Ep 316 Writing Isn't Just for Twenty-Somethings with Shimrit Hanes

Welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. This is a podcast for indie authors. I'm Cat Caldwell, novelist, short story writer, and book coach. Here on Pencils and Lipstick, we're obsessed with all things story, and it is my goal to bring you the writing tips that you need to make your novel come to life. Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. Today, we are at episode three sixteen of the podcast and I have an interview for you. I have pretty much interviews for the rest of the season. We'll be taking a break mid July. So the next few weeks, we have quite a few interviews for you that I'm excited for you to hear.

Everyone is very different. They all write very different things. They all have different experiences. And I think that it's going to be really good. Any place that you are in your writing life, you'll probably find someone in the next couple of weeks, who's doing the same thing or struggling with the same thing or looking for the answer to the same thing.

So I think together we can keep moving forward in summer. If you missed last week, Becky and I were talking about kind of the three things that you could do this summer to maintain your marketing or to start your marketing or to up your marketing, honestly. So it kind of depends on where you are and what level you're going to take. But I would highly recommend you go back and listen to three fifteen, the craft and connect where we are trying to make it really simple and keep it really easy for summer. Whether you are using it for social media or newsletter, it doesn't really matter.

The exercise that Becky breaks down in the interview is gold. And do not forget that Becky is gonna start her marketing cohort. And, you know, Becky works with romance writers, and that will be starting in August. So if you're interested in that, you just want more information, not all the information is available yet, but you're gonna need to get on her, mailing list so that you will be the first to find out because she's only opening six spots. So be sure to do that.

I think it will be an amazing experience for a lot of you, for all of you. And I'm sure that you will see a difference in your marketing. If you don't know, today is June 22 as this goes out. And, the Book Finisher Summit hosted by Rhonda Douglas starts this Thursday, the twenty fifth. My talk is not until Monday, so you have a lot of time to, to join before I talk.

But, there are so many good speakers this year. They all all of the videos released at 8AM, so you don't have to sort of wait. You don't have to be around for that that 2PM, talk that you wanna hear. So right at 8AM, you could binge them or you could just watch the one that you wanna see. So, again, mine about comp titles and keywords will go will be published 8AM eastern time on the twenty ninth.

There are so many, though, people who are speaking. It's just amazing, like, Bailey Lang, Tracy Skews, Rami Sommer, Gabriela Pereira, Talia Stone. There's so many people, Stacy Juba, Karen Fisher, Anna De Valle. You you're just gonna have a lot of people helping you both in the writing and in the publishing. So I would highly recommend you get to this.

I mean, you sign up for free and it works like every other summit. You sign up for free. You have to watch the videos that day. If you want to be able to watch them later, you pay the, you know, I don't know, whatever it is. So it's just like every other summit.

It's how everything works. But I have the links in the show notes below. It is an affiliate link. You do not pay anymore, but I do get a percentage of it as I'm speaking in it. My speakers don't get paid, so we get paid through affiliates.

So that is the biggest news that's happening. Yeah. I am just plugging forward on trying to, you know, intelligently promote my books. I am actually giving the Bend Did duet a makeover. I like the covers, but that doesn't mean anything.

If the covers are not selling your book, you have to go back to the drawing board. Right? So those if you're on the, YouTube, those are the covers back there, those kind of green covers. So I will be changing them. I do see a lot of people using more real life pictures.

So I'm I'm going that route. I'm trying to go that route. But it's quite difficult when you have a very limited budget and you will get slammed for using AI. Oh, you have your reasons for that, whatever. But there's, like, witch hunts out there, so I'm not using any AI for any of it.

And while I would really like a picture, there are just so many pictures out there, you know, without getting actually a a model and a photographer, which I cannot afford. So we're working on it. We're working on it. We'll see. I will let you guys know when the new one is ready to be shown.

But, yeah, it might not get my way, but we'll see. So so, yeah, we have the Book Finisher Summit. I will actually be part of another summit, in August, but we'll talk about that later. If you are anywhere in Richmond, I am going to be at a at the SAS book signing on the twenty seventh, and I'm gonna be speaking at the Virginia Writers, Symposium on August 1. So if you're part of the Virginia Writers, group, I highly recommend you come and hang out on the first.

It's just one day. There's a lot of speakers there as well. It's actually a little unfortunate that there are speakers I want to hear while I'm I will be speaking. So I don't know if there will be a recording or not, but it should be really fun. We you know, you'll get to meet and hang out with local writers.

So that should be exciting. I will be talk I will get be giving my speech on how to create a story around the ghost that haunts you, because I think a lot of us have character ideas and we can't quite find the story around them, but they are the that that thing that haunts us and we want to write a book about. And then it's just really difficult, but I'm going to break it down and make it very easy for you to figure out what the story is. So definitely join me there. It should be a lot of fun.

