#407 - Writing a Multi-POV Family Saga with Erin Singer

0:22Erin Singer was born in Arcola, Saskatchewan and lives in Las Vegas. Her debut novel, Dangerland was published in July 2026. She is the recipient of the Penn Robert J. Dow Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and a McDowell Fellowship. We talked to Erin all about the writing of her debut novel Dangerland and it is a hoot. Spoiler, you should read this book. It's a lot of fun. Dangerland is an epic family saga that's set in Vegas and Erin talked to us all about writing memorable side characters and especially the art of writing an unlikable protagonist, somebody that you don't like, but you can't stop reading about.

1:04She had some really great advice also for authors who are maybe looking for a little motivation to finish a project. It was a really great conversation, so hope you enjoy. Hi Erin, welcome to the Kobo Writing Life podcast. We're happy to have you here. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and have you always been a writer?

1:25Erin Singer: You know, I've always been a reader. That's how I would define myself from my earliest memories. I loved reading when I was little. And I guess I didn't have the self-confidence to believe that I could actually be a writer. I had this weird hang up where I thought I could never even finish a short story. So I'm not even going to try because, you know, in high school, you start writing these like long, weirdly descriptive pieces or whatever, and they go nowhere. That was sort of me. So I told myself this and I was just like, I'm just a reader. And then I think it was having kids. I had two kids and I was alone a lot with my own thoughts.

2:04Erin Singer: And I was like, why? I think I could finish a short story. You know, this was only like, you know, 12 years ago or something like that. So I went to I live in Las Vegas. So I went and took just an undergraduate writing class at UNLV here and had a couple of great teachers and, you know, finished a short story like for the class. And that kind of broke that whatever I was thinking in my head, this narrative I'd created in my head that I couldn't write. And then after that, I would say I was writing pretty seriously. So just for the last 12 years, but yeah, I live in Las Vegas. I'm originally from Saskatchewan in Canada.

2:44Erin Singer: My dad was in the RCMP. So I lived in the Yukon all over the Yukon until I was 12. And then we moved back to Saskatchewan, which was sort of my parents where they grew up and then moved to Las Vegas almost 20 years ago, just on a romantic whim, I guess. I met my husband and now I live here. It's kind of crazy. And I believe you also have experience writing short stories too. So was it weird to go from writing short stories to writing your book, Dangerland, which we're going to talk about a little bit more? Well, it was a hard adjustment. It took me a really long time to write Dangerland, about five and a half years.

3:22Erin Singer: And I think it was because I was in short story brain. I originally structured this book. I was very inspired by the book, Mr. Monkey by Francine Prose. I don't know if you guys have heard of this, but it's like a, it's a comic novel, but also like emotionally resonant. And it's kind of, I don't know how many characters there are in it, but each chapter is this, the focus is in this, of this like children's play, like kind of an off-Broadway production of this children's play, Mr. Monkey. And there's about 10 characters or somewhere in that ballpark. And it's each chapter is told from their different perspective.

4:00Erin Singer: And it's each is sort of its own standalone short story. And then there was also a novel called Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. And that's sort of structured similarly. And I was like, I want to write a novel like that. So I could lean on my crutch of short story writing, which was my comfort zone. So when I started writing Dangerland, I did it like that. I'm like, it's going to be in this community with this dying golf course. And it's going to be, you know, 10 different residents from this community. And they're each going to tell a part of the story and it's going to be a novel. And that was too many characters, I guess.

4:36Erin Singer: I turned it into my agent and she was like, you really need to shave it down. You need to look at who the strongest characters are. And in her opinion, those were Eugenie and Kurt. And she said, I think that's where the heart of the story is. And so that's what I ended up focusing on. But originally, I was it was sort of like 10 standalone short stories. And the interesting thing about that, I guess, is that this the novel was the first time I'd ever written about Las Vegas, because when I was at UNLV taking those classes, my first short stories, they were all very much sort of about rural Saskatchewan people, because that was what I really knew and was really comfortable with.

