Ash Harrier - From Digital Dreams to Print Success

Ash Harrier, welcome to Totally Lit. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm extremely excited to be here. I'm loving that you're a West Australian. I'm doing a little bit of work with the Australian Short Story Festival, doing a few interviews for them. So I feel like I'm a bit connected to WA at the moment. Do you want to tell me... Yeah, that seems to be going great guns. Yes, yes, it's very exciting. And it's amazing in the world we are in now that you can be anywhere in the world and be connecting with anyone.

So I'm like, oh, I'm over here in Brisbane, but I feel like I'm part of the festival over there just through the magic of our internet connections.

But thank you so much for joining me. I'd love to chat to you about your YA ghostling because it has a little bit of a history, a bit of a journey to where it is at the moment. Would you like to share with me, where it began and where it is now? Yeah, so about 12 years ago, I had just come out of a failed marriage and I actually met a new man and I wasn't really ready for that at that point, but, goddammit, he's stuck around and he's still with me now.

Hooray! And the reason I tell you this is that we, you know, as you do when you first start dating, you share what your hobbies are. And my hobby was writing. So I told him that. And he was very interested to read something that I'd written. So I gave him something that I had been working on and submitting to publishers for years and years and years. And every time it got rejected, I would take it back and I would rewrite it again, flogging the dead horse, basically.

So he said to me, why don't you, this is really good. Why don't you send it in and see if you can get it published? And I was like, well, what do you think I've been doing for the past 20 years of my life? And he said, oh, so no one wants to publish that book? And I said, no, no one at this stage. No, not yet. And he said, well, why don't you write something new? I know, right? You can tell when someone's not a writer because they asked that question. Oh, why don't you get that published?

So he said, why don't you write something new? And actually that hadn't occurred to me for quite a long time so I went okay I could try that so I sat down and I wrote something new and I sent it off to all the usual places the big five and all of that got, zero response and then I actually knew someone who had had some success with smaller digital only presses and I thought well you know maybe that could be

a foot in the door for me so I sent that off to a couple and someone wanted to publish it.

So that was my first published book and it was a young adult called The Seventh. It's paranormal and it was around 65,000 to 70,000 words and you know, terribly excited, thought that I was going to be a huge runaway success, The Next Twilight and all of that. And, you know, I'm sure that it sold at least a couple of dozen copies in the first year. All the pain of being a writer. It didn't do hugely well, but, you know, it was a book and it was out there.

And I wrote the sequel and then I started experimenting with all kinds of other things like self-publishing and different genres.

But that one just sort of sat there and ticked away eventually I wrote the third book because it was a trilogy that went out in about 2020 and then those three books just were out there on Amazon and on iBooks and all of the other kind of online outlets or print on demand and eventually it did rack up a few thousand reads but the more I thought about them and the more I looked back at them the the less happy I felt about them because they were my first books and you know what it's like when I

don't know if you do any kind of creative art but do you ever look back at like one of the earliest things you've ever made and realize how far you've come yes yeah or even in your writing you probably do the same so I'll read something why what was I thinking why did I think that was good exactly or how could I have said that you know you learn a lot as a human, even over a 10-year period.

So this year, it's actually 10 years since I wrote that book, or since I got the contract to get it published anyway. And I thought to myself, God, I'd love to have that book back and just rewrite it. And then I remembered that I've actually got rights of version clause of five years. So I actually do have that book back if I want it. The only one I didn't have back officially was the third one, which came out in 2020.

So I emailed the publisher and I said, look, I'm thinking of taking this back. I want to rewrite it. Obviously, if I'm putting out book one or two as rewritten books, then you won't have those anymore. So it doesn't seem to be much point keeping book three. And they totally agreed with me. They were lovely about it. I thanked them. We parted on good terms. And they gave me the rights for all three back. And then I embarked on the rewrite. And I had so much fun.

So this book, the main changes. Was it like going home, revisiting those stories? Yes. I don't write fan fiction. My kids do. but this felt like writing fan fiction with my own characters I was basically writing scenes yeah new scenes new backstory you know new new sub storylines and more character development yeah it was just huge amounts of fun and it was really good because I was in this lull where I was waiting for to get some edits back I didn't really have much else to do.

So I just used that time to rewrite this book. I added 30,000 words. So it's now nearly 100,000 words. Wow. Yeah. Just book one? Yes. Is that length? Yes. So, excuse me. Yeah. The kind of dark academia slash paranormal genre seems to be quite open to books around that length now. So I felt comfortable writing it at that length. And I really don't think it is a YA in the sense that it was before. My characters have changed age. They're actually a little bit older now.