If you have any questions about the Book Finisher Summit, about the Virginia Writers Symposium, about SAS in Richmond, you can always go to my social media, DM me a question. If you're on my newsletter, all you have to do is hit reply, and it goes straight to my inbox. You ask me a question. So I highly encourage you to do that. We do have a lot of really exciting interviews coming up, and I have already gone ahead and scheduled them.

We actually have JD Barker, coming, and you'll listen to him at the end of August. But that being said, even though I'm ahead of schedule, if you or someone you know want to be on the podcast, please let me know. You have to have already three books published. That's kind of the norm. I think that gives you enough insight into the industry that you have something interesting to say.

Please, you know, pitch to me what you would like to chat about. It is a conversation. I do not make up questions for you. But if you have an expertise or you have experience, it's usually pretty easy to chat about it. So let me know.

You can always message me, again, hitting reply on my newsletter. You can always join my newsletter straight below and message me from the intro email if that's what you want, but you have to have three, books already published. It It doesn't actually matter if they're nonfiction or fiction. Okay. So if also you are liking the podcast, please give a little review wherever you listen.

That's always helpful. I know most of you are listening on iTunes and Spotify, but there are a million apps that you can listen to. And I appreciate all of all of you who listen and put up with me. But a review would be great, whether it's just stars or you do write something that is wonderful. It helps other people find the podcast.

And if you want to share it, I would love it. That would be wonderful. Yes. And we did say last week last week in the Craft and Connect, if you continue your marketing over the summer, please tag Becky and I. We would love to see what you're doing.

Maybe give you some feedback, you know, I would or follow you. It would just be fun to support you in that endeavor as we all try to find our ideal reader and get our our books out there. Right? So that is about all I have to say today. Please check out the links below, sign up for my newsletter, sign up for Becky's newsletter.

He will constantly be getting, you know, better updates that way. And let's get into the interview. This week, we have Shamreeth Haynes speaking with us. I had a really great time speaking with her. She has she is a sci fi writer.

She is older than middle age, I guess I can say. So she started later in life, which I think is really interesting and just encouraging out there to anybody who thinks, you know, this is a young person's game. It's really not. You have a lot to say. I think actually you have so many more lived experiences as an older person, person over than over 50.

So I would encourage you to keep writing and keep going and get your books out there. She also talks about her covers and how she had to learn a lot about the industry. And it can be frustrating as somebody who is not of the generations who grew up with Internet and all of those things. But I think you'll find a lot of encouragement from Shamreet and how she's doing and how she's plugging forward and how her kids are helping her. And just be encouraged that, again, it has nothing to do with age.

It has everything to do with what story you have to tell and how the world wants to hear that story. So without further ado, let's get into the interview. Alright, everybody. Today, I am here with Shamrit Haines. I am so excited to talk to you because you are a writer, a musician, a jewelry maker, all of the things.

So welcome to Pencils and Lipstick.

Thanks so much for having me. This is really fun. I'm looking forward to this.

Yes. I I'm always fascinated by people who do a lot of creative things. I think most creative like, if you're a writer, most likely you're a creative person. Right? And there's some sort of interest going on.

But you have what what came first for you? Was it jewelry? Was it music? Was it writing?

Actually, writing came first.

Okay.

I was a voracious reader as a kid. We'd go to do the summer library program and I'd get my limit 10 books for the week and I'd read all mine and all my sisters, you know.

Within a few days.

Yeah. Yeah. I was a voracious reader. So I started writing stories and poetry when I was really young.

Oh, that's amazing. So Where were you growing up?

Grade school years were mostly in Massachusetts, and then we made a big jump from Massachusetts to San Francisco.

That was a big change. That is a big change. Well, I feel like Massachusetts in my head, and I'm not from there, that seems like a very, like, high educated reading is a pretty important right, as Yeah.

The crazy thing was when we went to San Francisco, all the books, they were the same books, but they were they had the grade lower printed on the backs.

Oh.

So they were a year behind Massachusetts.

Oh, that's so bad. That's interesting.

Yeah. I thought it was pretty crazy.

Did they move you up a grade or did they keep you in the same grade?

No. They kept me in the same grade. They were all into the psychology and keep you with your age group. Matter of fact, that killed me in the third grade because I was younger than everybody else, and I was really socially awkward. I think I was I probably am on the autism spectrum.

I couldn't look people in the eye. I never made any friends. I didn't know how to talk. It was really hard but I was actually in my own little bubble and I really didn't care. It wasn't really hard, you know?

It was just Right. It's all I knew. Right. But,

You thought that's how the world

should be working? Me back in the third grade. I was reading at college level in the third grade, and they held me back because I wasn't socializing.

Oh, that sounds very Californian.

It wasn't. That was in Massachusetts.

Oh, that was in Massachusetts. Oh, goodness. Goodness. So things were happening then too. Yeah.

It's so interesting when they think, like, what kids should be doing. But it is true. Like, back when we were kids, there was no you know, unless you were had, like, a physical showing of a disability, no one thought that you your brain might work differently. They were just like, oh, no. We must do something for this child.

