place? Are we going to talk about the same feelings? Like, is it an opposite event or whatever? Like the, the way that they're so connected makes it so much easier for me. I'm planning hopefully within the next few months to start another newsletter, to talk to other writers about this, because this was the thing that I could not figure out for the longest time.

39:14Amelia Wilde: And I just feel like sometimes you have to listen to like 30 different people explain it. And then you're finally like, Oh, that's what we're doing. This is going to be my way. So how I think all people should do it but like you have to do whatever whatever you want to do I love that you are like eight years into your career and you're still not only like actively seeking out learning but are able to like apply those learnings like oh like I kind of already knew how to do that I just didn't know I knew how to do that but I just think it's really cool that you're still so open to learning about writing even though like you're doing okay you know yeah Yeah, I'm doing okay.

39:53Amelia Wilde: And I mean, it's it, it really was astounding how much easier it made things for me because I go through, like, sometimes I'll do this, you know, where I'll have a group of people and I'm like, and here's the plot, let's put one together right now. And they'll be like, Oh, my God, how do you do this? You know, you're done, you're done with the whole thing. And I'm like, well, not necessarily, because this is it's, you know, it's a circular thing of I'll get to the end of the plot. And then maybe I start writing the book, and he's different than I thought. And he's not doing the stuff that I thought.

40:22Amelia Wilde: So then I'm going to go back and I'm going to like, I'm going to redo it again. But when I'm thinking, you know, like when I started out, I was just like, well, you know, 25 % is like a change. And at 50%, they commit to each other. And at 75%, something bad happens. And to me, not those things did not connect. I didn't realize that they should or could escalate. I didn't know that they should be related to anything. So I was like, something bad is happening and it's random. And now I'm like, well, if I'm looking at this, you know, whatever this turn is, then I'm also at the same time thinking about what is the opposite of this?

41:00Amelia Wilde: How do we get out of this at 75 %? I want it to be a strong mirror. So I'm thinking, you know, if I get to the 75 % and something unexpected happens when I'm writing it, I'm going to go back and make sure that the 25 % leads up to this. So it's like, it's actually much less thinking on my part, because I'm like, well, if this happened, you know, it's almost like math. I'm like, if this happens at 25, this happens at 75. So like, we got to look at this. Does it does it equal each other? Or is it falling down on one side? And if it is, you got to fix it. I genuinely think in the way that like reading books about writing books has helped you like people listening to this will hopefully gain some insight into writing because it is very helpful to like keep evolving, I think your practice.

41:43Amelia Wilde: So I mean, hopefully they will later join my newsletter. They want to hear more about it. Well, we know you're working on quite a lot of things, some things you can't really talk about, but can you drop any hints maybe as to what's upcoming in the future? Yes, I can, because I've been working on it for like the last, I mean, I have, I've had other stuff to do and I've been working on this anyway, because I'm so into it. I have one book on pre-order right now, which I've had to push out because I, my whole it's slower now but whatever we don't have to get into that it's called damned damned or damned villain and this whole series that i have this idea for like i i spent a ton of time making a whole chart of all these people it's billionaire trilogies based on shakespeare plays so the first one is based on hamlet but in the course of this there's there are families with brothers but the core group is like a group of people who went to boarding school together.

42:44Amelia Wilde: So now they're, you know, now they're out of college, but they're acting like a group of siblings, basically, you know, at the higher level. And when I was, you know, planning this dark mafia standalone, I was like, I want it to lead into this, this trilogy, which meant that I couldn't just make up two random heroes. I needed one of them to be, you know, in one of these rich family, I have eight rich families in this series, I need one of these heroes to be from there. one of these you know heroes is going to be the fixer and then in the course of this I'm like I can't just start writing this standalone unless I know all eight families so I put together all these families came up with like I have two trilogies like already covers for them based on Hamlet and then Romeo and Juliet and then I came up with two other trilogies based on Macbeth and a final trilogy based on King Lear so not from Lear's perspective but like his son's perspective, even though he doesn't have a son in the play.

43:37Amelia Wilde: So I have just been spending an incredible amount of time being like, how do I adjust the stuff that happens in the plays? Like, how much of the vibe can I take without everybody dying at the end? Because that's not going to be good for a romance. And like, how do these people interact with each other? Because now, after 10 years, I'm like, we have to have basically all of these, all of these main characters appear in the first trilogy so that people can start getting idea of what they're like and how they act with each other. And it's probably the biggest world that I have come up with because normally I'm focusing on three brothers, you know, and their sister and then whoever is around them.

