Vikki : Hello Youtube Family!
I'm so excited because today we have a special guest on the YouTube
Vikki : Channel and I might slip and say podcasts because I also have a podcast. I just got done doing some editing. So forgive me if I say that. So, Laura Wolf is here and we're going to talk about libraries writing the whole combination of the two. So Laura, how about you say hello to everyone,
Laura: Kia Ora. Hello from New Zealand.
Vikki : Yes, you guys. We got from New Zealand. It's not fantastic.
Vikki : I love the internet world. So Laura and I met through a Facebook group, which is pretty fun. It's for librarians and it's library means, so we literally just put up funny means about the library world. So it's highly entertaining. Laura, do you work in our lore library or have you worked in a library in the past
Laura: I worked in a library a few years ago, but I sort of stole what Steph had and will these groups cause I really miss it. yeah, I worked, at Darfield Library in Canterbury for like a good year or so.
Vikki : That's fantastic. What was your favorite part about working in a library?
Laura: I think it was the thing that I really loved about it was actually that it was just such a diverse job because you'd be doing different things every day and you know, like 20 minutes you'd be doing stuff with kids and then you'd be, you know, searching down really random sorta requests that people would have that they'd just email through. Well then you'd be teaching someone how to use the internet. Like we had quite a lot of elderly people coming in who like, not even used a computer before. and I've seen them like sunlight, Google maps walking around France or something and that'd be like, so just being able to do so many different things was I think the best part of their job would never got boring.
Vikki : Oh, it never did. Especially the public library sector. So I've had the opportunity of working in school library for school aged children, public library, and academic library. and I'm telling you, the public library kept me on my toes. It was just constantly busy. And I don't know if people really realize that, but public libraries are very active and they're super active in our communities.
Laura: Yeah, you get a really good cross section of I think everybody who lives in your community there and it's like. I was new to that area as well. And I ended up meeting pretty much like someone from every demographic. It was just being tested. They're really good spaces, super great.
Vikki : Tip right there, if you're new to an area and you need to find out who lives there and what it's all about and the library is open because we're currently recording this during COVID, then go work at a library, right? Or go volunteer at the library.
Laura: We actually had, at our library sort of system, cause like we hit the community hub, based in one of the rooms there as well. And that be a little welcome packs for people. And so everybody who turned up would sort of turn up in the library, going, I just moved in last week. Can I get a library card? And it'd be like, yes. And then he is like a directory of like all the clubs and everything. And it's sort of just became a really cold space that would save people all over the place, you know, like pretty much every different thing that that they would need.
Vikki : People, I don't know if people really realize how much particularly the public library is the community center and in our area here in the states, United States, Pacific Northwest, where I live, the library that I worked at, the public library is, was gifted to us by our founding father who created the whole city. And so it's protected, but the service funding isn't always protected. And so I think it was a year ago, we did a big campaign to make sure that we can keep the funding for it because it does have a service for, a lot, our elderly population, our transient population. It's just such a great place to be. I am so glad you worked there. If it was only for a year, hopefully it was a worthy year for you.
Laura: Oh yeah. It's probably like one of the only jobs that I would choose to go back and do for free, you know, like really, really good. But yeah, that funding thing is I think one thing people don't realize is just how on the age of always is like year to year. And if you get counselors and people who just, and not unto it, they don't put it at the full front. And unless you're actually saying, I really appreciate the library, I like this, I got this, but you don't like that. It sort of gets shunted to the back seat. But yeah, like when you do get a really good funded library, you get so many amazing services through it. I have moved down to Southland now. And our library down here does not have nearly as many things as what our old branch saw. Okay. I keep emailing them asking, "can we get that? Can we get that?"
Vikki : I always appreciated the patrons that would come in and give suggestions of, we really need this. You need that. Cause then at least it was vetted a little bit for us. And especially if it was patrons that we knew really well, you know. So we're like, oh yeah, that's great. Well, we'll throw that to the director and see if, go for it. Yeah. So, so Laura is also my listeners, followers, friends, and watchers. I have to do the whole thing cause I forget what medium we are on for the moment. So, she's also an author, which I thought was just fantastic. So talk us through a little bit about your authoring journey. Tell us, you know, are you self published? Are you traditional published? And then we're going to talk about that relationship, library and author world.