I would have been I was happy to sit in my closet and read, honestly. And, thankfully, my mother was happy to let me because she just wanted everyone to, like, leave her alone. And she's like, that's fine. You know? Oh my goodness.

And I I don't think Wisconsin was up on the psychology. I'm just saying.

Massachusetts was very into it.

They're very into it. Oh my gosh.

Oh gosh.

So as you were writing, did you ever show anybody your writing, or was that something that only you you got to see?

Well, in school, of course, I turned in writing assignments. It wasn't till I got to high school that teacher realized that, you know, I had a gift and that, you know, they get she'd give a book for the class to read and I'd be done with it by the next day. And I'd say, what else you got?

Yeah.

So that teacher had a whole Ray Bradbury library in a back room, and I everybody else was going through one book, and I went through her whole Ray Bradbury lunch.

Through the whole thing. Oh my gosh.

So you're just I wrote reports on everything. You know? So I

just read and did reports on it.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Look at you. Okay. Did you annotate?

My grades weren't that high because I hated school. I felt like everything was dumb. And so I didn't try. I never did homework. It was like, I just did the classwork and took the tests, and it was enough to keep me just above a c, you know?

Oh my gosh. They probably should have moved you forward,

not backward. Yeah. But language arts, I always did really well in English and language arts and stuff because that I loved it.

This is why, like, I really think that the measure of education I don't know how else to do it, but it doesn't measure intelligence very well. You know what I mean? Like, it just doesn't like, taking a test, if you're not good at tests, doesn't mean that you don't know the the stuff. Honestly, sometimes better than the person who knows how to just b s their way through a test. You know?

Like, it's just it's such an odd thing that we're trying to figure out how to measure whether they know the material or not, and it just doesn't seem to be working. Mhmm. I don't know. That's another thing that we're not gonna solve TED day. So No.

So That that's for a TED talk.

Yeah. That's definitely somebody else needs to figure that out. So when did you start in with music? Was that during high school?

I started playing guitar when I was probably around 10 years old.

Okay.

My mom set me down with her guitar and taught me how to read a chord chart. And, I just sat in the room by myself and bang through I don't know what my first song was. They were the old the old folks songs, East Side, West Side, you know, all around the town, that sort of thing. And I would practice until my fingers were bruised. Because it's so funny because I read Eric Clapton's story and that's what he did when he was a kid.

And so I really resonated with his story because that's the way I was. I just when I got into something and I liked it, I mean, I just went

went focused. Yeah.

Yeah. Must be that autism hyperfocus. You know?

Hyperfocus. I mean, that's good and bad. Like, for creatives, that's good and bad. Right? Like, you gotta peel yourself out of it, but I feel like sometimes people have a if they don't have that, they have a really hard time focusing and, like, sticking with it.

Right? So Yeah. So then you move from guitar to harp?

Yeah. That was much later. I I I learned guitar when I was in high school. I started well, actually, I wrote my first song when I was a kid. I had to climb on a chair to call my mom at work to try and sing her the song over the phone.

And by the time I got her on the phone, I forgot the song. And I cried.

Oh, poor thing. I cried.

I felt so bad.

You must have been a funny kid to to raise. That would be entertaining to have had you.

Yeah. I'm kinda sad for my mom that she didn't spend that much time with us. I wish she'd asked me questions, figured really figured out who I was. You know? I think she would have really had a lot better time.

I had so much fun with my kids.

Yeah. You know? I know. They didn't really know to do that. You know?

Like, everyone was dealing with their own stuff. I don't know. My mom is early fifties, like, in the was born in the early fifties. So they're all dealing with, like, their parents' issues that they never got figured out.

That's where I'm at. I'm 70.

Yeah. Are you really? Oh my gosh. You look amazing.

Thank you. I'm a carnivore. Oh my gosh.

You look great.

Shout out for carnivore diet.

Oh, yes. Eat some beef, people. Get some iron in your bodies. So I just I I don't know. So you dealt with, like, what my mother dealt with with what was, like, my grandmother.

No one ever talked about their trauma. Like, I mean and they had hard lives. They had hard childhoods. You know? But you were just supposed to, like, no.

Well

Well, we were raised by the parents who read doctor Spock, and so it was like, you raise your you raise yourself. That was my family. You raise yourself. You'll be fine. You know?

And then independence. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, it did.

It really

did Right.

Grow independence in us. I mean, by the time we went to San Francisco, we had three boy cousins, we were three girls, and the six of us, we hiked all over San Francisco. We'd hiked through a meal near Twin Peaks all the way to, Golden Gate Park. You know? We'd go to we went everywhere, all over the city.

And and they your parents only looked around when it was 10:00 and they said the television said, do you know where your kids are? Oh my gosh. But you're right. It it made it motherhood a lot less pleasant, I think. Or they just maybe they just didn't under that you don't know what you don't know because kids are fun.

You know? I feel bad for even this generation. My generation of people are like, oh, I don't want kids. Like, why?

I know. They're so much fun. Oh my gosh. And my grandkids, they are so great. And I've got two granddaughters that wanna write, and they're both good at it.