5:14Erin Singer: And I didn't feel like I was ready to kind of write about Las Vegas. And this was my first sort of giving myself permission to write about the city here with the novel. So for listeners that are not familiar with Dangerland as your first novel, can you give us a little bit of an overview? Because it's a pretty epic, but also hilarious, like family saga. So yeah, tell us about it. Thank you. It's definitely a maximalist book. It's told from the point of view of six different characters. So I did cut down the characters, but not all the way. There's still a lot of different points of view. But at the heart of the novel are these two characters.

5:51Erin Singer: Their names are Eugenie and Kurt, and they are born and raised in Las Vegas. And they have this sort of will-they-or-won't-they relationship that starts when they're teenagers or kids, basically, and runs until they're in their 50s and 60s. And they really love each other, but they're like, I don't think this can work. And the novel really explores what that means for them in their lives and also the lives of everyone in their family, like their kids, you know, the nanny that works for Kurt, somebody who dates Eugenie. And it's all set on this sort of dying gated golf course community in Las Vegas, where Kurt, who's a real estate developer, has bought the golf course and shut it down.

6:38Erin Singer: And there's a lot of, you know, anger toward him for that. I had a blast with this book. I thought it was so funny, an epic read, but like a great one. And, you know, I have to admit, now, Vegas is not my favorite place in the world. But I loved how you wrote it. It's like you didn't glamorize it and you weren't either focusing on the seedy underbelly. Like you were just writing Vegas, like giving a reader a glimpse into what it actually might be to live there, which now makes sense knowing that you do live there. Can you talk a little bit more about what it was like to write Vegas? You're saying it's the first time that you kind of written that piece.

7:16Was it important to you to not write the Vegas that we think of when we think of Vegas?

7:20Erin Singer: Yeah, the interesting thing about Las Vegas, and this is true of a lot of places, is there's different Las Vegases. Mine is kind of like the suburban Las Vegas because that's the reality of what I live here. So it's sort of like, what's the average person in the suburbs? What does a day in their life look like to live in this city? Because in Las Vegas, you'll get a lot of people who are like, oh, it's just like anywhere else. You know, it's just like living in Orange County or, you know, Scottsdale or something like that. And I've always been like, no, it's not. I don't know. Maybe that outsider's perspective of coming from kind of rural Canada has gave me that view when I moved here.

8:00Erin Singer: I was just like, wow, this is wild. Like everything I was seeing, I was taking in and thinking this is so interesting. So I think that all came in to play when I sat down and wrote. The place was just so important to me. and it's fun because it's a fun place to write about because it's sort of larger than life but uh it's a real place and um yeah I don't know it's there's a lot of humor there's a lot of love I can find a lot of love for the city and I can also find a lot of humor in you know some of the details of living here I guess yeah it definitely made me want to revisit and rethink my opinion And especially if you've lived there for 20 years, there must be a lot of change.

8:44Like that's the sort of beautiful thing about writing such a big family epic is that you get to kind of tell the story of the setting over time. How is that?

8:52Erin Singer: Yeah. Well, just in the 20 years I've lived here, there has been so much change. I moved here during like at the very start or just before the big real estate bust here where it was like you would drive down a street and, you know, 75 percent of the houses on the street had the foreclosure or for sale signs out front. And then now it's like construction's booming. Everyone from California is moving here. We got like the NHL hockey team was really big when it came here. and now a major league baseball team, like it's exploded in my time. So to even go back further, like the people I know who've been born and raised here, it's even wilder, you know, what Vegas used to be versus what it is now.

9:41Erin Singer: And I tried to show that, obviously, to research the stuff that was in the 70s and stuff in Las Vegas. Yeah, it's a city that's always changing. I mean, if even the Strip, like take the Strip, the casinos on there, they'll just, you know, oh, this is like 35 years old, like time to explode it, build a nicer building. You know, that's kind of the way the city operates. It's always in motion. Yeah, it's definitely was a character within itself in the story, which was fun to read. You could almost set a story in one of the casinos alone and not run out of things to write about. So it was absolutely the people watching here is so good.