Laura: I was actually working in the library. I think that started me off on this cause I'd always written for leisure like in the past, but I'd never really thought I'm going to publish a book until I was actually in the library. And particularly the Mills and Boons section. It just got so much traffic through and we actually had to be, like talking to the other libraries in our area to rush them, to get enough, sorta just resources to be sending people home with new books. Cause we'd get someone come in and pick up like 10 of them to go home. And even a week they come back and get another ten. And it's like, this is, this is probably a good business model. No, I just, I've always really loved books obviously. And you know, I was just kinda like, well, I could actually do this. I could write some books. And then when I went home to, I had toddlers and everything, I was like, I really need something to do to keep myself out of just the design of where you're constantly talking about poop. And you know?
Vikki : I wrote my first book when my kids were taken naps. That was what I did my first full. And it ended up being a children's book. Cause you know, your mind ends up with the books with children. It won't see the light of day, but that kept me occupied.
Laura: So yeah, I wrote my first book, sort of after I'd left the library and started in at home and I did that in about, I think it was three months. It took me to put it together. And I stuck to just contemporary romance because I was like, it would be easy then having to research some period in history. If I just go New York. Cool. I've been there. I can sort of like, just go with what I know, cause I wasn't super confident with it. and then I sort of built it out from there and I stuck with the contemporary romance just because I, I really like it it's it gives you those fuzzy feel-good kind of like, there's quite a difference, I think between like literary fiction and fiction in genre fiction and like I do sweet romance genre fiction, and that's just mostly all fuzzy feel-good things and it just puts me in my happy place to write it.
Laura: which is as well, what I get when I read it. So that's okay. I chose to self publish rather than traditionally published for few reasons. I am part of the romance writers of New Zealand group and you know, in New Zealand. So I've been a part of the Canterbury chapter and the Southeastern chapter as well. And I've met a whole bunch of other authors, who, everywhere along the spectrum of, traditional or self-published or you know, like a mixture of both different pin names, all sorts of things. I've met people who do actually write for Mills and Boons as well. And one of the things with traditionally published books is those publishers really know what they're after and you have to basically find what their requirements are in writer exactly. To fit in that box. And I really liked to write quickie things. And one of my books, you know, this is contemporary romance. I like snuck a plesiosaur in there. I like having fun with it.
Laura: And making it, you know, like, a bit original and all this. And I just, I don't think I could enjoy myself if I was fitting inside that little box. I know like another author had talked about the journey of one of her books and she said like, it, it had, did make it better. It was a bit a book, but she's still a bit like grumbling about it. Cause she, she made this, amazing story with like set in World War II. Set with these three guys and three girls. And she would just, she'd gotten like really emotionally invested in them after writing this whole book. And she had like her, the guy who was an ambassador and all this, and she was really sold on him and in the editor was like "Nah, cut him off. I want you to write him as a mechanic, someone who has light duty hands," she was like, "Oh my guy." Self publishing gives you a lot of really good benefits with like, you know, you've got editors giving you feedback and stuff. Traditional publishing also has a lot of those boundaries and restrictions, whereas self publishing, you can do whatever you want, but it's also all on you. Yup. Yeah. And I think with that, cause I've done one, non-fiction book as well. So with that, when I, well I wrote this because I was trying to find it to buy it and it didn't exist. And I was just like
Vikki : Nonfiction book, which is what I'm writing now. Funny thing for authors on researching that was relevant up to date. There's plenty out there, but the resources are very, very dated.
Laura: Often you want something specific and I couldn't find it. And so what I was looking for was Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers, which is a fantastic book, you know, or whatever. And I wanted to find not only the language of flowers, I wanted to find the interpretation of how to use it, you know? And I wanted, I wanted that examples of different bouquets and different messages that had been seen today. I got really far down this rabbit hole of researching and I was like, I could just put this all in the book.
Vikki : That rabbit hole, sometimes people don't. And it's so funny because before you and I started to record, I was listening on YouTube, one of my girlfriends on author tube. And she was, she does a series of research, rabbit hole, she's historical fiction, as she was showing some of the stuff that she, the holes that she'd gone down, it's a real legit thing. It's legit.