You know?

Yes. And

so, they're both in, high school. The oldest is 17, so she'll be graduating pretty soon. And I'm hoping to take her under my wing to get her down here and work with her and help her to get her first book published. You know?

Yes. So How exciting to be part of that. Yeah. Like, I I

And if you don't have kids, then you don't have the grandkids and you don't, you know, my kids, they do plays. I mean, we're we're Jewish, so we had Hanukkah and we had, you know, all the those feasts and Purim. And so they do plays around the book of Esther and about the Hanukkah story and what happened. They'd make little plays. They'd do puppet shows.

And with five of them, they all could do that together. They didn't you know? You have an only child and

They're just

do. You know?

I know. I know.

It was just so great. They pretend they were going on expeditions

and I know. I know.

They just let's bury some bones in the backyard so we could dig them out.

Yes. Yes. And honestly, like, you know, I have three. You have five. But I I tell people I mean, if you can, I do know some people who couldn't have more than one?

But Mhmm. If you can have more, like, it actually gets easier. It does. And it's now it's so funny to watch them. My like, mine are all girls.

Your all yours are all girls. I don't know, but my husband grew up with only boys. Oh my gosh. Sometimes he's just, like, wide eyed in between all of them, and they are, you know, just they'll go from happy to arguing to laughing to you know? And he was he's just, like, having whiplash.

I'm like, this is so funny. You know? Like, this is great. They get along. They're doing like, they'll go off and do their thing.

Sometimes we'll walk into the room, and we'll know right away we're not really wanted. They're kinda like, we're doing our thing. Like, but that's so wonderful. I think that's great.

We're doing our thing. That was kind of what happened when I wrote my first book.

Okay.

My three eldest decided to do the NaNoWriMo thing, you know, or

write a

book in a month. And so I was trying to I thought, oh, that's great. I'm trying to encourage him, and I'm total musician here. At that time, I was still on the road and still touring all the time. And so, it was like I didn't wanna get and and then all of a sudden, I got this incredible story idea.

My great grandmother fled Pancho Villa. Her husband went over to Pancho Villa's side of Mexico, and he was abusive. And she fled from him and, got on a boat to San Francisco with my nana and her big brother, Jorge. Her name was Antonia Sanchez. And so that's actually the protagonist in my first book.

I thought, what would happen if I took her story and pushed it a hundred years into the future? You know?

Well, that's an amazing story, first of all. Like, what do I mean?

Yeah. Exactly. So I was always fascinated by that. And

Yeah.

And so that idea came into my head, and I went, oh, no. Because I've always been

on my kids. I've always

been an overachiever, and I I didn't wanna trample on their stuff, you know. And they're such good they come up with the greatest ideas and and they said, whatever. Go ahead.

We know you're gonna do it anyway.

Go ahead, Ima. Just write the book, you know. And so me and my middle and my second oldest daughter were the only ones that finished our manuscript, and I was the only one that published. And then next thing you know, I've got two books published. The next thing you know, I've got three books published.

It's that hyper focus, again. You just I know. Always. So So what was it about science fiction that that

just Well, it was a hundred years in the future. So, at the beginning, she has a nightmare.

Okay.

And she wakes from that nightmare just shaken. And she tries to convince her family. She's like she prays and goes, what's going on, Lord? Is this from the enemy? You know?

What am I supposed to do? And she gets this really strong feeling that they need to stay home. Well, they've been planning for weeks to all go out today. It's Chinese New Year in San Francisco. That's a big deal there.

Okay.

And so she went downstairs, big our family argument. Nobody wanted to stay home. She runs upstairs really upset, you know, ends up with a headache, decides, well, I'm just gonna stay home. And she stays home alone. And then there's this horrific there'd been an earthquake in Japan the day the the was it the day before?

It takes about twenty it takes a certain amount of hours. I studied all this before I wrote the book. Yeah. It takes a certain amount of hours for that tsunami to actually hit the West Coast, and it's usually slow.

That's a possibility?

Never no. They always do, but it's never more than a couple of

feet high. Okay.

The thing is is it's really long. It goes from you know, it's this one giant long wave. Well, what happened I had happened was, then the, Fairweather Fault in Alaska and the, now I'm forgetting the name of the Oregon one. Anyway, the the there's an offshore fault offshore of Oregon that has been needing to go off. It's they figured it's about a every so many hundred year fault.

Well, it's overdue at this point. So I made that go up. They all triggered each other and just went around the circle, and that triggered volcanism. It triggered the San Andreas and all the faults in I mean, everything was just a mess. It's total disaster.

Right? So she loses her family. Her husband was on his way to see if she's better and pick her up for all the festivities. And he, ends up having an accident and ends up brain injured. So she's stuck in ruined San Francisco wondering what in the heck happened to her family on the street weeping, you know, with her husband.

At this point, he's out cold, and she doesn't know what's gonna happen with him. And, she, they drag some stuff and create shelters, you know, the group that ends up on this hill. And she ends up they pulled this potting shed out and rebuilt it, and she ends up in there with a mom with a new baby and her and Pedro. So, anyway, she ends up having another dream. She dreams of this incredible, beautiful world, just untouched.