44:18Amelia Wilde: But this time I have built out in advance, like some of these, like my Romeo character has five siblings. So he has a huge family. And then whose siblings are the same age as whose other siblings like I want to be able to have this sense of them so that when readers come into the first book, they can see how all this stuff is going to develop over over hopefully 12 books. So that's what I'm, I'm doing, I'm supposed to be doing other stuff. And I'm doing this. And that's another tip I have. I think, I don't know, I see a lot of people like I can't, I can't plan anything, I can't do anything until you know, I'm done with this.

44:55Amelia Wilde: And I'm like, well, if I said that, I would just take all the time. It would just expand to fill up all, all the time that I have. So I try to work on too much stuff because whatever I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be doing becomes like my work. And then whatever I'm not supposed to be doing, I, I feel like I'm getting away with something, but it just makes it a lot more fun. Like this is the thing that I'm doing, even though I'm supposed to be doing something else. So like, I feel like people should have those kinds of projects too. I have two things. One, I love that you have said how much you love rules, but your motivation for working on multiple projects is breaking your own rules.

45:30And also, I want to circle back to this in like a couple of years to see your like plot character map of all of these Shakespearean characters and how they connect together. Because if this was me, I'd be like that meme of Charlie Day in front of the board with all of the red string from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

45:50Amelia Wilde: So that's what I yeah, that's what I'm all I'm already like. And I'm like, I keep having to tell myself like, you have to just stop because I can decide all this stuff in advance. And most of it, I probably will keep how it is because I have now planned so much of it. But like, as soon as I start writing, they start doing other stuff like they're they're acting different ways. Like, I can't actually lock in everything that's going to happen because, you know, I had I have to pick for this. group of people there has to be a problem that's bigger than all of them and so it's like their rich parents have a rich council or something and the rich you know they're take they're gonna eventually over 12 bucks take it down but like i can't telegraph that whole thing i can't tell everybody all the details in the first trilogy so like it's gonna have to just happen over time so i need to just stop it's hard to stop though because i'm excited about it well as a big Shakespeare girly.

46:48I am very excited to see what you do with this.

46:51Amelia Wilde: Can I tell you though that, I mean, I was just telling a friend today that I spent like a full day on Romeo and Juliet because like you want to just make them enemies. Like that's what the, that's, that's the hottest trope thing that you could put on them. But like, they're not actually, they're, they're into each other. So like, they're not actually enemies. Their families are enemies, but they're also like partners in being rich. So like, they're not, you know, whatever they have this, they have this thing with their families, but they also are into each other. So I'm like, I was telling her, actually, I think this version of Romeo and Juliet that I have imagined is angstier in a lot of ways than the play, because in the play, they're just like, they're, they're into each other and then they die.

47:36Amelia Wilde: And I'm like, well, we can't have that happen. So, and they also can't start out in love. So it's like, I mean, it's a fun, it's a really fun puzzle game. I hope that I actually finished all of it and you can read it and we can talk about it in two years. Amelia, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we let you go, we know we have taken so much of your time, but where can listeners find you online? I have a website at AmeliaWildBooks.com. And I really hope, I think there's a way to join my newsletter on there, which is my favorite way. I know a lot of other people have been really successful with Facebook groups, but it just like social media stresses me out.

48:15Amelia Wilde: And I just, I love to chat with people like we're just chatting. So I would, I would look for me on my newsletter and my website. Perfect. Well, we will include links to hopefully both in the show notes. And thank you again so much for hanging out with us today. Thank you for listening to me talk about this. I could talk about it for so long. So please have me back. Hopefully I'll write one of these trilogies soon and we can talk about that too. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast. If you are interested in picking up Amelia's books, we will include links in our show notes.

48:50If you are enjoying this podcast, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you're looking for more tips on growing your self-publishing business, you can find us on socials. We are at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok. This episode was hosted by Rachel Wharton and Vanessa Salemi with production by Terrence Abrahams. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham. Our theme music is composed by Teardricker and a huge thanks to Amelia for being our guest. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at Kobo.com slash writing life. Until next time.

49:22Happy writing.