They're almost adults. They're in their final year of high school. Before they were 16. So now they're kind of coming up 18. It's the same characters, the same school, they've got the same psychic gifts, but a lot of other stuff has changed. I've got, yeah, just a whole lot more depth going on in there. And so that was really rewarding to do. The other thing that I really wanted to change was it wasn't very diverse. So I wanted to make it more diverse. So I did that.

And the other one was that having two teenagers over the past, decade they're both kind of coming out of the teenage years now but really taught me a lot about mental health and teenagers so I improved that I think I gave that more nuance and more sensitivity it was a little bit insensitive before so that was nice to be able to kind of jettison some of that stuff from the older Sasha or the older Ash I should say get my own name wrong i do that all

the time my because i write under kai garvey and you know and podcast under that but i'm really kylie and i do sometimes go oh yeah that's kai's me that's me. And have your kids read it since you you've oh well have they read the first version and the second version. Yeah, so they definitely read the first version and I kept them apprised of what was happening in the second version. Neither of them really enjoy reading books. They like reading fan fiction, but not physical books.

So I just told them what was happening and they seemed really excited about it. I actually involved them a lot because they were my reference points for today's teenage zeitgeist.

So whenever I thought that something sounded dodgy or middle-aged, I would read it up to them and say, hey does this sound okay and they would go yeah that's cool or they would go mom please let us help i must admit i recently did a workshop at a bookshop with some kids and felt a million years old because i did not understand what they were talking about i'm like oh lost my cool what am i gonna do i have to get across like all the lingo which just say and they use

it deliberately reality now as a weapon don't they to make us feel old yes yeah so that was a long story made even longer and then what i did was i thought all right i'm going to republish this how am i going to do it there's going to be some costs involved i can handle that but you know it is it is a big step and then a friend of mine christy nita brown who you may have heard of yes i know yes she said why don't you do a Kickstarter?

All the cool kids are doing them. I said, what the heck is Kickstarter? So I had to go online and do some serious research at that point. But as soon as I saw it, I thought this is exactly what I want to do. So then it was the learning curve of Kickstarter. Yes. Well, because you can't just go, I'm going to do a Kickstarter and see all the, it's the same as using Patreon or I have a Buy Me A Coffee account. For the podcast, but if no one knows it exists.

Nobody's going to contribute so did you have to sort of do a bit of learning around how to market that idea yeah I think the biggest thing which I'm jumping a little bit ahead here but was educating my readership my existing readership on what a kickstarter was because they don't move in that circle yeah I've kind of got a a readership of of print books within Australia because my books are in bookshops.

And I couldn't reach anyone through my previous books because they were all on Amazon and all that. Nothing had ever sold through any kind of direct way. So I didn't have anyone's contacts.

And I really had shifted so far away from that era of when my first book came out that I don't know if any of those people even see what I post anymore or follow me anymore yeah so once I had actually mastered the kickstarter system which was the first learning curve and the best way to do that is to go and join a group on facebook called kickstarter for authors by the way if anyone's thinking about doing this yes really good check that out yes extremely

useful you're not allowed to post for a couple of days which is a really important part of the process then because your first temptation when you go in there is to say so how do I do a Kickstarter? And they have just got so much information in there already and it's really well organized. So you're much better off spending a couple of days just looking around and searching on keywords.

So then I was finally allowed to post. So I did start asking a few questions and I realized really quickly that I was doing it all wrong. I had gone into Kickstarter thinking I'm going to pitch to make all the money I need to produce this book. Editing costs, proofreading, cover design, production, all of that stuff. And it was coming in at at least $6,500, which, you know, it probably sounds pretty normal for a book production or even quite low. But...

That's not how Kickstarters work. You don't do it like that. You don't ask the people to pay for stuff that you were going to pay for anyway when you put your book out into the world. What you ask them for is to support you to do a special edition. Okay. So it's like an advanced edition or a special one that you wouldn't normally sell.

Special editions could be just early or they could be actual special, you know, gilded edges and naked covers and hardcover and all of the kind of fancy stuff, end pages and painted edges and artwork within the book. So I stripped out all those extra costs that I was going to be covering anyway, like editing and proofreading, because I knew I was going to put this book out myself. And I made it purely about, hey, come along on this ride. I'm going to have an early edition. It's special.