The trees are colorful. Everything's different, but clean and beautiful. There's streams and pools and springs everywhere. And she's just blown away by this dream. And God speaks to her and says, I'm gonna bring you here, and you're gonna find peace.

And so from that point, she kinda tries to hold on to that dream, but she goes through hell. And so the rest of the story of this book is her going through that. This is my second oldest daughter. Oh, wow. So anyway, and my son-in-law made this cover.

He's a graphic artist.

Nice.

So anyway, that's what this book's about. And, at

the end was the one you wrote during NaNoWriMo?

The one I wrote during NaNoWriMo was this thick and it was in three parts. And, actually, I have it up on the shelf. It was one of those, like, 6 x 8. So it was a bigger format, and it was still this thick.

Oh my gosh.

And people were intimidated by it. And I was finding you know, I'm having trouble getting people to read this. They take one look at it and go, I'll never get through that. You know? Yeah.

So I went, well, what would happen if I divide it into three separate novels?

Okay.

And I started thinking about that and all the hassle it would be. And it was, and it has been, but I, I decided to take the jump and do it. And I have been so blessed doing it because I've been able to, I've been able to build the characters and their relationships more. I've been able to add new scenes. I've been able to, yeah.

It's just they're even better than I mean, I got incredible reviews on the on that first book. I lost them all. That was one of the risks I took.

It is.

When I had to unpublish it, I lost all my incredible reviews.

What was the name of it when it was big?

It was just the dreamers. Another thing I found out, I searched the dreamers after the fact. There were, like, 500 books with dreamers, the dreamers, the dreamer in the title, and none of them were mine. And mine, I couldn't even find it in the deluge of dreamer books.

Right. That is something to take into account when you're when you're

I know. And I'm happy.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it it I typed this title in. Boom. That was the only thing that

came out. It. So was that part of the the omnibook?

This was the first part. This was part one. That was

the part of

it. It was called Earth because it's what happened on Earth. Sure.

But it because it was a part of the yeah. Mhmm. Okay.

And then book two, I actually just put the ebook up on Amazon. It's called training ground.

Okay.

And it's when Antonia, she ends up on a ship heading north just like my great grandma did.

Yeah.

Going north to Oregon, fleeing her abusive husband because he's beat her a few times now, and now she's pregnant and she doesn't wanna deal with that. So she runs and ends up on the ship going to Oregon, and she meet there are three other people that are passengers on board. It's like a cargo ship, But even nowadays, cargo ships will have a few cabins that they'll set aside where people can actually pay to be in the cabins and go places in the ship. Okay. And so that's what they did.

And, the guy that saves her that helps her to get on the ship, his name is Charlie Tang. He kinda plays a good Samaritan part, gets her on the ship as she's ends up in the back of his restaurant. He has a Chinese restaurant right there, and all the ships dock there. So that's where he gets his business. But, anyway, so, he's the head of his family, the Tang Clan.

They're Christian Chinese family.

So anyway This is still a hundred years in the future.

Yeah. It's all hundred years in the future. So he gets her on this ship, Scarlet Dragon, and she meets these three other people. They're headed to Oregon to a training ground to colonize a new world. And something her the the there's a doctor and his wife, and she starts talking about the planet and what it looks like.

And Antonia says, wow. That's just like a dream I had. And, you know, Marguerite goes, no. What dream did you have? And she tells her and come to find out they'd all had the same dream and that's why

they're going to a new planet.

And it's it's a training ground and she realizes, you know, I could make a new life for myself in Portland, or I could go to this training ground and start a new life on a new planet. And the book too is about her fears, the problems she has making a decision, what decision she makes, and how that changes everything. So that's the training ground. So that's what

you first, that was all part of one book.

Yes. And then the third one's going to be Tara Shalom.

Okay.

And it's basically about the planet

Setting up.

And about them getting to the planet. And then the training ground is they're all learning all the survival skills. So that looks fun. I got to use all my because I taught my girls survival skills as part of homeschool.

Yeah.

And so I got to use a lot of that knowledge in that one. I was always a science nerd. You were gonna ask me earlier about science fiction for me. I I read the whole science section of the children's library. That was that was part of my

Of course.

When I get my 10 books, you know. At least half of those were were from the science shelves.

You're so funny. I don't think no. Well, that's good for being a writer. It's like,

Exactly.

You can honestly tell these days when you read a book and somebody just sort of skimmed their research. You know? They're just like the surface level. And it's the worst when you know something about a topic and the writer didn't bother, and you're just like, that's not how that works. That's not how this is.

And I have a good amount of encyclopedic knowledge because that was another thing I used to read when I was a kid.

I loved the encyclopedia. It was just

a shame

I could be like, how to

That's why when we had in common.

I remember we bought a whole encyclopedia. I was so excited. It was, like, 1988, '88 or '87. Yeah. I mean, it becomes obsolete within, like, a year when the Berlin Wall Falls.

