ATA-21 Elaine Edwards

Welcome to another chapter of Author to Author. Today we'll explore my thriller series. Stay with us as we explore the mind of Elaine Edwards. Welcome to Author to Author.

I'm Tim Trott. We'll meet Elaine Edwards in this chapter of Author to Author presented by Cybershoot Hosting, the place for your author website. Stop relying on social media for your marketing. Build a permanent home for your books, your brand, and your readers with your CyberShoot Author Package website. Your website isn't just for readers and search engines anymore. It's how AI large language models learn who you are. When your books, bio, and brand live on a professional website, AI models can recognize you. Your name and work are less likely to be confused. Your brand gains credibility. Future-proof your discovery in a world where artificial intelligence is replacing search engines. Owning your platform means when AI points readers to authors, it points them to you. Check it out at cybershoot.net/author or scan this QR code. Elaine Edwards is a Florida writer who began a career in public safety as a 911 operator. Over the years, she's been an EMT, private investigator, crime scene investigator, and a latent fingerprint examiner. She draws on her professional experience and relationships to create a fictional Timoquaw County, Florida. The fiction is well constructed. I know because these books kept me up past my bedtime more than once. The fiction is authentic, as you might imagine. The writing is tight and the flow is steady. The ratings and reviews reflect all that. You've published 2 books so far, Hunting Blind and Warm and Dead, and I bought and read both, by the way. 44 reviews, 4.9 stars, not too shabby. The main characters in Hunting Blind are Lucky Magnum and, and Michael "Cal" Jessup. Tell us about those characters and where they came from in your imagination.

Well, I've always been, I think, a little bit of a writer. In school, it was something that I enjoyed doing for myself. And when COVID hit, or actually a little bit prior to COVID hitting, I had a lot more time to develop that skill. And I kept seeing these characters in my head. And some of the scenes involving them, almost like a movie. And they continued to play in my head. And finally, I just thought to myself, you know what, I'm going to write this down, and maybe then it'll go away. And it didn't. It seemed like after I would write one scene down, I would start playing the next scene in my head. And those two characters just kind of came to the forefront. I would say they're an amalgam of people, like most of my characters are. A lot of people will ask, "Is this you?" or "Is this me?" "Is this your mom?" "Is this your sister?" No, they're definitely a mix of people. Sometimes I take personality traits or I take characteristics of someone that I find fascinating or that just would make a good character, and I compile them to make someone who I would find an intriguing person in real life. So no, they're nobody I know, but they're everybody I know. I don't know if that makes any sense.

There's one character named God who has a unique office setting. Introduce us to that character.

Uh, God is based on a couple of real people, just like most of my characters. She is a powerful woman that runs her own private investigation firm. And she runs it out of an abandoned church in Timuqua County called St. Agatha's. So hence the nickname is also for two reasons. I do that a lot where things have double meanings, but she is operating out of a church and she also tends to like kind of know everything that's going on in the county. She has eyes and ears everywhere, so that's why she is called God. She is based off of someone who I worked with in my past who, again, I found fascinating. And I thought, wow, this, this lady is a real character in a good way. And I sort of modeled her after that person.

In your other book, Warm and Dead, the two main characters are Quinn Adler and Nathan "Nate" Kimball. Describe their roles in your book.

So the whole point of the series is that these females in public safety They're the heroes of the story. They know each other because of the type of work that they do. Medics, cops, nurses, they all kind of congregate together in real life. And they share trauma experiences, honestly. And I wanted that for my characters. I wanted that to be authentic. So Quinn and Lucky from the previous novel are friends. And Quinn is a paramedic. Her partner is the EMT Nate. And what starts out as a partnership, I think develops into more of— in fact, I know because I wrote it— develops into more of a romantic relationship. But I really liked their partnership continuing throughout the novel. I think that that was something that was kind of unique and a little bit different from Lucky and Cal's relationship. I want all of them to be related, but I don't want them all to be the same because then that gets boring.

Your next book, I understand, is called Scorched Earth. What characters will we be meeting in that novel?

In that novel, you're looking at Kira and, uh, Ellis. Kira is a dispatcher, so like Lucky, like Quinn, she's involved in that public safety field. And then Ellis is one of the private investigators that works for God. So you have them all kind of tangentially connected that way. And Kira's upbringing was that she's nationally, ethnically, she's Russian. And it starts talking about, um, her dealing with the Russian mafia. So that's, that's Scorched Earth. And Ellis is a part of that because he has the access through God and through the private investigation firm. But he also just has an affection, I think, for Kira that then grows throughout the novel.

