Sounds Like Love With Ashley Poston

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird.
Get weird. It's your fade villain, Kale Lower.

Speaker 2 And you're listening to Barely Famous.

Speaker 2 All right, today's guest is best-selling author Ashley Poston. She's written everything from YA rom-coms to Go Smut.
And today we're going to get into all of it.

Speaker 2 So Ashley has a unique reader audience, and I can't wait to get to know her today. Hi, Ashley.
Thank you you for joining us on Barely Famous Podcast.

Speaker 9 Oh, I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So your newest release is...

Speaker 9 It sounds like love.

Speaker 2 I know that Seven Year Slip went viral all over Book Talk and that's where I had first heard of you. And so, but that's not your only book.

Speaker 9 No, I have, I have a dozen books at least.

Speaker 2 And so did that bring up people looking up your, like your backlist and stuff when you, when Seven Year Slip went viral?

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah. Like they were, they were like, oh, I didn't know that she wrote Geekerella,

Speaker 9 which is my first YA YA book, or that I wrote The Dead Romantics. And then after they found Seven Years Slip, they also found Novel Love Story, which came out last year.

Speaker 9 And now everyone's following me to sound like love.

Speaker 2 I love that. So before you started writing, you worked in publishing.
Is that right? Yes. What made you make the switch from publishing to writing books?

Speaker 9 I've always wanted to write books and I've always known like that was my end goal.

Speaker 9 But until I could do that full time, I also really loved

Speaker 9 the art of like pushing a book and the art of like getting a like a story into the hands of readers

Speaker 9 and so that was just one thing that was just it felt natural to just kind of

Speaker 9 try and figure out a way into it to it. There's not one like path into publishing really.
So I kind of went a roundabout way.

Speaker 9 When I was in college, I was an English major, but I got into publishing through freelance cover design and I self-taught myself graphic design way back when. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And so an opportunity opened up and I became a marketing designer. And so I worked in publishing, doing Google ads and newspaper ads and tote bags and pencils.

Speaker 2 So do you do your own covers then?

Speaker 9 No, I do not.

Speaker 9 I have a really lovely team at Berkeley.

Speaker 2 Okay. I watch, I follow this girl on TikTok who works for, like, she does covers for books.
And she walks through the process of like where it started and how it ended. And I think that's really cool.

Speaker 9 It is so cool.

Speaker 9 I also watch a lot of those too. And I'm, and like, everyone's process is a little different.
And so I love watching other artists' process and how they do it.

Speaker 2 And you went to USC?

Speaker 9 Yeah, the University of South Carolina.

Speaker 2 And when you were going there for English, you knew you wanted to write.

Speaker 9 Yes. Oh, that's really cool.
That was one thing that I always knew I wanted to do. And English, like, I've always loved stories in general.
So English just felt like the natural major to have.

Speaker 9 And it's something that I could like use for a multitude of things that I wanted to try and do.

Speaker 9 So yeah, I just, I, I just did English and I just kept writing. writing.
And I wrote while I was working and publishing. And then finally, I sold my first book and I had a talk with my agent.

Speaker 9 And I was like, hey, do you think I could do this writing thing full time? And she was like, yeah, no, absolutely. Not in New York.

Speaker 9 Too, too expensive.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Can't do it. Stars are not in position.
So.

Speaker 9 I ended up moving back home to South Carolina and I lived with my parents for a little while, writing two books a year. And then COVID happened and my career kind of stalled.

Speaker 9 Like a lot of people's careers kind of stalled.

Speaker 9 And so I was like, Holly, I don't know what to do. Holly's my agent.
And Holly was like, just write something weird. I'm like, cool, I can do that.

Speaker 9 So I wrote The Dead Romantics, which at the time was called Ghost Boners, because.

Speaker 9 Why not? I label all of my books silly things

Speaker 9 because I want to remind myself, like, to have fun while I'm doing it. It's not, it's not that serious.

Speaker 9 I can, like, forgive myself for like mistakes that happen because this is something that I do for joy.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And yeah. And then we sold Dead Romantics, and I have been ever since with my lovely editor, Amanda, at Berkeley, and it's been a dream.
Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2 When did Geekerella?

Speaker 9 Geekerella came out in 2017. So was that your first? It was, yes.

Speaker 9 It was my first traditionally published novel.

Speaker 2 Okay. What was that experience like?

Speaker 9 It was, it was so wild because, so technically, Geekarella is my first novel, but it's an IP. So it was a work-for-hire for Quirk Books.
So I auditioned for the role to write that novel. Okay.

Speaker 9 And while I was doing that, I was on submission with another book, Heart of Iron, which took another eight months to sell. So while, so after, so I, so we were,

Speaker 9 we were on submission for a Heart of Iron when I got the offer for Geekerella. So technically, Geekerella sold first and then eight months later, Heart of Iron sold.
Oh, wow. That's incredible.

Speaker 9 It was, it,

Speaker 9 paths are always different, you know?

Speaker 2 Would that be similar to ghost writing?

Speaker 9 Kind of.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 IP writing is you are still writing mostly as like your, your own self. They hire you because of your voice, because of, because you know the story, because they think you're the best fit for it.