10:26Erin Singer: Because you go to a casino and you'll see, like, go to the Bellagio or the Wynn and you'll see literal, like, a billionaire could be there. And also, like, you know, a guy in a Let's Go Brandon shirt with the Mile High Margarita and the Sunburn, like, it's got the whole spectrum comes to Las Vegas. And so that makes the people watching really cool. And the casinos are cities unto themselves. Like the amount of times I've walked in MGM and thought like you could house my entire town in Saskatchewan in the MGM Grand. Like we could all move in and live in our own room there. It's kind of crazy when you think about it.

11:04And one of the scenes you wrote was actually in the casino. Did you have fun kind of playing with the different characters in that scene? Because that was a fun one to read. Was that the one at the poker table? Yes. Yeah. I love the poker table scene.

11:18Erin Singer: Thank you. Well, I did have fun with that. Actually, I would say I had a lot of fun writing that because my husband is actually a professional poker player. So I had always been like a lot of his stories are truly like I couldn't even put them in fiction because people just wouldn't even believe them. the people are so crazy who are professional gamblers in the city so um but there were a lot of things about you know he'll come back from his a regular game or something and talk about different people and things they said and things that you know the bet about the the uh whether the woman was attractive the guy there's a guy at the uh poker table and he wants to bet that his girlfriend that everyone will think she's really hot because one of the guys is like you're crazy she's not good looking.

12:06Erin Singer: That actually happened at my husband's in a poker game. Like this is the kind of things that happen, I guess, when you're gambling and for hours and with nothing to do, you just find crazy things to bet on. So anyway, I took a lot of, you know, his little stories and stuff and kind of crafted a little scene out of that. And I really enjoyed it. Well, in Dangerland, you're managing several different timelines across lots of different characters and you've said that it was originally sort of like 10 short stories but I'm just wondering what your plotting process looked like when you did realize that this was going to be an epic novel well it was a huge mess structure was I knew that it had to be plotted I guess after I abandoned the kind of 10 short stories as a novel concept I knew I it was going to be plotted.

12:58Erin Singer: And I just kept it. It's just a matter of like coming up against a wall and being like, how am I going to get over this wall? You know, taking a walk, laying in bed, I would try I'd read like, go to bed thinking about the problem in your novel and fall asleep and see if your brain will solve it or go for a long walk. I had so many of those things in this book, because everything kind of comes together. And in the in an initial draft, it did not totally come together at the end. And then I gave it to my old writing teacher to read who has been on this podcast, Ramona Ossibel. And she's amazing.

13:36And she loved her craft book, the Unlocking the Doors. It was a recent episode.

13:42Erin Singer: It was super. Okay, I have not read it yet. But it is on my to read pile for sure. And I could use some help for my next book. So that's thank you for reminding me of that. that might be where I'm going to go. So Ramona gave me the note. She was like, I think they all need to come together sort of around the tree. Eventually. I don't want to give too much away. And I had had that thought kind of flick through my head and I was like, okay, Ramona is telling me to do it. I have to get them to a point where they all, where it all kind of comes together. and really this is like such a terrible answer for people who are looking for like pointers in their own work but what really got me there was just time it took me so long to write this book and time solves a lot of problems for you your brain has more time to chew on it and then I ended up just sort of like an idea would come to me out of nowhere it would seem like and then I'm like okay this person has to be here or what if you know again I don't want to give anything away But there were some kind of big changes at the end of the novel where I had it written or I had an extra character doing something.

14:52Erin Singer: And I was like, why do I have this extra character doing it? I should concentrate it on these sort of core six people that all the major motion in the novel or action in the novel comes from them. So really, the boring answer is just taking a lot of time. And I found that with my short stories, too. it's so depressing because when you're a young writer and a new writer, you're like, send this to the New Yorker, like, get me my agent. I was 100 % like that. And I know a lot of people in my writing classes were also like that. But with writing short stories, I found I really the best thing for them was if I put them away for months, and then came back to them.

