Bookcast Episode 122: I been busy!

DL White [00:00:00]:
hello and Happy Sunday to my boos and bros. My book people, my book besties. Welcome back to the Book Cast where I talk about reading and writing, Black Love and real life as a self published Author. I am D.L. white. I am an Atlanta based author, reader and storyteller teller. If you like this podcast and the kind of stuff I do here, the very best way to support that is to buy the books. You can get those direct from booksbydlwhite.com shop.

DL White [00:00:43]:
You'll also find print editions on my bookshop.org shelf. So you're supporting me and indie bookstores at the same time and that's a thing I've come to really like. There's a link to my bookshop.org shelf on my show notes and on my links page on my website. It's books by dlwhite.com linkinbio Today is Sunday, June 15, 2025. I am in Atlanta. I have a microphone. I have a fizzy drink and some kind of big news to share. So let's get into it.

DL White [00:01:43]:
Excellent. Excellent. Welcome back people. I hope your little beverage break was good today. I'm having a little something different for once. I got a San Pellegrino Chow cherry flavored sparkling water. I added a bit of Crystal light to kind of punch up, boost the flavor and added then some water and I served that over ice. It's refreshing, it's crisp, it's cold.

DL White [00:02:07]:
I I kind of like it a lot. It's good stuff. So let's jump right into the Book Report, our first segment. Because if I'm going to do anything, I'm going to what? Read a book. I am at 86 of 175 books read toward my goal for 2025. I'm 49% in. I'm right on schedule for mid June. Not at all worried, especially since I increased my goal earlier this year so I have to kind of actually make an effort to hit the goal.

DL White [00:02:37]:
I'm not mad at it. This week I got in Sinful Submission, a dark why Choose Trilogy. This is book number three by Stephanie Nicole Norris. I did get through the first two in those books last week and like I've been telling you all, I am chaste and innocent. So I don't know how those authors have me reading that series. But I mean, as an aside, the books are good. Really good. I'm not huge on why choose, but depending on the author I will read all outside my genre just to read their words.

DL White [00:03:11]:
I also got in her first mistake, which is Noel Marshall Number one. This is a new series by Kendra Elliott. I got that on audio. I enjoy Kendra Elliott. It's just, you know, I like a good mystery and I love a woman led mystery detective series. I think. Is she a detective? I believe she's a detective. I don't.

DL White [00:03:30]:
Of course I don't remember. And then I got in Good Neighbors which is number five in the Alibis collection. That's the same collection that Wanda Morris is in. And I also read false notes in the Alibis collection. Sorry. Good Neighbors was by Chad Zuncker. False Note was by David Lagercrantz. Both of those are just.

DL White [00:03:50]:
Okay. There is one by Sally Hepworth that's coming up that I'm gonna read and I thought there was one by Frid Frida McFadden, but maybe not. I was thinking I was looking at something else. What I am getting into still got August Lane by Regina Black. That's going to stay on my TBR until I get it read. I think I might also be waiting for the audio because I'm finding, I'm finding the Kindle. It's not even the Kindle version. I just, I have an arc of it and I don't have the ability to do the text to speech so that I can listen to it, which makes it easier for me to read.

DL White [00:04:27]:
I don't have that version of this novel. So that's kind of what I'm struggling against. But I still got it up. Fog and Fury Haven Thriller number one by Rachel Howzell Hall. I can't tell you how excited I am to have another detective series from Rachel Housel Hall. I have missed Lou Norton so, so, so much. The Lou Norton series was her first. I believe it was a self.

DL White [00:04:52]:
No, it's not a self published series, but it was her first detective series and then she went off into sort of a different vein and now she's back writing Detectives. And Rachel messaged me, not messaged me, but posted on Blue sky that the protagonist in this novel and Lou Norton would definitely be friends in real life. So that makes me happy. Can't wait to get into it. And then of course the aforementioned the Ex Wives Club in the Alibis Collection by Sally Hepworth. I've read a couple of her novels. They're not based in the US which is different for me. I'm not.

DL White [00:05:28]:
I am annoyingly ethnocentric. So if it's not based in the US I have a really hard time with it. But sometimes a Sally Hepworth novel Hits just right for me. So just tossing in a question here. How are y' all doing on your reading goals? Did you set one? How are you doing? Are you right on track? Are you way behind and stressing about it? Are you way behind and not worried about it at all? Are you super ahead and very proud of yourself? And then you should probably increase your goal because why not shoot for the moon and be among the stars or whatever that saying is. Let me know how it's going. Moving on to the super quick streaming update. I'm gonna check out the mortician on Max.