Speaker 9 And there are a lot of books that are IP projects that are generated in-house, that they pick authors that have the perfect voice for those roles. And that's how a lot of books are written.

Speaker 2 And you grew up in South Carolina. So how do you think your upbringing and growing up in South Carolina has shaped your voice in becoming an author?

Speaker 9 My parents always

Speaker 9 told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. They gave me books when I was like, I love reading.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 there's really not much in South Carolina.

Speaker 9 There's sports.

Speaker 2 There's... A bookstore, maybe?

Speaker 9 You know what? There was Borders.

Speaker 9 i i spent a lot of time in borders i remember borders they closed down a long time ago and i wonder if they would consider bringing it back listen if if they did i would be the first one there in their manga section just sitting down just like what's manga uh a manga is uh those uh japanese comic books that okay that you read backwards to front yeah oh that's cool is that like your favorite oh i i love manga so much um it is i've i i always have uh ever since i was like in middle school and i first found it i was like oh this is so This is so cool.

Speaker 9 And like these, like, there, there's like 20 volumes in this story that goes on forever. I love this.

Speaker 9 And so as like a kid, I

Speaker 9 like ate it up. And now that I'm an adult, I still like, you know, I still like to read, read it.
And I love to like read the things that bring me joy.

Speaker 2 For sure. And fanfic is one of those.
Oh, yeah. I had to have the girls explain to me what fan fiction was because I actually didn't know.
Are you kidding me? No.

Speaker 2 I live under a rock.

Speaker 9 It must be a very nice rock, though. i mean

Speaker 9 so what is what is fan fiction okay so fan fiction is basically when you uh have

Speaker 9 it's when you write your own story based on like a book or a piece of media that you really like so say you like twilight uh and you're like man i like twilight but i have a different story for edward and bella uh i'm going to write that other story and i'm going to you know like elaborate on it yeah yeah and see where it goes or or say i don't like bella with with with edward i think i think bella should have been with alice which is what should have happened uh

Speaker 9 but uh but and so and so you can like write that in this like fanfic space and there's a community around that and that's actually where i got my start writing was because there was nothing in south carolina i ended up um finding a fan fiction community online for my favorite fandom and I just started writing like the wind of bullseye, right?

Speaker 9 I wrote so many different fanfics. I found so many different friends in like fandom.
I explored like who I was and who I like wanted to be

Speaker 9 like in this community.

Speaker 9 And it basically opened up my entire world in this like very, very small town of South Carolina. But I love that.

Speaker 2 And you did theater too? I did. And so how did that shape your voice as a storyteller?

Speaker 9 In high school, I did a lot of tech theater, but I also did playwriting. And so I won a state championship for playwriting.
And I was going to go to SCAD for their screenwriting and playwriting.

Speaker 9 And then the 2008 recession happened. And my mom lost her job.
And I had a scholarship, but it wasn't enough. And I wanted to stay close to home.
So I chose the University of South Carolina.

Speaker 9 It ended up being the

Speaker 9 perfect fit for me because I ended up finding a mentor who helped me get my first like internship in publishing. And,

Speaker 9 you know, fast forward 15 years, and here I am.

Speaker 2 No, I congratulations. And so, your

Speaker 2 first novel, Geekarella, is that also based on fanfic?

Speaker 9 Well, okay, so the IP.

Speaker 2 I know you said it was IP and it was, it's different, but is it fanfic or no?

Speaker 9 Well, I

Speaker 9 you can argue that any Cinderella retelling is fanfic. I mean, like very loosely.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 9 But I would not consider it fanfic. Like I think like the fanfic uh like labels should be reserved for like transformative works that you find on AO3 or Wattpad or fan or like fanfiction.net.

Speaker 9 Whereas if you retell something that is in like the public sphere, like like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast or the Count of Monte Cristo,

Speaker 9 then that's like more of a retelling than fanfig. But like technically in like loose broad terms, yeah, they are both

Speaker 9 transformative works. Okay.

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Speaker 2 And then you also write YA and also, you know, adult fiction. So how do you switch your mindset when you're writing between the genres? Because I would imagine they're pretty different.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 they are pretty different, but like in a lot of ways, they are really similar as well.

Speaker 9 For my YA books, a lot of young adult is about like first-time experiences.

Speaker 9 And so, like, middle grade, I like, so for me, middle grade is like finding as like a main character finding where they fit in and like, like, like, like, like, like who they are and like fit in in their small community and their family.

Speaker 9 For like YA, it's like, how do you fit in with like the larger world? Like, how do you engage with community or like engage with like relationships?

Speaker 9 Um, and that's where like first kisses come in and first like relationships and first crushes. And with like an adult, it's still the same thing.
You're still like finding first, obviously.

Speaker 9 And you're also like reinventing yourself over and over again. So you're trying to find who you are again.

Speaker 9 And that's, for me, that's what like adult romance is, is like finding out who you, who you truly are and who you want to be and who you want to surround yourself with. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Because I think that's something that we as humans have to constantly like navigate in like the real world as well. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And so that's like a through line between both like middle grade YA and adult is that finding where you fit in in this human experience.

