Hello, Protagonists! In this post you’ll find:
🎥 Our latest podcast episode, which is part interview of me, part interview of the artist whose work inspired the paintings in my book
🥳 My newest novel, One Year Ago in Spain, is out today!
🎥 CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY Podcast:
Celebrating One Year Ago in Spain
Welcome back to the CREATIVE.INSPIRED.HAPPY Podcast, an interview series with incredibly successful writers about how they rose out of obscurity to build fulfilling careers. With each episode, I hope you'll learn something to make you more creative, inspired, or happy!
Today we're celebrating the release of my newest novel, One Year Ago in Spain, and to do that, we have a fun joint interview for you, with me and artist Sally Fama Cochrane, a classically trained painter whose gorgeous work was the inspiration for the paintings in my novel.
In this episode, we go back and forth, asking each other the same questions, to delve deeper into how creative careers are the same yet different in the worlds of writing and fine art.
We talk about:
🟨 our processes for making a book or painting from idea to finish,
🟨 balancing motherhood and art,
🟨 why artists have a hard time asking to be paid for their work,
🟨 the little Easter egg in One Year Ago in Spain that my long-time readers will find,
🟨 and so much more.
Afterwards, explore more of Sally’s incredible art on her website or Instagram.
I hope you enjoy the show!1
»Watch here, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts! (please leave a rating for me on Apple or Spotify 💛)
» Past podcast episodes live HERE
🥳 My newest novel, One Year Ago in Spain, is out today!
I loved writing this book for you, and now it’s finally here! It’s truly a gift to get to spend my days weaving dreams into stories for readers and writers like you who appreciate all the hard work that goes into it.
📚 Is this book for adults?
Yes, it is. I feel like I’ve fully made the transition now into adult fiction, since One Year Ago in Spain is my third novel for adults (The Hundred Loves of Juliet and Damsel being the previous two.) I will always love the time I spent writing for young adults and children (six novels), but writers—like all artists—change throughout their careers, and I’m really enjoying this new stage of my career here.
☀️ Is it a vacation read?
Yes, if you want to be whisked away to Madrid, and you enjoy characters with depth to their backstories and emotions, but with an undercurrent of hope and love.
(It’s not candy-coated breeziness, but it’s also not super heavy. I like to think it’s in-between.)
There is a lot of me and Tom put into this book—personality traits, yes, but also big emotions like self-doubt, unconditional love, and what finally makes people willing to take leaping risks.
It’s also about the bonds of blood and of found family, and about letting down your walls to finally believe in yourself and the good in others.
I hope you enjoy meeting Claire and Matías.
💛 Thank you for buying copies for yourself or other readers in your life. 💛
One Year Ago in Spain is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook anywhere books are sold.
Description:
A woman must woo her lover’s soul back into his body to wake him from a coma—or risk losing him forever—in this moving novel from the author of The Hundred Loves of Juliet.
Claire Walker has always had her life in perfect order, including her high-powered job at one of Manhattan’s top corporate law firms. Yet the one thing she cannot seem to find is a perfect love to complete it, until fate pushes Matías de León into her path. Matías is a Spanish artist who is everything that Claire is not: free-spirited and creative, chaos to her order. She falls for him, hard—and he for her.
A year later, however, Claire begins to question everything about their relationship. How can they possibly work long-term when they’re so different? Might it be best to end it before they are both in too deep?
Then tragedy strikes while Matías is visiting family, leaving him gravely wounded in a Madrid hospital. And when Claire drops everything to race to his side, she finds she is the only one who can see and talk to Matías’s soul, detached from his comatose body. But that soul has no memories of his year in New York, of her, or of their relationship. Claire soon realizes that in order to lure Matías back to his body, she will have to convince him to fall in love with her all over again. But can lightning strike twice? Can the same magic that brought them together once do so again?
photo credit in intro video: Arturo Holmes/WireImage via Getty Images (Evelyn Skye attends Netflix's "Damsel" New York Premiere at Paris Theater in New York City); Erin Ashford (Evelyn at Stanford sculpture)
Although I have no talent in the visual arts myself, I found the interview very interesting. All creatives do share some common ground.
I don't think reluctance about issues involving pay is unique to women by any means, at least not as far as writers are concerned. There continues to be a lively debate among indie authors about whether to price low and go for volume or price higher to show that we value our own work.
