Today I speak with Mary Adkins, best-selling novelist of Palm Beach and Privileged about her writing journey and the business she created to help other writers find success called The Book Incubator. Want more information about Mary? Check out her website: https://maryadkinswriter.com/ her IG: https://www.instagram.com/adkinsmary/?hl=en
And for more information about The Book Incubator visit: thebookincubator.com
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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:
Kat
Welcome back, everyone, to Pencils & Lipstick. I’m excited to have Mary Adkins with me, whom I’ve heard a couple of things about, and I think I’ve even heard her speak before. But she is an author, a novelist, and the founder of The Book Incubator. So I’m excited to have her on. Thanks, Mary, for coming.
Mary
Thanks for having me, Kat. I’m glad to be here.
Kat
Yeah, I’m glad to have you. I think during COVID I heard you speak. COVID is like this nebulous time, right?
Mary
Yeah, right, you’re like I think I did, but I don’t remember.
Kat
I’m pretty sure. I think it was about when Palm Beach, your third novel, was coming out. I would love to have her on and life gets busy, so I’m glad we’ve connected. This is exciting to you have such an incredible story to talk about. So let’s let you introduce yourself a little bit to people about who Mary Adkins is and then we’ll get in deeper.
Mary
Sounds great. So I am a novelist. I’ve published three novels. My first one was called When You Read This and my second one was Privilege, and my third one was Palm Beach. Two of those came out during the pandemic. So not a great time to launch a book. But I did my best. And I live in Dallas, I just moved. I was living in Nashville, but I literally moved a month ago, so brand new. Brand new for having just moved.
Kat
Oh my gosh.
Mary
You’re seeing the part that looks good, right? No, you’re right. The whole thing looks just like this. And I have a five-year-old son, and I live here with him and my husband, and I teach writing, of course. I work with novelists to finish their novels through a program that I started a couple of years ago called The Book Incubator.
Kat
That’s awesome.
Mary
So that’s who I am now.
Kat
That’s who you are now. But you started out as a lawyer, did you not?
Mary
I did, yeah.
Kat
Did you get to practicing law or were you like burnt out by the time you finished all those years or what happened?
Mary
Okay, I want to back up a little bit even farther because I wanted to be like many writers, I think I loved writing since I was a little girl, since like twelve years old is when I remember starting to tell people that I wanted to be an author, like, I wanted to write books. And so when I got to college, it was like, yeah, I even remember when I applied to college, I applied to a bunch of creative writing scholarships. I was just, like, very into, I was like, that’s what I am. I’m going to write. And so when I got to college, I signed up for a creative writing class, and I was so excited about it. It was a short fiction class, and it totally gutted me. It was the worst creative writing class experience I ever had. I got B minuses on my stories, which, just to be clear, that was, like, a very low grade at my college because we had crazy grade inflation. So B minus was, like, not good.
Kat
Especially with something creative you feel like it should all be.
Mary
Yes. And I just left that class so deflated, to the point, that was the only creative writing class I took in college. I didn’t sign up for any more after that because I was like, I guess I just can’t do that well. So going to walk away from that. I think it was partly, like, a very natural response and partly fraud syndrome, imposter syndrome, and just being like, I can’t keep putting myself out there. I’m embarrassed, kind of, because I was used to being a good student. I could usually figure my way out in most classes, or I avoided those classes.
Kat
Our grade system is what gives you validation, right?
Mary
I mean, yes.
Kat
What they teach us.
Mary
Exactly. And so it was like, well, if I’m not good at that, I’ll just avoid that. So I ended up I majored in public policy. Long story short, applied to law school, went to law school. I’m like, I’ll just go this route, because that was, like, where the action was. I was good at that stuff. I could get As it was like, I’m just going to do that. And so I went to law school. Law school was fine. I liked it because I liked being in school, and I liked my friends. But as soon as I got out of law school and started a job as a lawyer, it was like, what am I doing? It was like I had landed in the real world, and it was not what I had ever thought. I think I had just never truly known what a lawyer did. I mean, law school was interesting. And reading cases and talking about them. You were in a classroom. It was like, this is interesting. But I think I was never truly understanding of what a lawyer is. And it turns out I didn’t like it.