You know? It's just like, okay.

Right? But there's still so much knowledge in there.

Oh, there

was a

lot. Yeah.

I was a knowledge hog. I loved knowing things.

I know. I remember when I was I was arguing with somebody about, how it was illegal to be a communist in America, and they're like, not in 1995. I was like, oh, I guess I should update my exoclete. I should probably do that. So when you when did you publish this first book?

The very first book, I published it in 2020.

Okay. Alright. So you did NaNoWriMo in 2019?

Well, no. Three years before because I don't our income is really low because when we came off the road, we hadn't saved a lot of money. Mhmm. We had just enough to buy the acre that we live on. And, so we're just getting Social Security, and it's Yeah.

Very small because we spent years on the road in ministry.

Right.

So, anyway, so I had no money for to pay an editor.

Right.

So, I mean, I gave it to author friends. One author just loved it and didn't really give me any constructive criticism. The other one gave me a huge barrel of constructive criticism. Some of it, I felt was going too far. Mhmm.

You know, she was in a group that you never use was and you never use had and you never you know? And it's like, what?

That's odd.

You know?

Those are weird.

So, anyway, I I was able to balance that because there were some books I got on writing too, which is really important also as an author. It's good to read other authors on writing. So, I'd read a really good book that was nice. And then the NaNoWriMo, the guy who did that, his book was actually really fun too. Chris Okay.

I don't remember what his last name was. Chris something.

Yeah. They they don't do NaNoWriMo anymore. So

No. No.

It got everything got too big. But so you basically spent a few years

I spent three

years learning about story.

I wrote it in a month and then spent three years editing.

Yeah. So Which can happen. But do you do you enjoy editing or was that

it was really hard at the time when I got the really, you know, constructive criticism, which was actually really good. I had to rewrite the whole book, you know?

Oh.

Which I I was like

I know. That's the first thing

wanna do that.

First feeling. There's like

But it was like, no. And then that perfectionist thing came in. It's like, no. This has to be good. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try and sell a book that isn't good.

No.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I did that. I went back and I rewrote and I rewrote and I rewrote and I went through it and I went went through it. And every time I went through it, I'd put it away for a couple of weeks. I'd put it away for a month, and then I'd rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. And when I very first wrote the wrote the book, I had two books within the one book, even not with this it being the three part because I had it going bouncing back and forth between Antonia and a descendant of hers in the future on the planet.

And I was bouncing back and forth between those, and I realized this is two different books.

Yeah.

And so that first thing I did was divide that. Then I got the book finished, and then I had to rewrite it. And then edit edit edit edit.

Edit edit. So at what point did you decide to actually to cut it up? It was it just because of the response from the readers?

Well, I'm not really good at marketing. That's something I'm learning now.

None of us are. I know. So anyway Everyone listening is like you and me both.

Yeah. That's why I got on Instagram. I I have an author friend here, and her book is making her, you know, she showed me her income. It's like 860 something dollars. I'm like, what?

Is that good? If

I made $300 a month, it would make a huge impact on our lives, you know?

Yeah. Marketing is a beast.

And she said, you need to get on Instagram, and you should probably get on TikTok that start with one. You know? And she said, you need to do real. She showed me some of her stuff, and I went, okay. Alright.

And she's really good at it, and I I'm like and then I'm feeling all small. I can never do this.

You can. It it's like anything. The more you do it, the more you'll find your spot.

And I made my first little video and it's kinda clunky, but it's up there. And I just made another one and it's much better.

Yeah. Exactly.

So I made it right before we got on together. So

Nice. Yeah. So And the thing is, like, no one scrolls back to what you did last year. You know what I mean? So a year from now, you'll be better at it.

And Yeah. But it is true. There are some people who just have that knack. They have that that marketing creativity, and some of us have to figure it out, you know? But I mean, we have to learn how to, like, how to incorporate ourselves with the books and people will want to be part of your world, you know.

So

Mhmm.

Yeah. Marketing's a lot. But but when people I mean, I think one of the Can you read that? I love that.

That was a gift for my my, youngest sister. Our family had three girls. I grew up with two sisters. I was the eldest. So

So you're all all girls everywhere. So when you, what how did you get that feedback from readers that it was too much too long, I guess?

Well, I was going to an embroidery meeting with my, one of my daughters is living with us. They're about to move to Virginia. They just bought a house up there, but they were living with us and, we were going together. She wanted to go to embroidery, but she wanted me to go with her and I thought, well, that might be kind of fun. You know, it's something I taught the girls.

We had embroidery projects and I taught them all kinds of stitches. And I thought, well, it might be fun to get back into that. So we went to embroidery and it was during that that I actually got the book, finally got the book published. It was kind of a year in to going to the embroidery. And so, some of the people in the embroidery class bought the book and really liked it and others saw their neighbors.

They saw the book. They'd bring it. And it's like

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I don't think so, you know. I've got I've got one person going, oh my gosh. When's the next one coming out? I'm done. This is amazing.