DL White [00:06:11]:
Because I am a morbid person. I do watch. I watch some pretty tense stuff. So this is kind of right up my alley. It's a HBO documentary about David Sconce. I think that's his pronouncing pronunciation of his name. And the Lamb funeral home scandal from the 80s. Sconce mass cremated bodies, stole gold teeth and jewelry from corpses and mixed up people's ashes to maximize profits.

DL White [00:06:41]:
He's interviewed in the series and apparently shows zero remorse. So disturbing but fascinating is my middle name. So I'm going to dig into that and then check out AI and the Evolution of the Publishing Industry with Jane Friedman on the Book Funnel YouTube channel. It's. If you just search for that, you'll find it, but I'll put a link in the show notes. She breaks down how AI is impacting authors and publishers. What you what to watch out for and how to adapt. If that is a thing that you are into.

DL White [00:07:15]:
I'm trying to avoid it at all costs. I definitely don't do AI art. I think the limit of AI that I use is like prowritingaid. Like, if I'm, if I'm using a program that uses AI I'm kind of not really worrying about it. I just, I can't worry about too much at one time, especially things that are out of my control. You know, outside of that, maybe, you know, spell check, grammar check, is this grammatically correct? That kind of stuff. For the most part, though, I'm kind of staying out of the, the, the, the tussle. The girls are tussling, kind of staying out of it.

DL White [00:07:57]:
I want to see who lands on the right side of the law and is the law gonna catch up with it and that kind of thing. So that's where we're at. It's a very good episode. Jane Friedman is a trusted voice in publishing, and so when she speaks, I listen. On our writing and publishing update for this week, the only project I'm really Working on is missing persons. I'm at 57,000 bloated words in this document and I'm not done yet. A lot will get cut, but I'm still in the telling the story to myself phase of this. So I'm still like really adding and taking away.

DL White [00:08:34]:
And the more I smooth out and put to bed, the more it pops up as an end. I didn't tie or a conflict that I didn't address or I just open the document and think, wow, this random scene seems really dry and bland. I can punch this up and around and around and that happened this morning I woke up to pick out a scene for Sample Sunday and then I was like this, this, this needs help. And so I'd spent, you know, an hour and a half going through the earlier chapters and I just didn't need to do that. I will set aside time when I'm done done to go through the chapters and rewrite. So anyway, what I have done though is I've created a preliminary cover that I like. It does not have people on it because I just could not find people that I like that represent the characters as they exist in my mind. I really, I really need to know where people are getting high quality images of good looking people because the only real resource I have is deposit photos and the people there leave much to be desired.

DL White [00:09:34]:
The hunt for mature, adult, grown, AF sexy people is on. I find it difficult really to find images. Even if I find one I like, can I afford it? It's $500. No, no. Everyone I seems to find, everyone I find seems to be young and bland looking. So not really cover material, not people I want to put on my cover. So I'm working on it. For now I just have a scene as the COVID and we're gonna go with that for the minute.

DL White [00:10:09]:
I also created a Pinterest board for this book and I'll put the link to that in the show notes with boards for Wesley and Yvette as inspiration. And there's a little playlist for this book I will link to that. It's also linked in my show notes and it is linked in the Pinterest board for missing persons. Have I finished the story? No. Do I have a Pinterest board and a playlist for it? Absolutely I do. Yes. That's going to help me finish the story. And that's just my story.

DL White [00:10:38]:
I'm sticking to it. On the fanfiction corner, I'm working on a new episode of Music of My Heart. It is Zoe's EP release. Party at the Roosevelt Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. She walks the red carpet, she does press interviews, then presents her five song EP to an intimate industry audience. So I'm kind of just working through. It's one of those chapters where I just get lost in how to tell the story instead of just telling it again. I look at it and I'm like, that's so bland.

DL White [00:11:08]:
Like, how can I. How can I show this instead of just saying it? Like, and also, like, really pulling the relationship with JC forward and making sure that it's mature and it's loving, but balancing that with knowing that the character JC doesn't really want to be in the forefront, and he doesn't want it to look to the public like she's riding his coattails. He also doesn't want it to look to the public like he's riding her coattails, like she's a up and coming new artist who he met on his retreat, by the way. And so there's a whole lot that people could really grab onto and take advantage of and it could really be a scandal for them. Thankfully, they're both, you know, grown adults and so they could handle it. But anyway, I'm just making sure that every sentence hits the way I want it to. It doesn't sound boring or like it needs more punch. So I'm working on that.