Kat
A lot of it’s like, corporate in an office, trying to figure out what laws, I’m not a lawyer, but most of my friends are like, yeah, I’m just figuring out tax laws for this company. That doesn’t sound interesting. I’m sorry.
Mary
No. And I was in litigation, which is like the antagonistic kind of law. So it was like representing this side, and we would talk about the other side as if they were jerks or something, which was weird when they were banks. The whole thing was just so strange. It was like, I cannot get my heart into any of this. This all just feels like just a way people are making money, which is great for them, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. And I also think a large reason I felt this way is because that twelve-year-old was still in me. I still wanted to be a writer, and I had just managed to avoid it for like over ten years. Yeah, keeping myself busy. And I felt like she started screaming. Like, once I was in a law office, I felt like my internal creative kid was like, what are you doing? You want to write? You should be writing stuff. And so I tried to write. I’m like, okay, well, I’ll just write in the mornings before work and at night after work.
Kat
As like a book or just like…?
Mary
Or just anything creative, because I hadn’t written creative in a while. I just want to come back to that. And so I did start to do some of that, but my job was so all consuming that I didn’t have very much time. And so it didn’t take me very long to realize, like, I don’t think I can stay in this job. So I started applying for jobs that would well, this makes it sound better than it was. I was actually much more reckless. I called my parents, I’m like, I’m quitting. And my dad’s like, please have another job first. He’s like, I don’t care if you are a barista. He’s like, go get a job at Starbucks. Just please have a job before you quit this job. I was like, fine, deal. So I waited until I applied to a ton of jobs and finally I got this tutoring job. I’m like, great. I have a job. I can quit. So I started tutoring and quit my job right away, my law job. And the tutoring job turned out to be perfect because I just tutored people for like a few hours a day. It added up, but tutoring, you kind of tutor on other people’s schedules are supposed to be evening, so I would work a lot of times at night, which meant I have a ton of time during the day to write. And that was when I really got to start focusing on my writing. I do want to say sorry, I get a little carried away talking about all this. So it’s been a long time on my story. But my internal fraud syndrome around writing fiction, though, that had not changed. So I was like writing creatively, but I had so ingrained from that college creative writing class that I couldn’t write fiction, that I was only writing nonfiction. I was like, I’ll write personal essays, and I’ll write humor from my real life. But I’m not a fiction writer because I learned that in college. Can’t do that. We’ll never try that again. So I wrote a proposal for a memoir that I started submitting to literary agents. Because if someone had told me, like, this is how you get published. You have to get a literary agent, I’m like, okay, I’ll just do what everyone’s telling me to do. So I was sending that out, and they were saying no, but one agent said, he goes, no, I can’t sell this. But I like your writing. What else do you have? Do you have a novel? And I did not have a novel, of course, but I had had a novel idea, and I was like, I don’t have a novel, but here’s an idea that I had for a novel that I was thinking of writing, which isn’t true. I wasn’t thinking of writing it because I didn’t trust myself. But I had this person’s attention.
Kat
You got to answer.
Mary
Right. And so anyway, he wrote back, that sounds really great, or something like, that sounds fascinating. Write that and then send it to me. That’s what he said, write the novel and send it to me. And this person never became my literary agent, but I think ultimately he ended up ghosting me later when I did write the novel. But I’m still so grateful to him because he gave me permission. That’s the only reason I ever started writing fiction, because this person said, write that and send it to me. So in my head, it was like he was waiting for it. Which of course he wasn’t, like, he was, I’m sure, moving on and doing other things. But I was like, oh, this person is waiting for something, and said it was a good idea, so now I’m going to do it.
Kat
Do you think that gave you, like, a deadline too, of like, I got to figure this out?
Mary
Yeah, because I didn’t want too much time to pass. It was like, I’m going to knock this thing out. So I just became obsessed with getting this novel down. And ultimately, that was my first novel that became.
Kat
Oh, that’s awesome. You have three novels out, so tell us a little bit about each because are they standalones? Do you write in series or standalone?