It's going to be hardcover. It's going to have artwork in it and it's going to be, you know, have all your names in it as part of the acknowledgements. And I put that out there instead and it went really well and I ended up making $5,000 anyway. So it did end up covering the cost of the production almost. Yes. So with a Kickstarter though, you do need to. I was going to say, offering some value that is different from what someone else would be able to get outside of the campaign. Exactly.

Because why else would they? You know, it's why wouldn't they just wait until it comes out in its normal form on Amazon or off my web shop or whatever and just get it then? So it has to be something special that they want to get behind. And you include a whole bunch of rewards that won't be in the usual copy of the book. And then you can have, if you hit those sort of levels, tiers, then you can have stretch goals and everyone's getting all this cool merch.

So it's been really, really good fun because it sort of created a whole merch ecosystem and creative ecosystem around the book, including extra story, prequel short stories, alternative point of view, post-credit scenes and stuff like that that weren't there before. So that's been really rewarding and did you find like when when you were using the tips from the facebook group were you coming up with ideas yourself or were you being inspired by other members of the group.

To come up with all those great ideas? Definitely inspiration from the members in the group. I figured why reinvent the wheel if there's stuff that's working? The only thing that I did bring to, I mean, I brought my own kind of spin to everything. So when it was an art page, I decided that I wanted it to be a map of the school that the kids go to. And when it was, people do kind of art cards as well that people can put up around their room, like postcards.

So I talked to my kids about it and one of them suggested tarot style so we've created this kind of seven tarot card set which represent all of the psychic gifts and my family is full of artists so I got all my family to do the art and they're absolutely beautiful so that was really fun we just got those delivered yesterday but the one thing that I really didn't want to do was inundate people with stuff they didn't want so I made sure

that it wasn't first of all I didn't want any plastic going out there I just don't want to add to the plastic in the world and second of all I kept some of it digital so that we were again being as sustainable as possible and I also made sure that they were quality things not just kind of your boring standard bookmarks that that go out I've made sure that all of my bookmarks have got spot gloss, title, tassels, things like that. Sorry, nobody can see that, but they do look cool.

And I also gave people the option to opt out of merch. So if there was stuff they didn't want or had no use for, and when they got the survey asking for their address so I can send all the goodies, I gave them the option to opt out of anything they didn't want. And do you feel that having all that merch as extra does add value? Has it cost you any extra than you expected in terms of using this as a funding method for your book?

Yes, there are some costs that you don't expect. I still feel like I'm in front, but I guess overall I wouldn't say that I've covered the entire cost of making all this stuff and the book, you know, because I did have to make those outlays of editing and cover design and periphery. But I went a lot further towards covering everything than I would have otherwise. I did make sure that the Kickstarter itself covered everything that everyone's going to get.

So all of the books, the merch and all of that, they're all covered you do get caught short on the postage so be careful with that if you're planning a kickstarter make sure that you really really go into exactly what the cost is going to be and remember that when you send something to america it's not the same as sending something to germany or you know there are different costs for different country and they can significantly differ you sort of don't expect to get any backers from countries

that aren't completely fully English-speaking, but you do. So, you know, I've got one from Chechia, one from Spain, one from Germany, and a few from Canada, you know, a few from America, none from England, which surprised me. I thought I might get some from England and a bunch from Australia as well. Some of our UK listeners might jump on and place an order.

It is interesting when you have a podcast, i sometimes jump on and see what countries are listening and i'm like oh there's somebody in canada there's some someone in new england listening and like that's yeah you you don't really realize the reach that you potentially have when you're sending things out into the universe, yeah that's awesome that must be really rewarding it can be that i'm like oh Oh, I've got to be careful what I say.

Although I am thinking about saying a hello to everybody every now and then. But, yeah, it does tickle my fancy a bit when I see someone in Paris has listened and I'm like, oh, yay! It's like I'm travelling. Yeah. Just in my office at home.

But, yeah, if you think about it, it's like, oh, I'm travelling all around the world. Yeah, I've got all these friends in different places. So how did you achieve that reach in terms of reaching to someone in Chechnya? How did that happen? Yeah, I honestly don't know. I think the Kickstarter system itself has already got its committed goals. I don't even know what you'd call them, members. And they are hunting actively for things that they want to back.

So they're interested in this stuff. There are people on there who buy their books through Kickstarter because they love special editions. They love beautiful things. So they shop through Kickstarter. And Kickstarter itself has this lovely little thing called Projects We Love.