15:35Erin Singer: And then you see the problems kind of with fresh eyes or you're a different person like eight months later and you can see the the weaknesses in a story and you can see oh this is actually not as bad as I thought so time is a gift the problem is it's like not a gift that you want you want everything to go fast but the truth is in writing the fast stuff is that's the rare stuff I feel the stuff that for me anyway I'm kind of a slow writer so like it's funny you mentioned the poker scene because that was one that I wrote kind of quickly. You know, I would say I wrote that in like two weeks. Of course I changed, you know, I edited it over time and stuff like that.

16:14Erin Singer: But yeah, sometimes it just with this plot, I don't know. I would have had to actually have the whole story in my head at the start if I were to write it down and get all the points out, which I know, I don't know if you guys have read that. The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett. Have you ever read that in her book? This is a story of a happy marriage. Okay. You guys should read that. It's great. She decided she would write this essay whenever anyone offered her writing advice. She's like, I'm going to put it all in this essay. Then when anyone asked me for writing advice, I'm going to say, go read the getaway cart.

16:48Erin Singer: And it's, yeah, this is a story of a happy marriage is the collection that it's in. And I love it. And she talks about in that book or in that essay, not sitting down to write until she basically has the whole story in her head. And she'll say, I don't even make notes because if it's strong enough, I remember it. And once I have the whole story in my head, then I sit down to write this. And I don't know, like I love Ann Patchett and I have taken a lot of advice from that piece, but I'm like, I don't think I can actually do that. Cause sometimes I figure it out by actually sitting down and doing the writing.

17:24Erin Singer: I don't think I would have been able to connect everything together had I tried to plot it out in the beginning. It did change a lot because over time and different characters fell away, different characters became more important. I got to know certain characters better. And then that when you know your characters really well, that can change the plot too because you realize, oh, this is what this person, this is something he would do or this is something she would do. And that can kind of change the direction of where you're going. And we talked about kind of the humorous scenes, but there's also a lot of moments of seriousness as well.

18:01How did you find the balance between the humor and the emotional stuff?

18:07Erin Singer: Well, I like both, I guess, you know, and that's a lot of like, I think when you look at like standup comedians and stuff and you see they, they have a lot of like darkness in their lives. A lot of them. I think that's just what makes for interesting characters, an interesting story. No, you know, no one's life is just all laughs and satire and over the top stuff. I mean, if you're writing tonally that kind of book, then it works, obviously. But when I was working with my editor on this, she was like, you know, she had edited earlier in her career some Nick Hornby books. and she was like one thing that you do that reminds me of Nick Hornby is he also does the comedy but then he does some very serious like it's like a kid it's a funny book but it's also like about a kid who's you know mom is suicidal and depressed and yet it doesn't feel like you don't finish the book feeling like wow that that's like so depressing you know and I just feel like that's probably going to be all my books that I ever write will be like that.

19:15Erin Singer: I guess that combination of humor and then also sort of like some of the, you know, the sadnesses we all face. When you dig into characters, and I really like character when I read, you know, that's what you find when you dig into anyone. There's very few people that are just totally perky all the time, or even totally depressed all the time. Well, love jumped out to me as a kind of a big theme in this book. It kind of shows up in a number of ways, whether it's kind of like, you know, unrequited love, like familial love, like platonic love, and then love of career and place. With the main protagonist, Kurt and Eugenie, their relationship is all about how love changes and evolves over time.

19:58And I always like when there's like older protagonists as well, because I feel like sometimes we don't, it's not as common in a lot of books that come out. So I I guess I'm curious if you can talk about writing a love story that happens over such an expensive timeline as your characters are changing.