Mary
They’re standalone. They’re all standalone. Yeah. So they’re contemporary fiction, and they’re all different. So the first one is, it opens, the main character has already died, and she has left behind a printout of a blog that she wrote in her final few months that she left it behind with her boss, who is also a good friend of hers, asking him to try to get it published. So it’s the story of him trying to get this thing published that she left behind. And we also read her blog as part of it, so it’s sort of like a book within a book.
Kat
Oh, that’s cool.
Mary
So we get to know her after she’s gone. Yeah. And we kind of see how she left some little Easter eggs behind for the people that she loved. So that’s the style of that one. The second novel is a sexual assault on a college campus, a Southern college campus. And in the wake of this assault, the victim initiates a judicial proceeding at the university. It does not go her way. So then the second half of the book is really about how do you find justice or how do you recover your power when you don’t have it. It’s been taken from you.
Kat
That’s a pretty heavy topic. Was that hard to write?
Mary
That’s the heaviest, I would say, of the three books. Yeah, I would definitely say that one is. And then the third one is called Palm Beach, and that second one, by the way, is called Privilege. The third one, Palm Beach, is set in Palm Beach, Florida, and it’s about a young couple that moves from New York to Florida when half of the couple, the husband, gets offered a position running the household for this billionaire in Palm Beach. So this young couple’s lives get sort of enmeshed in the lives of this billionaire family, and things go south.
Kat
Yeah. I would imagine that he’s got to go south. That’s the energy.
Mary
It’s got to go south.
Kat
Yeah. You were talking about how, with the memoir idea, you were trying to push it out to traditional to get an agent. I guess. So did you decide to go traditional?
Mary
I did for all three of my novella, yeah. So my publisher for my three novels was Harper Collins. Same publisher.
Kat
Okay, cool.
Mary
For all three.
Kat
Oh, that’s awesome. So is that like, the agent route? Like, you have to find an agent and then they sell it to Harper Collins?
Mary
It is, yeah. It was definitely, looking back, I have no regrets about going that route. I think I also didn’t even know there were other routes, though.
Kat
Right.
Mary
So it worked out well for me, but if it hadn’t, I think it would have been helpful for me to know, like, oh, but this isn’t the only you didn’t have to go this way because it took me six years to get a literary agent. Like, I was querying literary agents for that long before signing with mine. So it was long. It was a long road.
Kat
Did you keep writing the other books, like, while you were querying? So did you have, like because your last two came out pretty quickly, like, pretty…
Mary
Yes, exactly. Like, the three my three books came out three years in a row. Boom, boom, boom. And so they were not like, you write so fast. I’m like, no, I don’t I’ve been working on these a long time. I mean, the third one I wrote pretty quickly, but the first one I was writing and rewriting for, like, seven years. The second one several years because, exactly, I was, like, working on the second one while I was querying the first one.
Kat
First one, okay.
Mary
Yeah.
Kat
And then how did you? So you’re a lawyer. You’re, like, licensed as this lawyer and you decide to become a novelist because the guy told you that you should. Which I think is great. But was it difficult to… there’s a lot to learn. So sometimes people are just really intuitive and they can write out their novel and there isn’t that much to change about it. And then there are those of us, like me, who you write a novel and then you realize you should actually learn some things.
Mary
Exactly.
Kat
How was that journey? And from being a lawyer to, like, I’m writing a whole novel, like, 1000 words, if not more. That’s a lot.
Mary
Yeah. I took a bajillion writing classes and so I definitely was like, I need to educate myself on this. And I always like school anyway, so I loved taking classes. But I also think, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’ve been having ideas for my fourth novel and I’m almost finding this one the hardest one to start. And I’ve been thinking about how there was something beautiful about being kind of cavalier in my early writing days and being like, how hard can this be?
Kat
I was just talking about that to a friend of mine. We’re both on our 4th, 5th novel. And I find it harder. I don’t know if it’s the expectations people have or the expectations you have on yourself or the like, I don’t know what it is.
Mary
Interesting. So you relate? You relate to that?