Speaker 2 Do you ever take personal experiences and incorporate them in either YA or adult romance?

Speaker 9 Always.

Speaker 2 And what is that like? Do people that know you ever read your books and you're like, wait, this sounds familiar?

Speaker 9 Oh, oh yeah.

Speaker 9 Quite often, actually.

Speaker 9 There was a, there was one book, I, I'm not sure which one, but there's a,

Speaker 9 there was a

Speaker 9 margarita mixer that is in real life, and it's like a lawnmower engine attached to a blender, and you have to like crank it

Speaker 9 to start it.

Speaker 9 And so I put it into one of one of my novels. And

Speaker 9 my parents' beach crew that they always like see every summer. They're like, hey,

Speaker 9 you added the margarita mixer. And I'm like, yeah, I did.
And they're like, you also killed your dad again in this one.

Speaker 2 Did you kill your dad in a book?

Speaker 9 Oh, like three of them.

Speaker 2 Is he alive in real life?

Speaker 9 He's super alive.

Speaker 2 I don't know if that's bad juju, or does he know you kill them all?

Speaker 8 Oh, how does he feel about that?

Speaker 9 So he, he, he, he listens to every one of my books. And so before he goes into them, he's like, Did you kill me in this one again?

Speaker 2 Oh, it's like a running joke. It's, yeah, so he's not offended.
No, he's not. Do you kill off any other family members that we should know about? You know what?

Speaker 9 It sounds like, love, I think I might have killed off my mom.

Speaker 2 Okay. It's fine.
Is she okay with it?

Speaker 9 Oh, she's good. She's like, she was like, finally.

Speaker 2 Do you have a favorite author or favorite book?

Speaker 9 Oh,

Speaker 9 I feel like, yes, I do.

Speaker 9 I love House Living Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

Speaker 9 It is, it's always, it's the same exact answer to this question I get all the time. And they're like, Ashley, don't you have like more than one favorite book? And I'm like, yes.

Speaker 9 But House Living Castle by Diana Wynn Jones was like, was instrumental in me becoming an author. It was, it was one of the reasons because I read it when I was 12.

Speaker 9 And Diana Wynn Jones, if you haven't read her, she has a really like witty, wry kind of voice to her writing that is

Speaker 9 in, it's impeccable. It's so good.
It reminds me of like Terry Pratchett.

Speaker 9 Terry Pratchett is also a fantastic fantasy author.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I fell in love with the book and then I read like everything else that she ever wrote.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I was like, I want to be an author that can that can make me me laugh and cry at the exact same time. I love that.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 2 We were just talking about that earlier today, that like, once you find an author that you love, you'll buy their entire catalog of books and titles.

Speaker 2 And so that's cool that you just mentioned that as well.

Speaker 9 Oh, man. It's yeah.
And like, she, she, she passed on in

Speaker 9 2014. Uh, so sadly, there will never be any more books from her.
But now I'm like collecting first editions. So, so we're on the next level now.
Right, right.

Speaker 2 Do any of your, do any of your books have different covers?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 9 no, okay, so technically, yes. Uh, so some foreign editions have different covers, uh, but I also, there's a fairy loot special edition of my adult romances that are just really beautiful.

Speaker 9 They're pastel, they are technically the same covers, the same design, but they're just different colors. Okay, and they have like a pretty painted edges and they have like embossing.

Speaker 9 Oh, they're just they're beautiful packages.

Speaker 2 Your covers are really, really pretty.

Speaker 9 Thank you. Yeah, sometimes books, books are repackaged to like find a different audience.
Sure. So that's kind of usually how that happens.

Speaker 2 Do you have any books that you have written that you would build a series off of?

Speaker 2 Any standalones that you would build a series off of?

Speaker 9 I don't, I don't think so not yet, just because most of my YA, they're pretty like, they're wrapped up pretty well. And my adult

Speaker 9 contemporaries, they're all sort of interconnected anyway. They have characters that kind of pop in between each other.
So, so not really.

Speaker 9 I get asked sometimes whether or not I'm going to write a sequel to The Dead Romantics. And are you?

Speaker 9 I don't know.

Speaker 2 We'll see. Maybe.
Maybe.

Speaker 9 I mean, if. If like the right story comes to me, absolutely.
But I'm not going to like sit down and be like, okay, I'm going to write a sequel.

Speaker 9 If I'm going to write a sequel, it's going to have to be a good story because I absolutely hate a sequel that breaks up like the main characters

Speaker 9 after you go through an entire book getting them together just to have them like have a miscommunication and then just break up in the second one just to get back together again. Right.

Speaker 9 I truly abhor that.

Speaker 2 Well, I hate that in real life. So let's also not put it in a book.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I get that.

Speaker 9 I'm like, you know what? You know, romances like deserve happy endings where they just stay happy, where like they're in a stasis at the end. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And like, I think that's why a lot of readers like gravitate to romance because, you know, like even with everything that happens, all the the betrayal all the drama you know at the end there's going to be a happy ending always oh in romance yes if like a book is like shelved in the romance section it it pretty much has to have a happy ending wait i didn't know that because i was like i was recently reading a book i think it was like may

Speaker 2 and i was like how is this gonna end like i did not know i didn't know that they have they have happy endings because so when she said that i was like is that a spoiler Oh, no, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 9 Like it is like baked into the entire genre. Like if it's romance, it's going to have a happy ending.