Laura: Pretty light type typing away with it. I got quiet. I got way off topic even. And I had to lie. I've taken a whole heap of stuff that I could have like expanded this book out further. And then I was like, no, no, I need to slice it down there because yeah. What I, what I did with this one was these actually different lists of the language of flowers as well. And Kate Greenaway's is the most common one but it's for Europe. And then there's one as well for America, which is different because America has a lot of different things like patriotism and also just different flowers that grow in different seasons, you know and if you using only one reference point and you're seeing something and you know, like Illinois, but you're using the one that's for Britain and that's like, there's going to be some things that don't match up there. Oh. And someone will call you out on it. Have you used the website smart bitches, trashy books? No,
Vikki : I'm going to check it out.
Laura: It's a review site. I think there's four main woman and they all, like, it gets sent different books and review them and they, they they're quiet, like brutal in some ways. They're just, I really love what they do because they are like, look, we love these trashy books. We love romance books. We love paperbacks. We love like, you know, the wolf shifter, romances. We love like they've got a whole series I think, on, where hedgehogs as well, which is like, there's so many different people with paranormal shifters. You know, there's dragon shifters and Wolf shift doesn't want it. And then there's this little niche, which I think someone started of like hedgehog shifters as a parody. But it's, there's actually quite a lot of these books out there by different authors. But it's like a I swear. I learned something every day.
Vikki : My new facts, I can't wait to tell my husband. Guess what genre is out there that I didn't know about?
Laura: Things pop up all the time and about that, but it's actually quite unique. And then it's like, oh, well, you know, with shift, as you often have been going into like dangerous animals and all this, but then with this, it's like, oh, actually they're like, they're vulnerable, you know? And then they've got like a different kind of, how element to it, you know but they've got this phrase as well, which like in there, I think I've popped it up in their terms, a glossary, sort of index. And then they've got this thing called "potato rage," which, it's, it's so funny, but it's so accurate. Like, you know, you'll find a lot of these, historical novels or time traveling novels, which, you know, go back in time and usually, you know, a Highland Scotland sort of area, but there's this one thing where it was set with Vikings and they keep sitting down to eat meals of potatoes. And she was like, "THEY DON'T EAT POTATOES! THEY EAT FISH."
Laura: I was just one of those little things that she's like, "we can just Google this."
Laura: And he got so filled with rage, but she's finishing this whole book off . She's just like, oh, I can't enjoy anything about this. Cause they don't eat potatoes. You know and it's just those, those little things, once they start prickling someone it's like, and then if you have like five different meals spread throughout their book and they're always eating potatoes, that's going to be a one-star review.
Vikki : It'd be a little more research that, and you know, Laura, that's such an awesome example. So I am writing currently writing my book to help with researching and it turned into, it's turning into this big thing, which then I'm going to self publish it. So woo hoo. I'm scared to death but I am going to do it. Yeah. I don't want to call myself into, but I talk about this a lot with other authors on my podcasts. We've talked, I talk about this and I talk face-to-face with authors on this. It's guaranteed. I can tell, and authors can tell , and readers can tell when there's a little bit of lazy researching happening, especially in historical fiction or scifi. That seems to be a big clue, but, cause it's easy to figure it out like the potato story, right. You know, you have the potato over and over again. One of my examples was, I was at a nursery here in my area in the spring about three years ago and they have this beautiful, display of this gorgeous book that I just fell in love with the book cover.
Vikki : And it was one of the owners wife why the owner's wife wrote a book on her Japanese culture and how to, it was a self-help book about, growing in courage. And I'm like, oh, this will be really great. She's self published. I'm really interested in seeing how other authors format their books. And I wasn't really interested in the topic as much, but I wanted to, you know, see it and I wanted to support her. And so I bought the book, came home, started reading it and I think it was like five, 10 pages in, there was a quote and I'm like, Hmm, that doesn't ring true. I, it feels weird to me and being in the librarian that I am, I went immediately and looked up quotes and I have a couple of really great quote, checkers that you can check, you know, and sure enough, it wasn't.
Vikki : And I'm like, oh, now I gotta go and look in the back of her book and see where she did her research. And I flipped back their book and all of her references were Wikipedia and I just, I couldn't get past it. I put the book down. I even paid a lot of her price tag was pretty high. And I just like, there has to be a better way. Maybe she didn't know. And that's what really drove me to this whole thing of maybe some authors just don't know that you should go beyond Google and Wikipedia. And then all of a sudden it became my mission to tell everybody .