Kat
I completely relate, yes. I think I agonize more and I was telling her it’s like, I wish I could go back to that. I’m writing a book and I don’t know what tropes are, and I don’t know what structure is, I kind of know what dialogue tags are and how to invent a paragraph. But other than that, it was like, whatever came to my head. Of course that came with problems.
Mary
Yes, it did. It came with problems. Writing a really messy first draft. I didn’t know anything. And then having to rewrite it over and over again. But, yeah, there was also something really beautiful about the innocence of being like, oh, I just have to hit a word count. I wasn’t quite that naive, but it was close.
Kat
I was close to that. Yeah. And I’m trying to figure out if it was easier to delete 40,000 words of my way overwritten novel or if it’s easier now of like, no, let’s try to not overwrite, Kat. Let’s try to stay in the line. I don’t know.
Mary
That’s such a good question, right? Yeah, it’s almost that. I wonder, too, if there’s part of it that once we’ve been through it a few times and we kind of know what the end kind of final, polished product is, you’re, like, looking for ways of maybe getting there faster this time.
Kat
Oh, true.
Mary
When really, maybe we just need to be a little bit more humble and be like, the first draft will be bad, even though we’ve done this several times before.
Kat
It’s so easy to say. And you say it to all your students, and then you’re like, no, but mine should be better. Yeah.
Mary
Oh, that too. And maybe that’s it, too. You’re like that’s, actually, I feel like you just nailed a lot of it for me because you’re like, well, yeah, yours can be bad because you’re new to this. But my first one is supposed to be good because I’m supposed to be the expert.
Kat
True. It’s a lot of self imposed pressure, I think, because I’m not sure really expect that, but yeah, I have to be careful, too, not to look at other people and be like, gosh, you write fast. Because, like, you I’m a mom, so I started writing when my when I had a newborn. And you did as well, right?
Mary
Yes.
Kat
We’re either insane or I’m not sure.
Mary
Or brilliant. No, my husband would say it was brilliant. We’re brilliant.
Kat
We’re totally brilliant. So was that just, like, a coincidence of time? Like, you were pregnant and this guy tells you, gives you permission to start writing. But what was that like, to realize, I mean, pregnancy-wise, if you don’t feel sick, you can keep writing. Right. But then this little thing comes along and expects you to all the time.
Mary
Writing with a newborn. Well, I got a book deal, right, when I had a baby. So then I had to write the book, was the idea.
Kat
Yeah. You sold it before?
Mary
I sold it because this was actually my second one that I wrote, so I felt like I had no choice. But I also because my husband, we were recently talking about this, he was like, I really feel like that was the best thing that ever happened to you. I mean, at the time, it was a lot of pressure, and it felt really kind of stressful. But looking back, I think he’s onto something, because it does feel like it would get me out of the house, which meant I had to put on clothes, which meant I had to think about something other than just keeping my little baby alive or how little sleep I had had, or like it forced me to use my brain. And I don’t know, I think it might have been really good for me. It felt like complete chaos. It felt just crazy. But I don’t know that it was a bad thing. And I never felt I still loved writing, like, it was harder because I was tired and I was like, right hormonal, and all that, but I feel like I always felt like a little bit charged by it. That was actually kind of nice to get away, which I think would have been I just know my personality. I wouldn’t have justified, oh, I need to go take 2 hours to, like, read a book or get a massage. Like, I just wouldn’t have done that, probably because it would have felt selfish or something stupid. I mean, it would have been a good idea.
Kat
Because we’re women. Exactly.
Mary
Yeah.
Kat
But we always think it’s selfish. Yeah.
Mary
This felt like work. Like, I had to do work so I could justify it to myself.
Kat
You didn’t really have to justify it to anyone else, honestly. Yeah, that’s nice, actually. That’s very cool. But then do you think that led you to this whole philosophy of carving out time for your creative self that you teach your students?