When's the next one coming out? And then I've got other people looking at it and going, I could never read that book.

Isn't that interesting? And and you have you have to sort of figure out, you know, what the right balance of it is. You know? Like, should you change? Should you not change it?

You know? And I I think in the end for you, like, if you're able to cut it up into two, even though it is work, those who don't mind reading big books, well, they'll just keep reading the book.

Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put out the addition with the three books together in a hardcover. Yeah.

Yeah. You know? And make

that if somebody loves the books, let them get a hardcover with all three in it. And that way they've got it forever, you know?

Yep. Yep. They have them all together. Yeah. It's it's sort of working.

I mean, yes, we have our creativity and we have our vision of how things are, but sometimes you have to adjust, you know, to the market and see. I mean, in the end, the goal is to get more people to read it. So if you can, I mean, you can sometimes people write long and there's no way to cut it into two books? Right? So you're almost lucky that there's a way to to divide that and have Yeah.

Well, being in three parts, I kept looking at it and going, the third one's gonna be hard because, it's when they got to the planet. And as I as I read it, it's like, it's really fun because the planet is really different. And, Antonia actually goes through almost panic attacks at the beginning because everything is so foreign and she just feels she has this unsettled feeling all the time. And, anyway, so but once she starts getting over that and they start getting into building and all that, you know, I I realized as it as it gets near the end, I was just trying to end the book. Yeah.

So I'm gonna have to add some more, you know, exciting things to that to get a third book out of

the book. Bit different, right, if you're ending a big book versus ending a a a separate, like, actual book. And there are things to think about when you're separating a big book into separate stories. And I know there are there are some people, I on TikTok, there are people always sort of commenting, like, oh, my book is so long. It's a 150,000 words.

And there's an there's a balance to that of telling people, well, you might be overwriting. You know? Like, it just sort of depends on how much knowledge you know about story, or you might have to cut it up. But like you said, it is work. It is not just, you know, snap your fingers and and figure out.

You might have to add, subtract, you know, make better. Yeah. That is the point.

And then after I wrote the first book, there was this little side thing that happened in, part is that gonna be a I think it's gonna be a part three. Yeah. Part two ends with, her going into deep sleep for the journey. And then, part three starts with them actually they have wake times every five years to exercise to you know, they've got electrostim, but it's not enough. They have to get up, move around, get their digestive going.

They found that deep sleep, five years is about it, and then you gotta get up and move around. So that's the way I made it in the story. So it's just those breaks. And during one of those breaks, they find out that the last ship has taken off, but they've got they found armed stowaways on the ship.

Oh, goodness.

And so first of all, they think it's a rover gang. Those are the city gangs that have started spreading out that are in the the ruined cities in California. And, anyway, they deal with rovers throughout some of the different books. But anyway, then they find out, no, it's this group of college kids, you know, that just were sick of life on earth, decided it would be a great adventure to stow away. And so I came up with this one.

The stowaways. Nice. And,

So you kinda have like a a shoot off of it.

Yeah. And so this can actually stand alone and and the stowaways, this is a heist novel. And that was one of the really fun things about writing this series because the first one's like apocalyptic disaster, you know

Yeah.

And going through that and keeping faith through that and growing through that. And then, the second one is growing through suddenly having to become community, being in each other's faces all the time, learning how to get along with other people. And then the stowaways are, Terra Novas or, Terra Shalom is almost like a, fantasy because the world is just so different. Mhmm. And then the stowaways is a heist novel.

And then in this one, the flight of the escargot, that's the ship they're on. This guy never the the other kids in the group end up, realizing, you know, god is real. That there you know, so many things happen. I'm sorry. That kinda cut off.

So many things happened that made them realize, this isn't just just happening. God's there is a god. But this guy's a real holdout. He's like, no way. I'm not gonna get into that.

You know? And he ends up falling in love with the AI on the ship.

Oh, you even incorporated AI.

Yes. And so this one, he's he's their hacker. He's the one he there him and, there's one other guy that were the main hackers that helped them to hack into the warehouse and hack into the, cases so that they could stow away for that first couple of weeks. They could get far enough away from Earth, you know, that when they got discovered because they couldn't stay in the case, they'd die, you know, that they wouldn't be able to send them back. You know?

That's funny. So yeah. How much research did you have to do for all of these?

I had to do a good amount a good amount. The first book, the disaster one, I had to do research on earthquakes, on the different type of faults. San Andreas can never cause a tsunami. It will never happen because it's a slip fault. You have to have a subduction fault.

So I learned all about that.

Right.

Subduction fault or an offshore landslide. Right.

Because science fiction, you have to know this stuff. Like, the readership of science fiction. I mean, of course, you'll have readers who just like to read a good story. Right?

But science fiction are hard to read.

To know.

Yeah. That was that was a struggle for me was not to get too deep into the science because some well, a lot of readers get bored. You know?

That's true. But they

don't mind it. But Right.