And if you've done a good job on setting everything up and got a decent number of followers before you launch and then you fund, you might get the Projects We Love sticker, which means that it's, yeah, which means that they then send it out in their own promotional materials to people who are already part of the Kickstarter system.

But I basically took the advice of the Facebook group and posted way more than I was comfortable with for a month, which meant at least once a day bleating on about this I need Kickstarter and just feeling really awkward about the whole thing. But it was worth it. It had to be done. It's just part of the process. So you need to kind of commit to that. I also did some paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram, a little bit on TikTok. Have no idea if that worked. Sorry? I'm afraid of TikTok.

Oh, me too. I have become afraid of TikTok. I don't know how to make a reel or a video. Yeah. Well, when I started to do this, I thought I've got to get onto TikTok because of BookTok. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to do it. And, you know, I sat there like a white middle-aged woman, basically trying to learn how to make reels or TikToks or whatever. And it was actually pretty straightforward once I puzzled it through and watched these few videos.

I'm pretty sure that my videos were incredibly embarrassing.

But I thought well I'm going to get out there and do it anyway and I decided what I would do is try and add value to my posts by following my kickstarter journey through TikTok and I talked exactly about what I was doing so I didn't just talk about the book I said all right I'm doing this I don't really know what I'm doing so I'm just going to tell you all the stuff I learned so I would get on every couple of days and say right I realized that I

was doing everything wrong now I've changed it all and oh my god my budget was way off yeah so I kind of really opened the door to show people what was behind it and you know it was it was fun and it was good practice and I know what I'm doing now I've actually taken it off my phone for a bit because I found that it was frying my brain I was just watching too many TikToks I I find yeah there's some nights where I'll go to bed and I might just start flicking through a few

reels and then suddenly it's like an hour later and I especially there's some like storytelling reels like where there's a comedian and each reel is the next part of the story and you just get sucked in. I'm like, oh, I wish I could do that with my stories. Yeah. So, yeah, you try and find the magic ingredient, don't you? Yeah. But I don't think there is one. I think you just have to hit the right people at the right moment with the right story. Yep.

And then it takes off and if that doesn't happen, it's just the way it is. And so have you been happy with your, I guess, pre-orders from that campaign? Yeah, very happy. It's great because it means that there's going to be, you know, maybe 150 books out in the world before it comes out in February officially. So hopefully people will be reviewing and, you know, spreading the word.

And I'm also using it as an opportunity to order extras so that I can send them to kind of bookstagrammers and booktalkers if they want them. And to, I guess, use it as a little bit of a run-up, you know, to make sure that it looks perfect and that it's printing well and that there aren't any problems or faults in it so that when they do start selling, everyone will be happy with them.

And are you doing all of the printing process yourself or have you outsourced that to, like, IngramSpark or something like that?

Yeah I wanted to keep it simple because I'm so inexperienced at this kind of thing so I went with IngramSpark obviously yes I could guess I found that the cost is not as good as you can get it if you do follow your own like find your own printer but I also knew that I was going to be drop shipping a lot of these in to other countries which means that I'm ordering them like buying them in US dollars, ordering from the US IngramSpark and it's getting shipped within the US.

So to keep the cost minimal, that's how you do it. So I knew that if I got them all printed here, I'd then have to ship them all to the US, which is like $40 to ship something. Especially that size book as well. It ended up 400 pages and, you know, it's not light. It's over half a kilo. So I was really glad I did it that way in the end. I would love to have been able to do a local print run and also support an Australian printer, but I just can't make the numbers work yet.

So if I start to get demand for it or shops want it or something, then I'll look at that. But at this stage, I'm just going to try and keep it simple. And have you got a copy yourself, like a hard copy yet?

I do yeah I've got got the soft cover like the paperback and I've got the hardback and they look beautiful actually it didn't the first hardback cover didn't work we had cover designer and I were both pretty new to the do you know what I mean by the dust jacket the folding page yeah it goes over the hardcover yeah so I ordered one of each just to make sure they looked right and the hardback came back with it was just slightly off it wasn't sitting in the center so she adjusted that

and then it was perfect after that so now it looks beautiful I got them both done in the matte matte finish which looks stunning and yeah it's really cool because I love that the hardback has actually got a different cover underneath the dust jacket it's got like a plainer simpler with more kind of iconography. And on the outside, it's got the full cover. So that was really fun too. And how did it feel?