Mary
Yeah, definitely. Because I think the cool thing that I discovered through that the other piece of pressure for me during that period was my husband had gone back to school, so I had a full time job so that we could get health benefits, so that I could have a baby. So I had a maternity leave, and I was like, I don’t think I can write a book and be in a full time job and have a newborn, so I have to write this book on my maternity leave. So I gave myself that deadline. I was like, you have ten weeks. By the end of this ten weeks, you will have written this draft. But I couldn’t write for more than a couple of hours a day, tops, because and usually, honestly, not even that, like hour and a half, maybe because I was nursing, I was tired. We had childcare in the sense, like, my husband would watch him a little bit. My mom was in town for some of those weeks, and she would help out, but other than that, we didn’t.
Kat
You had 8 hours of child free.
Mary
No, exactly. But I think the thing that I learned through that that was cool was that I wrote a draft. I wrote a draft of my book in ten weeks in like a little over an hour a day, and it was like, okay, that’s doable. I just didn’t know that was possible until I did it, and that was really empowering. So I explained that to people,. Now you don’t have to overhaul, a book sounds like such a big thing, where they’re like, well, I’ll probably have to take a leave from my job. And it’s like, I mean, you could do that, but you may also just have to find a little bit of time every day. Or like a few hours a week total. Right? You can actually make good progress.
Kat
So do you teach your students in the Book Incubator to outline or to do you have a certain way that you think is the best way for them to do it? Or do you just sort of work around what their creative process is?
Mary
I guess I teach them my creative process, which is not outlining, and then help them find what’s best for them.
Kat
Okay, that’s cool. So you don’t outline?
Mary
No.
Kat
Wow. Okay.
Mary
I do have some tools that I use, like something called the Big Question, where you think of, like, what is the big question that your story is going to explore and a story destination. Like, you’re writing towards something that’s going to happen. What is that thing going to be? And it doesn’t have to be at the end, but just have something in mind, and then we talk about characters having unfulfilled wants. There are things that we’re working with, but it’s not an outline.
Kat
Okay. One of my questions that I always philosophize with my writer friends is, like, I’m not sure it’s so much the outline, because an outline can be good on one hand, but it’s also the thinking, like, an outline of what’s going to happen, sure. And some of your questions are probably like, that going towards a moment that’s sort of going to bring everyone together. Like the realization or something. Something like that. It’s good to have that there, but I’m almost convinced that it’s the thinking about your book more than everything else that will help you write. I don’t know what you think about that. I love that.
Mary
So you mean just like, kind of getting obsessed with it in your head so that it’s just what it’s like where your brain goes?
Kat
Yes, because otherwise, I don’t know about you, but when the years that get really chaotic, like, we moved in 2020, I was re-editing a book. Of course, it took longer than it should, so we’re moving, looking for a new place to live, all that stuff. It’s a pandemic. Three kids on zoom is what’s insane. I was distracted, so I was thinking back of like, why did it take so much to edit that? And there would be pieces that didn’t make sense, and my editor would be like, what is this? And I would just like, I wonder if it’s because I wasn’t present in the book.
Mary
Yeah. Yes, I completely agree. And I inversely, too. I love when I just had this idea for a new novel, and it’s that fun thing where you like, it becomes the default that your brain goes to. Instead of like, what color rug should I get in my living room now? It’s right where you’re like, what should be her motivation? Why is she doing that? But why did she marry him in the first place? You get to just mole over those things. And I love that. That’s like my when it’s like this private puzzle that you’re doing in your mind.
Kat
Yes. And I think that should count as your writing time. You don’t want to elongate that too much to not get words on the page. But it’s good to know that stuff because I’ve worked with students who don’t know that stuff and then they finish the novel and they still haven’t answered any questions because they never asked any in the beginning.
Mary
Right. No, that’s a great point. And maybe that is also playing into what we talked about earlier, like your fourth or fifth book being one that’s hard because you kind of know, okay, there are some things that will make actually writing this better and easier if I can figure them out. Now, what is this character’s motivation? What’s actually going on here? Let me figure that out first.
Kat
Yeah, that’s a great scene to think of at 11:00 p.m.. At night, but what are they doing?
Mary
Yeah, exactly.
Kat
Real angsty there. But I don’t know. So within the Book Incubator, do people have to come already with the book, like already with a draft? Or how do people approach you and be part of this?