And, like, there are he he goes real deep into how they may they made those dinosaurs.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it really kills me when Christian readers will go, oh, I don't like sci fi. I want fantasy or I want, you know, a biography or I want historical fiction or Yeah.

You know, I don't wanna read your book because I don't like sci fi. And I'm like

That's funny.

It's about so much more than the science.

You know? Yeah.

And, they're Well, you

gotta ask them, like, do you like Star Wars? Do you like Star Trek? Like, that is science fiction, you know? I sometimes I don't know if people really know. So so your audience is Christians.

Yeah. Mainly. I I've had all different people read. I had one person when the big book was out, and it's one of the things I one of the reviews I lost. And he said he wasn't a believer.

He's a guy. He said he wasn't a believer, but he really appreciated it. He said the faith, it was just a cultural thing. It was part of their lives. It was who they were.

I never felt preached to at all. Well, that's perfect. Yeah. So, my book could have a wide audience, but I do cover I do cover some real issues.

Your main your main audience. In the

book in this one, I cover I cover abortion and why it's wrong. You know? And, you know, so I do cover issues in the book. Mhmm. But I've been able to incorporate it in a way where it's these are things that they're discussing.

These are things they're coming to grips with. These are things you know? So it it's part of the story. It's not

Yeah.

You know? It's not a monologue where someone's preaching to somebody else. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the way to do it, honestly, no matter what you're trying to tackle. Because, I mean, nobody readers don't usually tend to like being preached at. That's not the point.

You know? They want to discover along with the characters, and that's if they can discover along with them, that's really the best thing. But you mentioned that you lost reviews. If anyone's listening, and they might be confused about that, what what what did you have to do when you pulled the book to divide

it? When I unpublished book one and republished book two, book the new book one, all the reviews just go away because it's a new book. It's considered a different book. Right. And so, what I did, I I have two reviews now.

I gave out art copies that's, I'm saying copy twice there. Advanced reader copies.

Mhmm.

I gave out some of those and But

then that is a hard decision, isn't it? I Yeah. Feel like you've worked so hard for reviews and then you go, okay. I'm gonna. It's a big decision.

It's probably the right one, but

it's hard. It was hard. But I kept those reviews. I actually copied and pasted them. So I do use them in advertising.

Right.

And, you know, so Yeah. They were helpful. It's not like I lost them completely. And I have them on my website. Yeah.

I kept them there.

Yeah. It's just a shame that you can't be like, please, whoever you are, come back and get my review. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So when does the third one publish?

Third one, at this point, I'm not sure. I am trying to I'm I'm wrestling with the cover on book two.

Okay.

My son-in-law made the cover for the ebook. And normally, this one, it's a star scape. So I have star scapes, and I just I I blend them together, the the front cover with the star scape. Well, this book too is a training ground. It's Oregon Forest.

You know, Douglas fir, you know. Yeah. And the way he colored it, I mean, it looks really cool, but the forest is almost in shades of blue because it's twilight and there's sunset. And and so I I had to figure out how in the world am I gonna get blue forest scene and the and and in the foreground like, this one has a background in the foreground. The foreground is the ruined city with her hair actually going through it.

I asked him to try and do that, and he's so amazing. He did that. You get

the

city before and behind. That's not easy to do. I know because I worked with some of this stuff too, and it's hard. So I need to try and figure out how I'm I I got and people denigrate AI and, AI is a whole another skill.

Yeah.

You have to know what to write in there, how to write in a way the AI understands you and will come up with what you need. So writing the prompts is no picnic in the park.

Oh, it's not. Usually, you need to have some graphic design background for it because just to understand the words. Otherwise, you'll end up with a mess. There's a lot of things people just don't understand about the AI. So I don't know.

That's one of those arguments that I just stay out of because there's no people just waste their energy on so many silly things that they're not

gonna end

up changing ever. So this

back cover, I'm gonna use AI to make a forest so I can get it to blend around and go all the way to the back because I don't like having the ebook cover and then having a solid color on the spine in the back. I just think that looks kinda chintzy.

Yeah.

And I wanna make it look epic.

Exactly. You gotta use the tools that you have. Well, where can people find you? You you said you're on Instagram.

I'm on Instagram. Just my name at shimread haynes. My name is unusual enough that that's wonderful.

Yeah.

So at shimread haynes. I'm on, x, but I'm not really doing a whole lot there right now. I'm on Facebook. I have Terra Colony Project, Facebook page. And I usually put what's happening up there.

But right now, I'm just getting really started. I just got finished, publishing book two, and I'm really antsy to get into book three. And once I get that hyper focus into that, it may it's really hard for me to break away and do marketing.

You'll get it. You'll you'll find your balance.

Yeah. I've got a really, really good website. So she she read haynes.com real easy.

Yeah. We will have the link in the show notes, but it is for anyone listening, it's s h I m r I t, haynes, like the underwear.

Yep. Makes it feel good all under.

Well, thank you so much, Shamrit, for coming and talking with us. It was fun to have you on and hear all about your books.

You're so welcome. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.