Vikki : So that's why we're here.
Laura: Thank you. My trick with Wikipedia, because I used to use it slightly even like when I was studying for my degree, I'd go and I'd read the Wikipedia page and I go, okay, well that's a better context. And then I'd go and find the sources. And then you click on the sources and you go there.
Vikki : That's a number one librarian trick.
Vikki : When, when I taught library instruction at the academic level, at the community college, we had a game that we would play. How many clicks are you going to get if you start with this particular website, because I knew, cause I already went through it and you had how many through the references on Wikipedia, are you going to get to this particular legitimate source? And so I'd send everybody home with this assignment. And then they had to come back and share with me their results. And the whole point was to teach them that what Wikipedia is great for for that alone. It's a good place to start some research ideas, but it's not the place to leave your research, but it's really great to click through and find what's being said. So I go, I bashed Wikipedia and Google a lot. And in my book I definitely do it nicely & professionally, but I explained, you know, quite a bit about how it can be used. Well, so what are some, so as a romance writer, do you do research, and if you do kind of what some of your favorite places to go, what do you like to do?
Laura: And it's quite an interesting sort of mix cause I, I don't like repeating the same thing too often. And so with like, I've got this fun book that I've got the placed Christmas on Henderson Island. This was what I was trying to do is like this, this would never have been published by a traditional publisher ever because nobody would want this. Like people who have read it have really enjoyed it, but nobody would ever be like, this is marketable. So I was trying to write something that would be, Treasure Island sorta or not just kind of crossed over with Life of PI if they were like fluffy romance and so on and day, desert island romance, but you can't get more modern day than like the most plastic choked island in the middle of the Pacific. So there's like pollution and ocean festering turtles.
Laura: And what it's it's like, who would ever use it as a seating? Nobody would want to publish this, but I was like, this is a really interesting island out near Pitcairn Island in the middle of a Suffolk and all of the like ocean currents that it ended up washing apple, this plastic on the beach and you can find really interesting, articles and stuff about it. I don't think anybody else would use it as a romance thing. But I was like, I want to know as much as I possibly can about this. And so I found, sort of like who had been to the island and found some from these articles like, okay. Pitcairn Island is a populated one, nobody lives on Henderson Island because there's no sources of fresh water on it. It's uninhabitable. So Pitcairn Island, that was the closest one that's popular that has people. And I emailed their, like council or something around it. And I, I got in contact with one of the people who had lived on the island for two years.
Laura: You got me doing trapping of rats and, and research and all this sort of stuff. And I was just like, tell me about the birds. You know, tell me if you were going to eat a bird, like, which one would you want to eat? Like, how were they, how easy are they to track? And you know, like what of, of the plastic, where does it come from? What's the most cause I, I was kind of like, okay, I've got these people crashing in a storm on this island and then they're like, oh, we need to make shelter. There's a top. You know So it's quite different to what a normal one would be because they're like interacting and using all this plastic waste. And I want to show watched what's actually there. And one of the biggest issues with, the plastic that turns out as fishing waste.
Laura: So it whole big bins that fall off a boats . This is practically cause all the fishing stuff floats. And so that's but just yeah, if, if they gotta be there, find the fishing nets and all sorts of things. So I've have incorporated all this firsthand knowledge of a Pitcairn Island , which you can't find anywhere. You have to find the person and ask them. And she just gave me so much information. And I didn't even use it all. Like the I've got this co a very tragic, but I, I just author Brian, I like, I find things and I'm like, Ooh. Yeah, Ooh, I want to know. But there's like a cave in there that, you know, like there was some shipped wrecked , people who, you know, like there's like all these crosses and stuff from people who are buried in this cave, you know and I didn't get to you.
Laura: Yeah. Like all the, even just, the cultural knowledge of, she was like, this kind of fish in this kind of area and this kind of bird is protected. And if you probably have somebody who was stranded and they ate it, it would be like, well, okay, you going to stop it, it's fine. But they wouldn't really approve of you going and like killing all these birds, you know? And it's the same thing with New Zealand. If you came and you were writing a desert island romance based on one of the little islands around here, and you looked at when you found like, oh, Weka, it's kind of like a chicken. And they're, they're really like, they'll come in and open your zips up and get into your bag and they are not shy at all. Like you can, you could probably just grab one. But our native birds are so precious to us. If, if anybody was like, I didn't know make them for dinner. We'd be like "No!" So it's sort of like, it's good to, if you're setting in something in a location somewhere you haven't been before, especially if there's like strong cultural practices and stuff around it, like find someone and ask.