20:15Erin Singer: Well, I sort of felt like I'm a big fan of romantic comedies. And, you know, I dabble in romance novels and stuff, too. And sometimes I'm not like completely satisfied or maybe I'm too. There is a cynic in me that's like, they're 26. Are they really going to make it? You know, I don't know. Like just knowing how I, you know, how I was at that age and everything. So the benefit of this love story between Kurt and Eugenie is that they really know themselves, I guess. So they're realistic about what they think, like why their relationship wouldn't work. But they're also it also is like, well, if you have a love that's endured for 40 years, then kind of don't you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

21:13Erin Singer: So it's nice to listen. Love is so exciting when you're young. It's just the most exciting thing in the world. But what is truly like satisfying as a person, I find is like getting older and feeling yourself changing and feeling yourself sort of becoming more wise and able to cope with things and able to understand other people to let go of certain things. And I liked writing that for sure. I mean, Kurt's not as evolved as Eugenie maybe, but Eugenie has achieved some level of self-awareness in her time. And so I liked that about writing an older character as opposed to a young person that's more maybe like an exciting love, but not that deepness to it.

22:03Yeah, I did like thought about her that she was kind of like, I'm happy with my life the way it is. so you can leave or stay. Yeah. I really love the characters overall and like how well they were written and they kind of come to life in the book, even the minor ones, the side characters. Were there any that you particularly enjoyed writing and did anyone's story kind of surprise you as you went along?

22:27Erin Singer: Okay, that's a good question. Truth be told, I liked writing all of them, although the hardest character to write was Kurt. Another note Ramona gave me, very helpful. thank you Ramona was you got to make him a little more likable like he was like I love I love an unlikable character I find it infuriating but I can't stop reading it it's like an unreliable narrator I'm like challenge me make him the worst yeah I was sort of like well I want to show you because we maybe not all of us have fallen in love with a guy who has like bad qualities or a woman who has bad qualities or whatever a problematic person but maybe we know somebody who has where you're like why do you love this person like I want to shake you or I want to shake myself and so that aspect of it is fun because it's like well I did have the idea of I knew people wouldn't like him but definitely after I got the note from Ramona really I did a 180.

23:29Erin Singer: Well, not a 180, but I definitely changed him to be more. I wanted him to be that guy that you're like, you're exasperating. And like, I don't agree. Like you're, you're talking too much. You're ranting too much. I don't agree with what you're saying, but then they'll come around and do something and you're like, oh, but I like you. It's so annoying. Why do I like you? You know, that was sort of the challenge of creating Kurt as a character. And then, I mean, I had fun writing Chad because I really was like, he's very different from me, thinks differently from me, but he also has a heart of gold.

24:05Erin Singer: Eugenie was fun because she's very sort of plucky. And that's like one side of my personality that I wish I was kind of more like Eugenie in some ways. So it was fun to kind of lean into that, that side of her. It's, I had fun, you know, Brianna, a character going off the rails is really fun to write. And then, of course, Nellie, the nanny. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of my thinking about moving like from Saskatchewan to Las Vegas, more so when I was younger, like how I thought about it that I put into her and like Austin, that sort of Eugenie's son, Austin, is that like kind of, you know, floundering, like rolling around on the floor in his pajama pants.

24:46Erin Singer: Like, I don't know, there was like a lot of comedy in that too. So there were like aspects of all of them. The one who surprised me the most, I think probably, I think maybe Chad ended up kind of surprising me. He was a kind of a deeper character maybe than I first anticipated he was going to be. Yeah, there's a scene with Chad that really had me laughing when he's working out with Austin and they're just having a big heart to heart, but it's in super like bro coded language. And I was just like chuckling because it's like you could understand like this emotional conversation they're having, but it was really like, no bro, like do this, get your macros.

25:27I just, I thought it was great. Little things like that really add depth and bring those side characters to life. So just curious if you have any advice for authors who do want to add a little bit of depth to their side characters without really taking away from the main protagonists. Like, cause I think it's such a delicate balance.

25:43Erin Singer: Yes, that's true. Well, I think for all your characters, you have to love them. And I do love all my characters. And so that is that way you're never going to write a caricature. And you hopefully will have the reader seeing in the character what you see in them. So that would be my number one. And as far as that's a hard question, like, how do you keep them from overtaking sort of the main character? Because that is kind of a danger, you know, when you watch like say you watch the movie Bridesmaids and you're like, oh, Melissa McCarthy's characters, like who you think of sort of more than the protagonist almost because she was so funny.

