SPA Girls Podcast – EP019 – Interview with Trudi Jaye
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This week we’re up to episode 19, and it’s an interview with paranormal romance author Trudi Jaye, yet another member of the SPA Girls.
Trudi Jaye published the first book in her Magic Carnival series in 2014, and now has five books out, the latest in December 2015. Before she was an author, she worked as a journalist, writing about a range of topics from big data and artificial intelligence, to movies, television and even chainsaws and hardware.
Trudi has wanted to be a writer since she was very young. Over time it became apparent that she needed to choose between a love of photography and her writing. (We know how that turned out)
With a wide and varied resume Trudi has been – an exchange student in Denmark, lived and worked in a castle and also a pub in Scotland, worked in London as a live in assistant and been a camp counsellor in USA.
With an Honours degree in Political Science achieved and her overseas experience finished Trudi returned to New Zealand and became an editorial assistant. This made her very detail orientated as she was editing blurbs for TV programs. After two years she became the official writer for this.
Moving on to writing for a variety of magazines Trudi eventually became an editor, but quit when she realised she preferred the actual writing to editing.
Trudi began searching for groups looking for support for her passion and eventually joined RWNZ (Romance Writers of New Zealand), which is where she found the rest of the spa girls and other like-minded friends.
When she was younger she felt embarrassed to be seen reading romances so finding RWNZ was a revelation that so many people not only love these stories but write and publish them with or without agents and publishing houses.
Several years ago she was a freelance writer but when she had her daughter, Zoey, she began part-time work as a magazine writer for a tertiary institution.
Trudi Published her first book Ringmaster in May 2014. Her genre is paranormal romance and urban fantasy because she loves world building, supernatural and the mystique of paranormal. Since that first book Trudi has published another 5 books including a boxed set which all belong to the same series.
She has also written and epic fantasy which has yet to be published which is 140 pages long!
Trudi found her niche when she watched the MTV awards with a dark carnival theme and this appealed, especially after seeing an old episode fantasy Island where people got wishes granted but not in an expected way. Mashing the two ideas was how she created her magical carnival.
Self Publishing
Why self-publish? It was something Trudi has wanted to do for a very long time. Having tried the traditional route by querying agents and publishers Trudi realised that she doesn’t like the idea of being judged by anyone other than her readers and likes the control it gives her – to write what she wants on her own schedule.
It is a lot harder than she thought it would be as she is impatient, but she believes that you have to put the hard work in and follow the processes to get the desired outcome.
In the last few months Trudi has done a lot of work on building her platform by doing courses to upskill as a publisher. Growing her mailing list, advertising on Facebook and Twitter as well as joining a few forums were top of her to do list. Being a member of the Spa Girls has helped and she is always on the lookout for new ways and processes to do things.
Trudi publishes direct where possible. In New Zealand there are platforms we are not able to upload to. Initially she only used Amazon KDP select because it was too daunting to upload to others. Over time she began to use all the other platforms – Amazon, ibooks and Kobo direct and others through D2D (Draft 2 Digital). Trudi has a philosophy now of not wanting to put her books on one platform as she doesn’t like the singular control.
Other Tools
Trudi writes and loves working in scrivener. After the first draft she takes it out and puts into word. Formatting is done in Legend Maker because she has a mac computer. She also uses create space to have POD (Print on demand) available.
Trudi is a proponent of the Pomodoro method and does 1000 words in 25 minutes – 2000 words in an hour.
The Future
Trudi is looking at another 3 books in the carnival series but has a new series in the works and another YA series planned out. She really enjoys writing – thinking up new ideas – and doesn’t find it a struggle in general, apart from the editing.
She is also looking for ways to stay healthy by doing Karate and walking, and not wanting to be desk bound learning is in the process of learning a dictation program, which should also help with word count.
Advice
Treat fans as if they are your friends. Reply promptly and help them in any way you can.
Links
Trudi Jaye.com
https://twitter.com/TrudiJaye