I notice, rather envious, that your books have many chapters. Honing Blind has 20 chapters and 488 pages. Warm and Dead is 63 chapters, 357 chapters, not exactly like, and that's including an epilogue. And but I envy you that, that your ambition to work at that length. These are not thin books.

They're not. I like to say they're kind of chunky books, but to me, if I'm asking someone these days in the market that we're in to pay $20 or $24 or $25, depending on where they buy it, for a novel that's not a hardcover, I think that it should be substantial. So I'm coming at that from someone who's a reader, and that's some of the things that I would look for if I'm trying to choose, am I going to spend my money on this book? Not to say that shorter books are any less involved or any less good, because I've read some fabulous ones, but I remember the days when you would go to Barnes Noble and pick up a hardcover for $34, but it was worth it. And I kind of want to make my books worth it.

Being one of your readers, I will say it is worth it.

Thank you.

Just from a mechanical standpoint, what is your main writing platform? Do you use Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, Atticus? What is, what is your platform?

Well, you're gonna laugh at me because I know you use a lot of platforms and you're very knowledgeable about that kind of thing. I started in Word, and I actually started on legal pads and pens, and I still to this day will write my novels longhand, at least portions of them, and then convert them to Word because that's like my first edit. Um, that's my first chance to change things and get in there and maybe move some things around or cut things out. And I think I will always do it that way because I always have a pen and a pad on me, whether it's at work, if I've got 15 minutes and I'm taking a break, I can go with my pen and pad and write my novel. Or if I'm in a coffee shop and I don't have my laptop on me, no problem, it's notepad time. So I think that's always the way I'm going to do it, but I, I'm starting to explore some other options because I see the value of the other platforms.

If you've ever seen my handwriting, it would qualify as encryption. Where do your covers and formatting come from? I happen to know the answer to this question. You do a very good job.

So the covers are interesting to me. The covers are again something that I kind of saw in my, in my mind, especially the first one. I actually sketched both covers out. Not, not well. I mean, I can draw, but not enough to do my own covers. But I was kind of blocking what I wanted, and I found someone through a friend who does excellent covers, and she was recommended to me and went ahead and used her. And we'll use her for probably— actually, I've used her for all 3 of this trilogy. The next set of books, I'm probably not going to. I'll probably use a a mutual friend of ours, Kris Holmes, because I think she does a wonderful job too. And then the formatting was my friend from our writers group as well, Marie. And again, she did a really good job. Some of it is the margins are a little larger than I think you see in a lot of books, and I think some of the, the font and spacing is a little bigger and larger, but personally I like that. She offered to make it tighter, make it smaller print, But it's hard to explain. I would be— I'm paying more to buy my own books and then sell them at events or sell them at independent bookstores because it's more pages this way. But as a reader, I appreciate this formatting because it's easier to read. It's easier to make notes in the margin if you want to. And it means that I can read this book all the way through if I want without stopping. Because my eyes are tired and I have a headache. So I'll probably continue with the formatting and with the covers up until this point, and then I'll ask Chris to do the next 3 books.

You are really hard to get as a guest because you are just so busy and active in marketing your books. I know you invest time in appearing at bookstores, and how many bookstore tables have you set up in your career so far? Oh, um, that's not a fair question.

No. Because sometimes they're nice enough to have the tables and everything set up for you, which is lovely. Um, I, I don't know. I would say I try to do a couple of events a month, and those vary. Um, in the summer months it slows down a little bit, partially because it's so hot and I don't want to do outdoor events. Sometimes I'm there for— you could be there for 8 hours and all you've got is a tent. So, and that's if I'm lucky. I just bought a tent. So I can't even estimate, maybe, I would say maybe 30 or 40. And I've only been doing this, now marketing it for 2 years. I'm always open to doing things like book clubs. I think that's a really great way to meet new readers and also to have more of a, like a personal experience with people. And it's also a really good way for me to kind of test my books and ask for advice on where do you think this character should go? Who are you enjoying? Who are you not enjoying? They've really been helpful as far as as that.

I assume— am I correct to assume that you buy paperbacks and book for your events? You don't get the stores to stock them? How do you work that? Do you advertise online? What has worked for you, like BookFunnel, BookBub? What are your trade secrets?