Speaker 2 So if it's not having a happy ending, what type of genre would that be?

Speaker 9 It would probably women's fiction or it would be like, I think there's some like dark romance, but it could be not like capital R romance.

Speaker 2 Okay. And then for like, as far as books go, like when I was asking you about inner, you said interconnected series or would you ever build off into a series? You're not contracted.

Speaker 2 Could you, if you don't have a contract for a series, could you decide, hey, like I want to do a sequel to this? I mean, I

Speaker 2 could.

Speaker 2 I could. Like, how does that, Do you have the freedom to do that? Or how does that work?

Speaker 9 I mean, I, I, I think I would have the freedom to do that, but I don't think I would want to. So, all of my books are, are like a team effort between me and my amazing editor.

Speaker 9 And so, like, they wouldn't be half as good as they are without her. So, I don't think I would want to go on any journey without my editor beside me.

Speaker 9 But, but I'm pretty sure that if like Amanda, if like I wanted to shenanigan, Amanda would definitely shenanigan with me.

Speaker 2 What is shenanigan?

Speaker 9 Goof off.

Speaker 9 Do a fun.

Speaker 2 Your first ever, The Geekarella was published through someone else. Well, your next novel was The Dead Romantic?

Speaker 9 So it was Geekerella, and then there were two sequels, The Princess and the Fangirl and Bookish and the Beast. And then I also published with Harper.

Speaker 9 I published a space fantasy, Heart of Iron and Soul of Stars. It was a duology.
And I published a standalone young adult fantasy called Among the Beasts and Briars.

Speaker 9 And then COVID. and then the dead romantics uh with berkeley so you never really self-published then did you ever think about self-publishing oh i did i i i self-published back in 2012.

Speaker 9 okay uh realized very quickly was not for me i why why do you say that because i am very good at writing the book i i am not good at marketing myself i'm very bad at being like my own uh my own marketer okay i i just i am not equipped to do that you do a a good job on social media.

Speaker 9 Thank you because I

Speaker 9 have someone behind the scenes to help me. Same.

Speaker 2 Yeah, same.

Speaker 9 But I am very bad at promoting myself because I'm like, why should I promote myself when there are these other amazing books that I am reading that I'm loving that I also want to promote? Right.

Speaker 9 So it's that balance is hard for me.

Speaker 2 I mean, I definitely think that social media has changed the game for self-publishing and marketing because there you can essentially do it for free. So I think that's really cool.

Speaker 2 It's harder than that. No, for sure, it's harder.
And I would imagine that it would be be hard too, because you've worked with publishers. And so you know what, you know, the game plan is.

Speaker 2 And so when you do it for yourself, it's going to be a little bit harder and different. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And like, you have to be, you have to be your own marketer. You have to be your own publicist.
Like you are, you are wearing a billion different hats at once and you might not get paid for it.

Speaker 9 And so, and so it's all like a passion project until it isn't. And it's just, I have so much respect for indie authors because they are the whole kit and caboodle.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've talked to a couple indie authors and they just, and they're so sweet. And I'm like, how can I help you? Right?

Speaker 9 It's like, let me help you, please.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I feel like I just want to help them.

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Speaker 2 What do you do when there's writer's block? When you said COVID hit and you were kind of going through like a limbo, a period of limbo, like what do you do for writer's block?

Speaker 2 What do you when you're not writing?

Speaker 9 I usually try to refill the well anytime, it like any way I can. I

Speaker 9 like watch movies. I play video games.
I have a long list of video games that I am like waiting to actually play until I have like time to play them. And then I will just tear through all of them.

Speaker 9 And then I will go back to writing again.

Speaker 9 And so. I do a lot of that.
I read a whole lot of fanfic, a disgusting amount of fanfic.

Speaker 8 It is truly abhorrent how much fanfic that I read.

Speaker 9 But yeah,

Speaker 9 I just pursue whatever brings me joy. And like for Sounds Like Love, it was really hard for me to write that one just because I was so creatively burnt out.
Yeah. Because I had been going non-stop

Speaker 9 for like three years at that point. And so I hit a brick wall and I did not know.
how to write this book. And so I took some, took a little bit of time off, a little bit like two weeks, right?

Speaker 9 And I decided to go back to what I did best, which was writing fanfic. So I went back to AO3, Archive of Our Own, and I wrote like a 50,000-word fanfic in two weeks.

Speaker 9 And I remembered, oh, I know how to tell a story. I, I love these characters.
I love how to write. This is amazing.

Speaker 9 And it just, it filled me with so much like creative energy and joy just to not have like the shackles of like deadlines and like a contract and and things that like I like I like deliverables that I had to to turn in like just to have something for me and so now whenever a new author or an aspiring author asks me, what's what is like a,

Speaker 9 oh, what's the word? I'm blanking.

Speaker 8 Like advice?