26:22Erin Singer: I don't know why I'm referencing movies in a writing podcast. But yeah, that is that's a good question. I mean, an obvious answer is they don't have as many scenes as the main characters, which I did. I did cut them down. That was sort of a note that I got from, I think, my agent in the earlier, because I wrote a couple drafts of this with my agent. She's a very, like, she edits before she submits. So kind of agent. So that was like cut down these other characters. More Eugenie, more Kurt, pump them up. So yeah, if you're doing a novel with multiple POVs, that's like a very simple, give them less page time, I guess.

27:01One thing that I wanted to talk about too was the title Dangerland. How did this title come to you? And was it always the title? Did it change?

27:09Erin Singer: Okay, I'm like obsessively talking about Ramona, but I had the thought of calling it Dangerland. And then I was like, well, there was kind of a run on books there where it was blank land. Like, I don't know if you guys noticed that. And I was like, I don't want to be on the, you know, down edge of a trend. So I'm like, I feel like I shouldn't do it because maybe it's like going to be a trend that passes or something to call it danger land. So originally the book was called domestic animals. And then, yeah, I gave it to Ramona and she was like, you should just straight up was like, change the name to danger land.

27:44Erin Singer: Cause that part was always in the book. Cause my friend, Nicole, who lives in Saskatchewan, she always called America danger land. And I thought it was funny. And then when I told her I was moving here, she was like, that's danger land. So obviously, I gave that to Nellie's mother, you know, in the book, she calls America danger land. And now I like it. I'm glad that I stuck with it. But I even again, a couple more books came out like it in the process of the editing and everything, literal years past. So I even tried switching it again. And I switched the title to I'll be your best friend. And then my agent was like, Aaron, no, that title's working, leave it.

28:25Erin Singer: So I don't know what I was, I don't know what I was doing there. Titles are hard. I think Dangerland is great. I really like it. And I like the cover too. I know there's a different Canadian and US cover. I really like the Canadian one. It's like a card. Yes. Yeah. With the king and the queen. The king and the queen. I think it's really good. Did you have any say into the covers at all? I know that's usually not something you get to input into. Well, I sort of did. They had let me, they didn't let me, they asked me to do kind of like a mood board. So I did a Google Slides thing with some images because I actually lived on a golf course that was dying in Las Vegas that a very similar scenario was playing out.

29:05Erin Singer: So I took pictures of the, you know, the dead golf course, some old poker books that my husband had just some images from around the city and I gave it to them. And then some, some other book covers that I liked. Cause I was like, I had no idea what a cover for this book would look like. I had no idea. So I mean, to the artists who made the covers, like, thank you so much because I just, but I had put like mostly pictures like that were illustrated or drawn, not photographs and stuff on there. And then basically, they came back to me with like, this is what we have, we hope you like it, you know.

29:44Erin Singer: And I did. I love both covers. They're great in like different ways. Totally, totally. They're both great. I just have a preference for the playing card, I think, because it's just, it's obvious. But also when you read the book, it's kind of like, I don't know, I like how it fits in together, because it's both the king and the queen. But yeah, I'm glad to hear that. We touched a little bit on like the ending of this book. And you said how it kind of changed a little bit and we won't spoil anything for the listeners but just curious about how that came together because you have so many characters and you're not writing them all into a neat little bow but just was this always planned out or was it difficult to write the ending you know no I'm gonna say no it was difficult getting to the ending I guess I kind of there were two endings I wrote an original ending and my editor was like, is this maybe a little dark?

30:35Erin Singer: And that was, you know what that was, was like, that was my cynical self. You know, that, that self that I was telling you about that reads a romance novel. And I was like, this isn't like, this doesn't have enough, like, grit to it or whatever. Me being like, I'm going to be really real with the readers here. like and I I still think that there and there were like kind of two camps at the the imprint like the people who worked in the office had all read it and they were kind of giving their two cents no keep half were sort of like keep it as it is and half were like write a kind of lighter ending and I was like okay I'm gonna I'll just rewrite an ending and it was really easy to rewrite the like I don't even remember the like the the process almost like that's how easy it was of rewriting it to the ending that exists now and I'm happy we we went in that direction ultimately I think it's just totally for the book too I mean it's not a perfect sort of happy ending but the other one was definitely um a lot darker I guess well I enjoyed the way it wrapped up um So I think you made the right choice.