Amazon has complicated the issue by giving the 70% royalty on ebooks only to those indie ebooks that fall between $2.99 and $9.99. Books priced lower or higher only get 35%. That tends to focus everyone on that price range, regardless of length, time needed for completion, or other factors.
Then Amazon further complicated the situation by introducing the free giveaway as a promotional tactic. Any book enrolled in Select could have up to five free days a year. It was very effective in the beginning--because it was used sparingly. But it gradually led to an avalanche of free books. People discovered they could price something free on other venues and get Amazon to match the price., eliminating the five-day limit.
Discount pricing is also a problem. I've seen $0.99 six-novel sets. That seems a bit low, even as a sale price. Yesterday, I even saw such a set being offered free as a reader magnet.
It used to be that you could put up a $0.99 short story on Amazon, and there would be a market for it. But people can get free novels and $0.99 box sets, $0.99 for a short story doesn't seem like much of a deal.
Sigh! And now there's Kindle Unlimited ($11.99 per month for all you can read.) Get novels for a fraction of the cover price. The "Spotification" of literature has begun.
So yes, there are a lot of problems with pricing, some philosophical, some practical.
Oh wow, thank you for sharing all that detail about Amazon ebook pricing, Bill! I appreciate you laying that out for everyone, in the spirit of this podcast interview. I think you're right that this is the "Spotification" of writing...
From my side of publishing (traditional), it also makes it much harder to sell books. Readers who are accustomed to Kindle Unlimited or the free books tactics will balk at paying $18 for a paperback or $28-30 for a hardcover. My books used to always come out in hardcover first and then paperback the following year, but for ONE YEAR AGO IN SPAIN, my publisher, agent, and I decided to just go straight to paperback because of the price point.
I believe that the fiction industry is changing, just like the music industry did before us. That doesn't necessarily mean doom for writers, but we just need to be aware and we need to adjust as necessary. We can look to what happened in music as a lesson in history and learn from it. (physical books being like CDS, ebooks being like mP3s, then Kindle Unlimited being like Spotify). Where our industry goes next, I'm not sure, but I'm glad we're all able to talk about it openly!
This was a great interview, Evelyn – I don't think I've ever seen you quite as animated as you were with Sally 😄 You both played so well off one another, thanks for including us in this conversation. I would like to have seen something of Sally's art during this chat (ie, if she had one of her paintings or a studio shot behind her while she spoke.)
But I did find her website and was astonished! 😍
Oh yeah, we had WiFi issues that day, so Sally had to do the interview on her phone while standing in the one place where she had a good connection and wouldn't be too loud and wake her baby, who was napping. It was like a real-time example of balancing art and motherhood 😂
I'm so glad you checked out her website. She's so talented and has a very interesting perspective on the scenes she comes up with.
Thank you for going into the archives and watching this one, Kristin!
I was just in the mood this afternoon for one of your great conversations, Evelyn, to keep me company while I work. So I went through the archives to see if there was something I'd missed. So happy I did, thank you!
awwww!!!!
Excited to watch when I get home! Also excited to start your book🥳
For me, there’s a part of me that blames my high school experience. Three years of career days and not once did they have someone come in with a more artistic career. They pushed safer, more traditional career paths so the arts felt more like hobbies and it creates a mindset of it’s not work so I can’t ask for money. Or the opposite where people don’t believe it’s work so they don’t want to pay handmade prices over mass manufactured ones.
So excited for you to read my book--thank you!!
That's a fantastic point that careers in art are not particularly encouraged. Maybe it's because parents would retaliate if schools told kids about how to be a starving artist, haha.
Great Interview Evelyn! So much to learn from you and the creative people you interview. Thank you!
I'm so glad you feel that way, Imola! It's my goal to share all the knowledge we artists have learned over our careers. Hope you have a wonderful Tuesday!
Oh! I forgot to mention that I just picked up your new book. It looks very appealing!
thank you SO much, Bill! I appreciate you supporting my writing!!
This was wonderful. I enjoyed the conversation and loved hearing about how her art inspired the creation of your character.
Sorry I'm late to the party! Congratulations on your book release, Evelyn! I found this interview very interesting. I love the connection between art and writing. (And music and writing!) I often include art in my newsletter. Also, I have written poetry inspired by art, and I have been part of a poetry + art collaborative where art is created in response to poetry. It is such fun learning about other creatives and how they approach the creative process. :)