Speaker 9 Yeah, advice. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oof. Words.

Speaker 9 I get paid for them. Weird.

Speaker 2 That's how I feel every day. I'm like, I get paid for this.
Like, what is going on?

Speaker 9 It's like, I know this word. This is, this is a word that I know.
Where is it going? It's just, it's gone. It's a whoosh.

Speaker 9 When new authors ask for advice, I always tell them, keep keep something sacred just for you because the industry is one thing and your creative endeavor is another.

Speaker 9 And so always keep like a story or keep like your username as your fanfic. Just keep one thing just for yourself that you don't want to monetize, that you don't want to show to the public.

Speaker 9 So you can remember that

Speaker 9 you love doing this, that this is like... freaking awesome.

Speaker 2 That's actually really good advice. I don't think I've ever heard that.
Any author that I've talked to has never said anything like that.

Speaker 9 Yeah. It's

Speaker 2 trial and error, right? It could be true for so many career paths, right? It's not just writing. It could be for anything.
Keep something for you.

Speaker 9 Yeah, especially in like this day and age when like everything is like content and everything can be like sold and marketed.

Speaker 9 Like just keep something that's just for you that you're not going to let anyone else see. Or if they do, you're going to be anonymous, like on AO3.

Speaker 9 And that's, that's been like, basically like a godsend for me. And so I go back to fanfic whenever I really need to refill the well and it keeps me from creative burnout.

Speaker 2 So then once you did that and you took your two weeks, you wrote the fanfic and then you were like, I can tell stories. What truly inspired sounds like love?

Speaker 9 It was the idea of two

Speaker 9 people communicating telepathically because you see that a lot in romantic-y, like how like two faded maids, they can like, you know, hear each other's thoughts or like, you know, a main character and a dragon or something.

Speaker 9 And I'm like, well, what would that look like in a contemporary setting because i love that trope so much in fanfic and it's like very popular in fanfic telempathy yeah telepathy okay yeah and so i was like well what's it what does that look like in like a romance book

Speaker 9 and i also really love music um i i i grew up going to concerts uh i think my first concert was a jimmy buffet concert

Speaker 9 because my parents are major parent heads uh and like they took me to like elton john and aerosmith and like all of those like you know divorced dad rock so

Speaker 9 so I, so that's like the songs that I still listen to is a lot of divorced dad rock.

Speaker 9 And, uh, and so I wanted to write a book that just like filled me with like the kind of joy that I have when I listen to my favorite song and I turn it up to 11.

Speaker 9 I can, I can, and I can feel it rattling in my chest, you know, when it's like that loud. And I wanted to write a book that kind of reminded me of that feeling.

Speaker 2 I love that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 And you wrote The Dead Romantics

Speaker 2 during, after COVID or before COVID, or or during. Technically, during.
But it was Ghostboners before.

Speaker 2 How did it evolve into The Dead Romantics being a best-selling book?

Speaker 9 Well, first, it was a Raylo fic for like a hot second. What is that? Uh, it was um, Ray and Kylo Wren, so it was a fanfic for like three chapters.

Speaker 9 Star Wars, Star Wars, yes, yes, Star Wars.

Speaker 2 I knew it. Yeah, I still haven't watched it, but I'll get to it at some point.
It's fine. It's fine.

Speaker 2 I have not watched Star Wars yet, but um, how did that evolve evolve into what it is today?

Speaker 9 So it

Speaker 9 I wrote the first three chapters and it was like

Speaker 9 an alternate universe. So like there was like no Star Warsiness in it.
Yeah. There weren't space wizards or anything.
And I was like, oh, this is really fun.

Speaker 9 It's like a ghost and this is a ghostwriter and it's in publishing and I am really enjoying writing this.

Speaker 9 I think I'm going to not write this as a fan pic and I'm going to take this plot and move it over here.

Speaker 9 And so I

Speaker 9 like divorced it from

Speaker 9 the fanfic of it all.

Speaker 9 And I

Speaker 9 just wrote a book about

Speaker 9 my feelings on kind of like being stagnant and stuck in a place in my career that I wasn't quite sure how to get out of. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I just wanted to write like the the

Speaker 9 feeling of like, I love you, but I can't touch you. like that is that is that is just so addictive to me.
Yeah, it's just it's so powerful, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, because I mean if you think about it in real life like when people pass away or whatever you're like I love you so much, but I can't touch you exactly exactly and then also like when you're like in love with someone who who like you

Speaker 9 you know, you have this like electric connection with, but they're a ghost and they're dead and you don't know what to do about those feelings, right?

Speaker 9 And I also was exploring at the time.

Speaker 9 My grandmother had passed away. And

Speaker 9 it wasn't sudden, but it was during a time when I was on the, it was in 2019.

Speaker 9 And my,

Speaker 9 I was on the road for, I think it was Princess and the Fangirl. And so

Speaker 9 she.

Speaker 9 got sick very quickly. And then I went to San Diego Comic-Con.

Speaker 9 And the night I flew home was the night she passed away. And so I never got to say goodbye to her.
And that had been weighing on me for a while. And I didn't know how to process that grief.