31:45Can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on next?

31:50Erin Singer: Well, I'm working on two things. And one is like a very genre novel. And it's sort of like, it's about, it's also partially set in Las Vegas. And it's about witches. is and it's also sort of like uh it's sort of like also a romance romance to comedy with some sort of like a dark like a dark mystery element to it too that was like a covid project that i started writing because i was doing like another draft of dangerland and i was losing my mind so So I was like, I need to do another project. So I'm like, let's see if I could write a book in like seven weeks. If I just go shut myself, myself upstairs and write like four hours a day, let's see if I can get like a really bad first draft out.

32:44Erin Singer: And it was really bad. So I accomplished that. But over time in between stuff, writing stuff for working on stuff for Dangerland, I would work on this book. My friend Drew calls it my witch sex book. Anyway, it's right now it's called Rough Hex. and so that's what I'm kind of focusing on but I have another back burner project which is about a woman who becomes a RCMP officer in Saskatchewan in kind of like the very early 80s and it right now it takes her from then until like the end of her kind of career but then I've been re like you now you have that uh when you're working like i'm working on this my distraction book which is rough hex has now become my main book so then of course i'm thinking about my mistress of uh this other book about the police officer and i'm like maybe it won't maybe it'll all just take place in the early 80s about one of her my thinking right now on that project is it's going to be about a police officer and she has sort of one big case that's unresolved at the start of her career.

33:55Erin Singer: And then the rest of her career is like quite lackluster in comparison to that one big case. So anyway, that's what I'm, and that one's more, I guess I would say in the realm of literary fiction. So those are my two things that I'm kind of toggling back and forth with right now. Very different. Rough Hacks is such a good title. Thank you. I like that you said that your shoulders like almost cheating on one book with the other as well. You're just, you know, kind of having a little fling with your witches and then coming back around. Oh, yeah. I think that's very relatable for authors. For sure.

34:33Erin Singer: Because I read Lauren Groff. I read a thing that she said where in her office, she actually has different desks for different projects she works on. And I don't have enough space in my house right now to have my own office, but I'm definitely going to do that. Like she'll have her like, this is where I'm writing the novel. This is the space I go to when I'm working on the short story, that kind of thing. And I was like, that's really smart. Cause you kind of do have to change brains almost, or like put a new disc in when you're switching over. Cause like, especially like in these two books, the voice is like pretty different, um, in both of them.

35:08Erin Singer: So maybe physically moving yourself is, you know, the way to do it someday. someday I'll have my multi-desk office that's the first time I've heard that but I totally see the value in like having two desks for different functions it makes sense to me I know we just all need giant houses to yes to house all of our ideas well it's been such a pleasure talking with you today and we'll link to Dangerland in the show notes and if listeners are interested in following you where can they find you online Oh gosh, nowhere. You know what? I have too much. I don't know. Take this, you know, everyone's got their different relationship with social media and stuff, but I was on everything.

35:56Erin Singer: And then over the last like 10 years, I've slowly disconnected from every platform. And I think the last one to go was maybe Instagram. I'm not sure. and then I, the, then I was like, I'm free the day I like deleted my Instagram account. And then I went back on and I did like a burner account and on that burner account, I would follow, I followed a lot of writers and stuff like that. And I would look at it sometimes and, but nobody followed me that I knew. And I was like, I, when my book was coming out, I'm like, I can't be on this. I don't want to see if I didn't make a certain list or if someone else's book, like I didn't want to feel jealous of anyone else, or I didn't want to have that anxiety.

36:38Erin Singer: So I just have completely disconnected with, with all social media. And it's just sort of for like my mental health as a writer, because, um, one unexpected thing about publishing the book that I never anticipated was the amount of anxiety I felt like when I had initially wanted to write a novel and I had that dream carrying me of like selling my book and publishing my book. The part that I fantasized about was working with the editor and getting notes and like discussing the novel. That was sort of like my fantasy. And I realized after when it came publishing time drew near the reason why I was like, I never dreamed even of holding the book in my hands or seeing it in the bookstore.