I don't have any trade secrets. I would say that usually it winds up being that I have the books stocked at the bookstore that I'm having a signing at. Um, so they're independent bookstores for the most part, and they will carry anywhere from 2 or 3 of my books to 10 of my books at a time on their shelf. And then most of the time when you go in there for a signing for a couple of hours, whatever you make for profit is yours. Sometimes they'll say if you go through our point of sale, they get a cut. So it's up to you as the author and then up to them as the business, um, how they want to divide it. To me the exposure is almost always worth it, no matter what they tell me the deal is. I'm probably going to take it. Um, some places ask you for $25 for the table for the day. Some places will say, go ahead and set up on your own and we don't charge you anything to set up. It varies from place to place because every independent bookstore has what their bottom line is going to be. Sometimes if I run out of books, which has happened, you never know, Sometimes you could sit there and have nobody come over to your table. You could sell 1 or 2 books in 2 hours, and then sometimes you can sell out. But sometimes if I sell out, I just direct them to the bookshelf where my book is, and I say, please, you know, can buy it from the bookstore, and I'll still sign it and give you all the free goodies. That way the bookstore gets their cut and somebody's not leaving empty-handed. So I just think you have to be flexible. I think that's probably the main thing. Be flexible, be willing to work with independent bookstore owners. They have to have their bottom line as well met, and they will do a lot for you as a local author, as an independent author, to get your name out there. I've not met— I've only met one place where I thought, um, I don't think they're going to help me out. Most of them have been very receptive.

Do they advertise on their website or in other ways, or posters or stickers? They advertise for you so that you like a week week ahead, they'll let their customers know that you'll be there?

Most of them do. Most of them have their own content creators, or they themselves are excellent content creators. I am not. That's not a skill that I have. I wish that I did. It's just not something that I'm as good at as a lot of other people, and I've accepted it at this point. But a lot of these independent bookstore owners, they know how to do it. They know how— they have their flyers already created. They, they're going to push it out on Facebook. They're going to push it out on Instagram, Twitter. Their own website, but they will tell you in return you need to try your best to also push it. So I use Instagram and Facebook. I'm working on a website right now, but I don't, I don't have one as of yet.

I can help with that. We'll talk about that later.

We, we should talk about that because I need to get that done. Um, but I, I find them all again very helpful, very understanding about what my limitations are, and they offer suggestions on how to make things better. And I appreciate that. I take them to heart.

When they order the books, do they get them from IngramSpark? They, they don't— probably don't get them from Amazon because that's a competitor. And, uh, right. Okay, so, so I made that right assumption. They're getting them, they're ordering them.

I do not have mine on IngramSpark right now. So every, um, everybody who orders my books, if they're an independent bookstore, I'm stocking them. Um, I, I'm using the KDP Select Bookshelf where I, I then do author copies. They send me author copies and then I distribute them to local bookstores.

So you do not distribute wide like Barnes Noble or Apple Books or anything like that?

Not yet, but I am looking into, um, Ingram and Barnes Noble because once you do those, then like you're saying, you can distribute to larger markets. Um, I'm— again, it's the formatting that intimidates me. It's not something that I am familiar with. And it, like I said, intimidates me. So to pull— to get all that together is an overwhelming task. But I think that's my next step. Once I get these 3 books out, my goal is to get that trilogy out. And then I'm going to start really pushing the marketing. Because I think I have a decent product. I just don't have the reach that I would like to have at this point.

Your next book is kind of a little late, because I think you announced that it was going to be this year, but it's— it's— it's— how's the progress progress on, on the new one?

The progress is good. Um, I lost my father last year in October, and that really just slowed my roll. And, um, I had just a lot going on, and I didn't know— every time I kind of opened the story, I just shut it again. Like, I was not ready to do it, and I didn't want to do a disservice to the story because she's a character, Kira, that's kind of a little bit more special to me because she's a little more like me. I was a dispatcher for 5 years, and I know the difficulty that is contained in that job. And it's a very— it's an often dismissed job, just because you're not on the front lines, as they say. But really, you are, because you're the one hearing everything before anybody else. So I wanted to do that character a real, a real service. And I felt like I wasn't in the place to do that. So instead of giving what I think would have been a sloppy story, I was just like, you know what, hold off and try to get it out this year. I'm looking at October. I probably have about 10 pages left in the end of this book, and I'm going to do it. I'm going to get it done because I know for a fact that my dad would want me to do it.

Thank you very much for taking the time. You were hard to get because you're a busy person, and I really appreciate you going through everything that you did to be on Author to Author, and I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here. Please share this video with your friends on social media. Be sure to click the like and subscribe buttons and click the bell so you'll know when to join us for the next chapter of Author to Author.