Speaker 9 And so when I started to write The Dead Romantics and it was turning into this kind of story about grief and longing and saying goodbye when you don't think you have the chance to,

Speaker 9 I realized, oh, this is this is me talking about my own feelings. This is me exploring

Speaker 9 like the things that I have kept bottled up for years at this point.

Speaker 9 And it was just really cathartic for me. And then I ended up

Speaker 9 kind of writing my grandmother into the book.

Speaker 9 And I got to say goodbye to her. And it was just so nice.

Speaker 2 I was going to ask you if it was cathartic, but you already answered that. So that worked out for you.

Speaker 2 And how did your own experience, your own experiences through life sort of shape the way that you write?

Speaker 2 Because it sounds like you put your family members in the books and you put your own feelings in the books. So how has that been? Therapeutic?

Speaker 9 It's been, it's been cheaper than therapy.

Speaker 2 I would imagine. I just paid my therapist yesterday.

Speaker 2 Oh, right. Like,

Speaker 9 it's, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's,

Speaker 9 joking aside, it's, it's, it's how I see the world. I'm like, I'm, I'm anxious all the time and I'm neurodivergent.

Speaker 9 And so writing is a way for me to explore thoughts and feelings that I have like from the outside looking looking in.

Speaker 9 So I am writing about things that I am trying to puzzle out myself, but I don't know exactly how to. And so writing kind of helps me do that sometimes.

Speaker 2 Do you get that? Do your readers and your audience like tell you the same thing that you've helped them do exactly what you're trying to do through your books?

Speaker 9 All the time. Yeah.
And it's, it's so lovely because like when you're going through these big emotions, you feel like you're alone in it. And then to have

Speaker 9 like someone else come up to me like, oh, you wrote the exact thing I was feeling. it's like oh you you too come over to my island we can we can like be like weird and mourn together you know

Speaker 2 and it's just it's so nice to know that like in this world that like isolates you so much so much of the time um you're not actually as alone as you think you are right and i think books have the transformative power to do that well i think sometimes um when you're going through something and you don't exactly have words like you can't put your thoughts or your feelings into words the a book by an author who's gone through the same thing or is writing about the same thing can put it into words for you.

Speaker 2 And you're like, oh, that's what that was. Oh, yeah.
Which is helpful.

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Speaker 2 How did you pick your chapter song titles?

Speaker 2 Was it the dad divorce? What was it? Divorce. Divorce dad rock.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 I, okay, so I always make playlists as I'm writing the book. And so Sounds Like Love has like a huge playlist on Spotify.
It's public.

Speaker 9 People can find it if they want to and so i had to choose song titles or

Speaker 9 songs that had the title in the song because the the the chapter titles are lyrics but there's like the song title in the lyric okay so and not every like song has like the title in the song actually which is something that i that i found out while i was while i was trying to find song titles well chapter titles so just songs that you liked or yeah songs that i liked songs that uh that might that would be like a good listen while you're actually reading the chapter.

Speaker 9 Songs that have the same vibe, songs that are just kind of fun. Like I think the cheeseburger and paradise one,

Speaker 9 Jimmy Buffett, is like when they go to a restaurant or they're at a bar. Yeah.

Speaker 9 So kind of like that.

Speaker 2 We, when we run book club, we always talk about the books that have soundtracks or sound like playlists and we love that. We think it's a really cool element.
So really is love that.

Speaker 9 I think, I think my favorite like

Speaker 9 iteration of that is, oh gosh, A Butcher and Blackbird Blackbird has like the playlist at the end.

Speaker 2 Oh, Emily is a big fan of Butcher and Blackbird and Blackbird. I haven't read it yet, but

Speaker 2 I'll get to it eventually. My TBR is too long and I keep adding more books to it.
So I'm like, what do I do?

Speaker 2 It's like I can't, I can only read on my Kindle a physical copy and listen to so many books at the same time.

Speaker 9 Exactly. Like you only have so many hands.

Speaker 2 What is your favorite medium?

Speaker 9 medium to read to read or to consume a book uh okay it really all depends on the book Like some books are better in audio. They just are.
Like I tried.

Speaker 9 So one good example is I tried to read Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies by Heather Fawcett.

Speaker 9 And I tried like two or three times and I just could not get into it.

Speaker 9 And then I listened to the audiobook and it... and I could not stop listening to it.
I was like walking around the house, just pacing, just listening to this audiobook, trying to find something to do.

Speaker 9 And like there, there are some, there are some books that are just better as audiobooks, I think. For sure.
Yeah, and like same with Murderbot, the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Okay.

Speaker 9 Fantastic audiobook series.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 9 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 I did, I listened to Remarkably Bright Creatures on audio, Daisy Jones and the Six.

Speaker 9 Oh, Daisy Jones and the Six is fantastic on audio.

Speaker 2 I just feel like that book in and of itself should only be like, obviously it's a book, but the audio was so good. So good.
This is like a full cast.

Speaker 2 Do you ever have a hand in who does your audiobooks?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I work pretty closely with the producers of the audiobook. And for Sounds Like Love, actually, I got to request Patty Murin, who is amazing.
And

Speaker 9 we met in January. And she's like, I'm such a big fan of yours.