37:21Erin Singer: It was like seriously, just like the working with the editor part. That was like my fantasy. and then I realized because you get this weird sense of like you know I hope it performs the expectations of the publisher I hope people like it I hope like you know it makes this list or whatever that was sort of I guess it's not surprising in hindsight but it hit me a lot harder and I was talking to my friend Krista Diamond and she just had a book published by Simon & Schuster called Close Relationships with Strangers and she was like have you gone on a Simon and Schuster author portal to check your sales.

37:55And I was like, no, I would never do that.

38:00Erin Singer: I'm actively hiding in my alone in my house with my dog, uh, just to avoid getting that information. So that was like a weird, it's like weird to achieve your dreams, but also have this like sort of anxiety. I know I need to go to therapy. That's a way longer answer than you needed for where can we find you? I do have a website. It's like Aaron singer books.com or something like that with my web with my email if you want to reach out to me but other than that I'm not anywhere else but I think that's a relatable answer I think people especially authors especially with indie authors where you're kind of running your own business you're having to balance the mental weight of of being so public sometimes you know or not sometimes but often so it's difficult it's like difficult to actually you just want to be the author that sits and writes like that's the fun part yes so I think it's important to pick and choose things that you enjoy.

38:51You don't have to be on every single social media thing or any of them. If that works for you, you just, yeah, you have to put yourself first and your sort of mental capabilities. And yeah, I say this as it'll go out into our social channels as well.

39:06Erin Singer: Well, it's weird because writing, you're like, oh, it's, it's so hard. The writing can be so hard sometimes. See, and then it really is like, it's the journey, not the destination. You realize sort of like, I don't know, there's all these other things that you have to think about as a writer. Yeah, the self-promotion and everything like that, that comes along with it, that is not, especially because a lot of writers are sort of like, you know, introverts or, you know, leave me at home with my book and my laptop and I'll be good kind of thing. So that's the, you know the tricky part about it but worth it's worth it to do it because I mean there's also no you know if you're called to be a writer I mean then you know I put a lot of that into Chad's character by the way like you know his desire to be an actor and he kind of fails and he's like when is the message from the universe like keep going and when is the message that you're supposed to receiving like enough now you know you need to move on from this dream that was me you know giving him my struggles as a writer like when do I quit is this actually going to go anywhere it's very you know it's it's so hard out there but ultimately like if if you are going to go the distance then uh it's it's worth it it's worth all the stuff you did and it's worth all the you know putting yourself into positions that are a little uncomfortable to make it happen.

40:42Erin Singer: My old writing teacher, Marie Helene Bertino, one of the things she would tell us is the professional is the amateur who doesn't quit. And that was one of the things I would repeat to myself when I had those dark night of the soul times, you know, where you're crying and like, who's going to buy this book? It's so stupid, you know, and then be like, well, I've been working on this for four years, So I'm not stopping now and just keep going. So that's what I would say to tell yourself. If any of your listeners are struggling with that, that is like so normal with every writer I know. And the professional is the amateur who doesn't quit.

41:21Erin Singer: So you'll know if you come to that point where your mental health is so bad that you're like, I really can't keep going with this. But there's also the option of time passing. You can put the novel in the drawer and come back to it in a year and look at it with fresh eyes. and that might crack something open for you and your book too. But anyway, I'm rambling now, sorry. No, I think that's wonderful advice. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's been fun. Thanks so much, Erin. See you later. Thank you for listening to the Cobra Writing Life podcast. If you're interested in picking up Erin's books, we will include links in our show notes.

41:56If you're 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 social. We're at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok. This episode was hosted by Laura Granger and Tara Kremen. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham and our theme music is composed by Tearjerker. Thank you to Erin for being a great guest today. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at kobo.com slash writing life. Until next time, happy writing. Thank you.