Vikki : Laura you made my whole day today.
Vikki : And my job so much easier because you've touched on one of my favorite things that I think sometimes authors forget, or maybe they don't know that they can do what you did, you know, call somebody up or get ahold of an email of an expert witness. I call them my, my secret agents. Right. And you gotta be a little bold and be like, "Hey, I have some questions I'm writing this book." And then I love when authors give credit at the end and the acknowledgement of, "Thank you, so and so, your information about blah, blah, blah, was so helpful" because A. that helps me if I'm researching the same topic or close to. Aand B. it also encourages the practice of reaching out. There are people like me that love to talk about a topic that they love to talk about. And you can really learn a lot. You just gotta be a little bold, like send an email and get those secret agents and ask them the questions because you're right. Cultural differences are so subtle that you can really sabotage your writing a lot if you don't try to ask people that live in the area or whatever. So you just have made
Vikki : my day. I tell the questions I can be done. Now, thank you, author to
Vikki : Laura has done the job. so Laura, let's go ahead and wrap it up because we could probably do this again. Let's, you know, over and over again, cause you're so much fun and I'm just enjoying it a lot, but give, me and the other authors and people that are watching today one awesome tip that you have about researching. Well, that's not Wikipedia because we already went over that.
Laura: I think just whenever you're doing anything, like writing into your plots and everything, just asking those really basic questions of what, why, how when, you know, and it's like, if, if you ask those questions, you'll kind of catch yourself out quite immediately. Like you're gonna go and get some end season flowers. And you're like, well, when? And if you're writing a winter romance, you're giving summer flowers. It's like, do they, is the, the most amazing ones from the slight greenhouse? Or is he picking them out of a garden? It's not going to happen You know, those sort of things, just really add to, I think the, the depth and flavor of a book, like if you've seen it and you're going where, oh, it's set and, Texas or something, and then you go, well, what, the foods that people really love to eat in Texas? And incorporate those and, rather than, you know, potatoes and Viking era. It's like favorite.
Vikki : Well, we'd have to use that. So I had to go find that website
Laura: Hearing or whatever is just not quite so romantic. No,
Vikki : I think was it, what's that like some sort of salted fish that you eat?
Laura: Yeah. Limprey one of those things?
Vikki : I have a husband who has a little bit of that ancestry in his background. And you know what some Americans, we like to know our ancestors all about. And we want to always, when you start getting to a certain age as Americans, it feels like you have to go hunt your roots down and replicate as much as possible. It's very interesting phenomenon. So, we haven't gone down that whole, my husband and I, I mean, we know our ancestry, but we don't necessarily live that life, but he does know that he has some Viking history. And so when the whole Viking shows came out, it was Viking everything. And I'm like, you're like, not even a quarter Viking you don't even know what you are doing. But yeah, there's that salted fish. Oh, someone's going to email me. I just know it. They're going to tell me right now what it is.
Vikki : I haven't done my research people.
Laura: I just know about the potato. Right.
Vikki : Awesome. This is great. Well, Laura, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for spending the time. I think it asks you what time it is there, where you're at. Okay.
Laura: 11 AM on a Saturday. Yes. My husband and I
Vikki : we're trying to figure it out because I told them I have a two o'clock. So it's two o'clock Pacific time. And I'm, I got a two o'clock time with Laura and she's way down the other side, a little it's like that's probably in Saturday morning for her. Yeah. We're living in the future. There's another book idea to go down that rabbit hole. Well, Laura, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for joining us. And before I go, you will send me your, are your books for sell? And if so, you'll send me the link so I can put them in my description so people can come find you.
Vikki : Okay. Absolutely. Fantastic. Thanks. Thank you everybody for joining me. Definitely send me questions. Don't email me about salted fish. That's okay. But send me some questions. And if you
Vikki : know a library or you worked at with a Librarian as
Vikki : An author and you want to come on. you and the Librarian, let me know, email me and I'll bring you on. We can talk all about research as an author. Thanks a lot.