Because initially it was published digitally and now you've got something you can hold in your hand. How did that feel when the book arrived? Yeah, really special because the previous iteration, when it was the seventh, It was available in print but only through Amazon POD. So I did have some but they just felt really inferior to what I've got now. This is a bigger book size. It's not the mass market paperback. It's the six by nine.

And I was able to choose all the finishes I wanted and, you know, the thickness of the paper and the fonts and all of that just looks amazing. 20 times better than it did. Completely new cover as well. And I feel like it really has kind of, it was great to be able to shift it from that 2015 era cover wise into the 2024, 2025 era as well. Yeah, but it does feel lovely. And every time I look at it, I smile.

Whereas the other one, I would look at it and be glad that it was published, but I would never feel 100% happy with the quality of the book. And how long has the project taken you from the time you've received your rights back to publication which is in February? Oh I reckon that I made the decision around February-March this year. They gave the rights back within a week so I immediately pulled the file and started working on it.

I made the decision to do the Kickstarter around the same time so I was working on it and getting costs and starting like setting up the Kickstarter to do a three-month run-up because you need to try and gather as many followers as you can before you launch it. I launched with I think it was around 60 followers which is pretty good you know it's not huge but it's good it's yeah you want to try and get like a minimum of 50.

And then the Kickstarter happened in July so that was only like a three four-month turnaround I guess. I finished rewriting the book around July, August, sent it off for editing, then proofreading. So yeah, now I'm kind of in the waiting period. I'm just fulfilling the Kickstarter right now. I'm actually sending stuff out now. Everyone who got digital rewards, so the e-book, they're all getting that on Halloween and everyone else is just getting all their physical rewards or books

over the next couple of weeks. They're all being posted now. And then I just kind of, I'm in the run-up then for actual launch, like release in February. So, yeah, it was all pretty quick.

Luckily, I had a bit of time. And when, just because I do know what Kickstarter is but don't quite understand how it works in terms of now that the campaign is closed, does that mean no one can order through that now or can they still order the book from you in advance? Yes and yes. So they can no longer be part of the Kickstarter. That is finished. You can actually set your Kickstarter up so that you can take late pledges for a couple of weeks afterwards, which I tried to do and it didn't work.

So that was disappointing because there were a few people who were like, oh, I missed out. And I was like, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. However, you can then set your button on your Kickstarter page to go to a link somewhere else. So that's linking now to my shop. I've got my own website shop and people can go there and pre-order.

So I'm doing pre-orders for the hardcover, the softcover and the e-book and then those people will get the book a few days early from the actual formal release date, which is the 2nd of Feb. Very cool. So just in case people think they've missed out, they haven't missed out, they can still order.

That's right. So they can find that on Kickstarter if they look for the name of the book and the link will take them straight to my website or they can just go to ashharrier.com great okay and so ashharrier.com is the place to to come to to order a copy and they will be released in february is there anything else you'd like to share with me while we have time together yeah i guess one thing i didn't mention earlier which is what is kickstarter because

i think a lot of people don't know they think it is either like a GoFundMe type website and it's absolutely not. So the difference is GoFundMe is donations. Kickstarter is you're buying something. Basically you're pledging money because you think this is a good idea or you want to read this book or you want this invented product or whatever it is. You pledge the money, your money doesn't get taken until the Kickstarter ends.

So you actually set a goal. My goal was, I think, $1,300, which came in just under the thousand US dollars. People see the currency in their own local money. Once it hits that goal, that means you've got the green light, your Kickstarter is funded, but it stays open for however long you selected it was going to stay open. So then it's just building from there. And then only when it ends, which I chose a three-week period,

does the money get taken out of people's accounts? So if the Kickstarter doesn't get off the ground for whatever reason, because you've, you know, your goal is too high or your product is not compelling enough, then no one gets charged. And that's one thing I really liked about Kickstarter because I figured, you know what, no one's going to get hurt here if this doesn't work. So that was really important to me. It was also really important to me that

I wasn't just asking for money for nothing. I wanted people to be getting something for their money.

So if that kind of appeals to an author, I would thoroughly recommend it because it is a really good way to raise awareness about a project that you're working on and to create something really special that people would love to have on their bookshelves. And are you going to try to do that again with when it's time to release the second book and the third?