Speaker 9 And I'm like, I'm such a big fan of yours because she's read for Catherine Sinner's books and she's also like a Broadway star and she's amazing. And I was like, I would love you to read for Jodi.

Speaker 9 She's like, I would love to read for Joni. Oh, that's so sweet.
Yeah. And so like, we actually managed to make it happen.
And so Patty Miran is the voice of Joni in Sounds Like Love.

Speaker 9 And then she and her husband, they actually wrote the song Sounds Like Love. And you can hear it on like Spotify and like anywhere.
You can like find music.

Speaker 9 And it's just like so cool because it's a song that was in my head and now it's real. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Which is something that that usually does not happen to like authors because we're like, oh, we have this thing in our head and we'll just write it down. And then that's it.
Nothing else. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And it's just it's it's so cool to see uh to see other people creating things from something that you created like even like that or fanfic or like fan art i i love all of it and how did you name your characters joni and sebastian uh joni so in the book joni has a brother uh so i named them joni and mitchell or joni mitchell

Speaker 9 yeah

Speaker 2 just that's it.

Speaker 9 And so for Sebastian,

Speaker 9 I actually had the, so his nickname is Sasha. That's what everyone calls him.
Well, everyone who likes him calls him.

Speaker 9 And so I kind of like reverse engineered that. I was like, okay, what's a name that's like the nickname Sasha? So one's, so one's Alexander and then like a deep cut one.
Yeah, weirdly, yeah.

Speaker 2 But I wouldn't even get Sasha from Sebastian.

Speaker 9 Exactly. But like, that's like, that is, that is another one.

Speaker 9 Like, like, because, like, uh, because a shortening of Sebastian is just Bastion, and then like there's like a weird translation that goes to Sasha. It, okay, yeah, it's like three times removed.

Speaker 2 Okay, okay. And then your other books, like, how do you name the characters in your other books?

Speaker 9 Uh, so for a novel love story, it's uh, Eileen and Anders, uh, but Eileen goes by Elsie, uh, and it's from Come On Eileen

Speaker 9 because dad rock.

Speaker 2 There's a theme.

Speaker 9 For the seven-year slip,

Speaker 9 I knew I wanted to name her Clementine, but I didn't know what I wanted her nickname to be because I didn't want to be Clemmy. Because that sounds like that's like Flemy, right?

Speaker 2 It's just Clemmy.

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 9 So I was like, okay, what Clementine? Lemon. Lemon's great.
So she goes by lemon.

Speaker 9 And I named her Clementine because there was in a previous draft a reoccurring motif of, oh, my darling, Clementine. Okay.

Speaker 9 And then for Florence,

Speaker 9 I think I just named her after Florence Pugh.

Speaker 2 Being honest.

Speaker 2 Did you expect the success of Seven Year Slip? Like,

Speaker 2 did you feel, okay, this is going to go viral? This is going to be big.

Speaker 9 No, no, not at all. It took me completely by surprise.

Speaker 2 And do you ever get that feeling? Like, you're like, I'm putting out this book. This is going to be the one.
Do you ever get that feeling? No.

Speaker 9 No, I try not to think about it. Okay.

Speaker 2 So then you were shocked when Seven Year Slip took off.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I was, I was very, very shocked because for the first six months, it really didn't. It sold well, but it wasn't like super well, right?

Speaker 9 And then it made a few end-of-year lists, and then Book Talk took it and ran with it. And I, that was it.
Like, yeah, it's, it's been fantastic.

Speaker 9 And Seven Year Slip is now like so many people's favorite books. And so so many people found me through Seven Year Slip.

Speaker 9 And a lot of people have like, have come to me and said, hey, I really appreciated what you wrote in Seven Year Slip because it seven Year Slip involves a family member's death by suicide.

Speaker 9 And I have personal

Speaker 9 experience with that. And so, and like suicide is always something that like it feels taboo to talk about.
And so a lot of people don't talk about it and don't know how to talk about it. Right.
And so

Speaker 9 a lot of people come up to me and go, thank you so much for talking, for like talking about it, for like not making it like

Speaker 9 a no-go subject, you know, it's because it's something that's very real and something that we all kind of have to deal with or like some of us do have to deal with and some of us have like repercussions from it.

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Speaker 2 so you've talked about grief suicide dementia

Speaker 9 uh there is there is dementia in uh dementia rep and um sounds like love yes do what makes you want to talk about the topics that people don't want to talk about because like

Speaker 9 I guess it's because

Speaker 9 I do love a really good romance that where everything is perfect and nothing hurts, but I don't think that's reflective of like life in general. And I also think that it's like

Speaker 9 not genuine to like the human experience. I mean, neither is telepathic connection, obviously.

Speaker 9 I mean, when you're like close enough with someone, you can like start to think, yeah, I know what this person's going to say. Yeah.
But that's that's like after a long time, right?

Speaker 9 Sometimes, I mean, sometimes you have that immediate magnetic connection.

Speaker 9 But,

Speaker 9 but yeah, I, I, I think it's because I love

Speaker 9 like discovering and talking about and like feeling my way through like the different stages of like life that we all go through. A lot of us will have a parent that has dementia.