DL White [00:12:06]:
I'll probably edit it tomorrow and put it up. I got some things I want to work on tonight, and if I finish those and get to the them, I will work on the fanfiction. But I just, I have. I have a thing that has a deadline to it that you'll learn about much later. So I got to work on that. And this book I'm trying to finish, I'll do a quick check in for the remainder of my time. This is going to be a very short and sweet podcast episode because I'm prepping for a couple of upcoming projects and my mom is in town. Sometimes you just need, you know, sometimes you need some light and levity.

DL White [00:12:48]:
In between deep dives of random things, I can finally share what has been eating my concentration and energy since my mom has arrived and I wanted to unveil it to her first. She got in Friday night, I took her to dinner, checked her into a super nice hotel, and just let her, you know, sleep and enjoy a lovely view. It was just, you know, so late. But she is going to be staying with my cousin who lives, you know, a bit away. And so I just wanted her to have, like, you know, a nice night to relax. And I picked her up yesterday morning and then I took her over to view my surprise which is that I am buying a house. I've been in limbo for a little bit on it because I am waiting for construction to complete. Yes, that's right, I am buying a new construction home.

DL White [00:13:37]:
So I'm quite excited about it, about this development in my life and I won't make it my personality. I don't want to share too much just in case things have to unravel and unroll and I have to go back and be like, remember when I said this? Well actually, so I won't probably share a whole too much, but I will let everyone know when I have closed and the podcast will likely go on a smidge hiatus while I get moved and set up. But the very very best news that I'm excited to share is that in the house I have an office and I plan to turn the closet into a soundproof for recording the podcast as well as my own audiobooks because that's a thing that I am getting into. I recorded two of my own audiobooks this year, Grumpy Valentine and Drinks at Minx. Minx. Minx Audio is only available from me from Book Funnel because it was a kind of a quick and dirty recording and it won't pass a soundcheck through Book Funnel or acx. So what I'm likely going to do is later in the summer send those files over to a producer on Fiverr or something and have them clean those up so that they will pass a quality check and then get that audiobook out and distributed amongst the masses. So I'm very wildly, wildly excited to share all of the progress with those who would like to know about it.

DL White [00:15:06]:
And believe it or not, that's it. That's all I have for this week. I have have books to read and stuff to Prep for to 2026 already. Can you believe it? So it's time to stop talking and start working. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, rate it, leave a comment wherever you're listening. Apple, Spotify, Substack, YouTube. I'm all over it.

DL White [00:15:28]:
I see them all. I see it all. For full show notes, transcripts and links, you can head to booksbydlwhite.com 122 or my [email protected] don't forget you can support this podcast by shopping my [email protected] shop. You can buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com booksbydlwhite Please share this podcast or join the newsletter at booksbydlwhite.com link in bio. You'll also find links to everything I mentioned today there. Big thanks to my mom, monthly supporters, and everyone who has sent me a coffee. You keep this mic turned on. The Book House is written, produced and edited by me, D.L.

DL White [00:16:10]:
white. Theme music and sound effects are provided by Pixabay. I will be back next week. Maybe. Possibly I plan to be back next week. Well, maybe not. Because I'll be at Indie Love. I'll be at Indie Love.

DL White [00:16:20]:
And once again, I'm not doing a play by play. But I will come back the week after and let you know how it went, how things go. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I ordered more books for Indie Love because I was a little concerned that I didn't order enough. So I placed another order and as of June 10th, they were printing. So if they ship this week, there's a possibility I might get them by Friday when I need to leave for the hotel. There's a big chance they may not get to me in time.

DL White [00:16:56]:
So, you know, if. If the extra books don't get to me, I'll make do with what I've got. I'll oversell and promise to send the rest to people I don't want to, but I will. But y' all just like light a candle and make a sacrifice. Pray to the deity of your choice that my extra batch of books ship and arrive before India. Love. Okay? Okay. All right, so I will be back later.

DL White [00:17:23]:
Until then, be well. Pick up something good and put it in your face. We'll talk soon. Bye. Bye. Sa Ra.