Yeah I'm still making up my mind how I'm going to do that I'm either going to do one kickstarter for both and then you know have the full set kind of available perhaps with like one of those slip covers that you can put all the books into or I'm going to do one each but it's going to be fairly quick release next year I'm hoping to do February then May for book two and September for book three so I don't know if I'd maybe be pushing my luck a bit with my friends and family

by posting every day again about Kickstarter twice like that. Yeah, I think perhaps I might combine the two. There also are a heck of a lot of work. So make sure you've kind of cleared your diary for three weeks or however long you do it for. Don't overcommit because it's a lot more work than you think it's going to be. And I think also identifying what value you're providing, like I find it challenging to say, can you support my project I'm not really sure what I'm giving you back in return.

And I think value depends on the individual as well so people like we we come from a gaming family so um we're often getting parcels arrive that are from a kickstarter where t-shirts arrived or some special dice has arrived yeah like oh that's very cool yeah so people do place value on on different things as well yeah identifying what's popular yeah and i think what a lot of people love about kickstarter is the physical nature of what you're getting generally,

people are in it like most people very few people only bought the ebook most people were there for the physical book and they loved the idea of getting you know the matching charm bracelet and stuff like that that was cool appealing and i'm going like fun shopping can i get a charm Pricelift? I love that.

Yeah and kind of coming up with the concepts for those things was really good fun I think I know we talked about merch but you know I've got these on the on the book itself I'll show you I know that your listeners can't see this but on the inside you'll see there's like a mandala with seven symbols I don't know which way to show that and that's always been part of the the story but I was able this time to get it redesigned, made really beautiful and then use those symbols all through the merch.

So in the art cards but also because you can get charms for practically anything now. So the charm bracelet has the seven gift charms on, you know, a heart, a hand, a skull, a star, stuff like that. So it all matches and it's just really, really, what's the word? Satisfying. So potentially next year is going to be a lot around releasing those three books. Have you got any other projects in the background happening while you're working on those?

I do. I always have lots of projects happening. I'm working currently through a major edit of my 2025, at this stage it's 2025, but it might change to 2026, title, which is an adult historical coming out through Pantera Press, because I'm now a proud hybrid author, kind of working in the indie zone as well as in the traditional publishing zone. And I'm really excited about that. That one's set in Oxford in 1928, and I got to do some amazing travel research for that one.

I've also got a kid's book that I'm kind of pitching at the moment and yeah continuing to work on the ash harrier name because i would really love to get some more kind of dark academia books out under that name i'm really enjoying writing that genre and i've had some ideas so i'm just kind of waiting to get this current project finished so that i can chase that bright shiny new thing so it sounds like there's a lot on the boil for you. No rest for the wicked at all.

I've really been pleased to hear that your project was a success and also that it is a pathway to publication for authors as well in terms of that Kickstarter is something that you can play with and experiment with to get your book out. Because I think that is half the battle at times is, trying to get traditionally published and it doesn't always happen. It's a real slow burn, but there are other ways to get your book out into the world.

So it sounds like it's a really fun, creative process as well. I'm like, oh, let's get a few dopamine hits from doing Kickstarter.

Oh my God. Yeah. That's actually a really good way to describe it. And often, as you'll know, when it's release day for your book, it's kind of a big anticlimax because you're waiting for this day it happens and you've got literally no data when you're traditionally published you're just sitting there and you go oh okay that was that whereas at least during a kickstarter it finishes and it's like yes it funded and now I get to go and do all these fun things I have to admit

you've really just described what my day was like on when my my book came out I was just at work, in meetings doing my thing and it was like any other day except in the world my book was out Yeah, it's kind of that secret knowledge, isn't it? Sad. I was like, oh, it should be like feeling wonderful, but I'm just getting on with it.

I think a lot of authors have that kind of a little bit of post-release depression almost because you think that something major, like the world's going to change somehow on that day and then it doesn't and you're quite disappointed. And my cat's had this habit of always vomiting on the morning of my book releases as well.

So that was a nice little tradition. Is that an indicator of success? so if they vomit the book's gonna sell well it was an indicator of great stress and annoyance that's what i could tell you yep yeah animals they they are wonderful to have in your life but they can also create chaos oh yeah well thank you so much ash for joining me i really enjoyed learning and i have joined the kickstarter for authors group hopefully they let me in I'll see you in there then. Cool.

Are you thinking about doing that? Maybe. I do have some stories that I'm getting any traction the way I would like, so it might be a different pathway. But if anything, I'll learn something. Yes, absolutely. Well, make sure. I mean, hopefully I'll notice online. But if I don't, please let me know. I'd love to check it out. Definitely. Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your experiences with our listeners. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.