Speaker 9 Um, a lot of us will have someone who dies by suicide or knows someone who knows someone who has been affected by that.

Speaker 9 Same with like the sudden loss of like a parent or like a sudden,

Speaker 9 like, or like a, like even in a, even in a novel love story, sometimes the loss of a loved one or like a divorce or,

Speaker 9 or like there's, there's, there's so many different things. And I, I, I think that romance is not just, you know, kissing and like intimate moments.

Speaker 2 Romance is also like the romance between a friendship or the romance between like like just like the relationships and the connections between people because you can't have grief without love and you can't have love without grief of losing it so I love writing about like that dichotomy I was always scared to get into romance novels for that reason because like I don't want to read about like this like seamless love story because I always just felt like that was impossible and just unachievable so when I started to dip my toes in the note in the romance world it was like okay one of them was like less than seamless and one of them was a little bumpy and so i can really appreciate that in a romance novel.

Speaker 9 Yeah, me too. And I'm like, oh, like, everything is not perfect, but everything turns out fine.

Speaker 2 And I love that. Yeah.
Because it will turn out fine at some point.

Speaker 9 It's like sometimes we just need some assurance that, yeah, like shit's fucked, but

Speaker 2 shit's fucked. That's the title of this episode.
No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Nailed it.

Speaker 2 Are you a pantser or a plotter? What is it? Pants. Pancer plotter.
Plotter or a Pomodoro?

Speaker 9 Ooh, I am. Okay.
so, so, so I wish I was a pantser, but I can't be a pantser because I have too many deadlines and I have to meet those deadlines usually.

Speaker 9 So I plot, but I can't plot too much or else I get bored. And getting bored is the worst thing I can do for a book.
So I have to plot enough that I don't get bored, but I can't just not plot at all.

Speaker 9 So it's like a weird in-between. I just do enough to just get a vibe.
You know, I slap a song at the bottom. Like, this is the vibe of it.
And this is what happens next.

Speaker 8 And then they bone, you know.

Speaker 2 And then they.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I can say that word. No, you can say it here.
I don't know if your publisher will like it, but for your agents, but we don't, we cuss all the time.

Speaker 9 I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's fucking in my novel, so we're fine. Right.

Speaker 2 I can't listen to those. Like, I can't listen to the smut scenes, right? Like, I can only read it.
I don't want to hear it. I can't hear it.
No.

Speaker 9 Whenever I'm listening to my own like books back to me, I have to walk away or I have to like fasten it.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I'm just like, listen, if I

Speaker 9 if I like start listening to this and there is a mysterious like fifth hand somewhere in this sex scene, I'm going to lose it.

Speaker 2 So it sounds like love was to become a film. Do you have a dream cast in mind?

Speaker 9 I actually do not because I try, like, I don't, my brain doesn't cast

Speaker 9 characters as like actors because

Speaker 9 I like Frankenstein characters together. So, well, I Frankenstein monster characters together.
But,

Speaker 9 but so not, not, not really. I just, I just think, hey, they just have to, they just have to sing.

Speaker 2 Would you, would you sell the rights to a book if they wanted to make it?

Speaker 9 Oh, 100%. You would.
Absolutely. And I think it'd be so so fun uh just just to have like joni and sasha just on just you know

Speaker 9 up up there on like film just communicating with each other with through like telepathic connection and just like all the like like like the revelry the the the concert venue and everything oh and the live music like the the the only the only sticking point is it has to be good music yeah for sure it has to be like like not like i i'm okay with like not including too much dad rock but but that's like a pivotal that's yeah.

Speaker 9 You at least need piano man

Speaker 9 or like tiny dancer or something. Yeah.
Oh man. Just just give me like some Elton John or like some Bruce Springsteen.

Speaker 2 We're good. Where can people find your books and where can people find you?

Speaker 9 People can find my books online or wherever books are sold. Barnes and Noble, Books a Million.
Your local indie will probably point you right to them.

Speaker 9 And you can find me online at Hey Ash Poston on Instagram and also Hey Ash Poston on TikTok.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for joining joining us.

Speaker 9 Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

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Speaker 16 Hi guys, my name is Hayden, and a lot of you have been asking me to start a podcast. Okay, I'm totally kidding.
Nobody asked me to start a podcast.

Speaker 16 The world did absolutely not need another podcast, but I wanted to because there's no place on the internet where I can yap for 30 to 45 minutes straight with my best friends, you guys, and just shoot the shit, talk about all of my favorite things like social media, pop culture, reality TV, influencers.

Speaker 16 We all know I love a good influencer. And that's what you can expect from my new podcast.
A lot of you have been asking.

Speaker 16 This is a space for some real conversations with some of my favorite creators, reality stars, maybe even a celebrity or two if they answer my DM.

Speaker 16 This is all about the world behind the curtain that I really want to share with you guys. Allow me to ask the questions that you've been dying to know the answers to.

Speaker 16 And allow me to tell my guests that a lot of you have been asking. You guys can listen to, follow, rate, and review a lot of you have been asking with me, Hayden Cohen, wherever you get podcasts.