Mary
So pretty much everybody comes with an idea because it’s an application based program, so people do have to apply and they don’t have to send a writing sample or anything. It’s much more just kind of we just want to make sure we’re curating our community. So people are like serious writers. So people will say we basically say, what’s your book idea and what are you hoping to get out of a writing program? Just to make sure it’s a good fit. By the time they are admitted to the program, most people have an idea. It may just be a little fledgling idea, but it’s like, okay, but I just had this thing about this, or whatever, and then we help them flesh it out from there. And then other people come in. Actually, a number of people come in with like part of a draft written, sometimes even a full draft written, which is great. So then we just start helping them with revision. I mean, we can kind of pick we we just pick up wherever somebody is.
Kat
Okay. Okay. Yeah. And is it like group classes? Like, do you teach classes or is it like what is the sort of structure what would somebody expect, when they’re applying for it, of how it’s going to help them either take the idea forward or maybe they need to finish the novel?
Mary
Yeah, it’s really customized. It’s a twelve-month program. Everyone’s in it for one year. So I kind of talk about it like a candy store. Like, you come in and you kind of pick what you want. I mean, I do teach a live writing class every week. I have a fellow teacher, Ruffy Thorpe, she’s also a novelist, but she teaches a revision class every week. And people are invited to come to both of those, but I encourage them to come to the one that they’re currently doing so that they’re not clouding their brain with irrelevant things because they get those recordings. They can watch all that later, but then they can submit. We have a couple of editors they can submit to editors for critique their work as they go. They can schedule one-on-one meetings with us or with a couple of other team members that we have to talk about specific things like troubleshoot a plot point, stuff like that. When they have a full draft, they can have the editor read their entire draft and give them notes. It’s very much like you take what you need when you need it.
Kat
It’s like turning a light on in a very dark world of writing. Because otherwise am I doing this right?
Mary
Exactly. And that’s why I started it, because I had felt like that I was, like, hobbling it all together for years. And then because I went the traditional publishing route, when I first came up with the Book Incubator, I included resources for teaching people how to do all that, how to query a literary agent, how to find a literary agent to query, how to read between the lines of their responses, what to do when you get one, all of that stuff. And increasingly, we’ve added other support for alternate publishing paths because I just feel like things are really moving, actually, in that direction, like I said before I even existed.
Kat
Yeah. So you don’t have to be a traditionally seeking writer, I guess. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. Our art world is always changing. Who knows what’s coming down the line, right?
Mary
So how did you know you wanted to go indie when you started?
Kat
I got 50 to 60 rejections, but to be fair, I just didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. It’s one of those things. Like, I kept sending them out. I also lived in France, so I had to come home, buy the envelopes and the postage because you used to have to put the postage back in so that they could send you the letter, international.
Mary
It was snail mail!
Kat
It was snail mail. And then it sort of like into email a little bit. Like some of them started this was like 2010, I guess. They started some emails. And then I got a Kindle because I lived in Europe in 2011 because I wanted to read English. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Although a lot of it was traditionally published, people putting their ebooks on. But I think at one point, I was just like, I just can’t handle any more rejection.
Mary
Yes.
Kat
It could have easily gone anywhere had I gotten someone that was… there was no Twitter pitching or anything like that. Or maybe there was and I didn’t know.
Mary
Doubt it. Yeah.
Kat
Who knows what you know?
Mary
Well, it’s like feeling around in the dark. Yeah. And I was in the same boat. It just was like, I guess this is what you do and then you just keep doing it until and then.
Kat
If they say yes or something happens. Yeah. So my six years ended with me being screw it.
Mary
Yeah, basically. It’s really funny too, because sometimes writers will ask me if they are going the traditional route. They’ll ask, how do you choose between agents, literary agents who are giving you offers? And I’ll be like, I’ve never met anyone who has faced that choice, I think, ever.
Kat
It’s a nice dream, though. I went through the Author Accelerator program for the fiction, and you have to put together things for clients. And I was like, I’ve never seen anyone get two acceptance at once. Better that way. But if you do, I mean, that’s great. I guess you do.
Mary
If you do, amazing. I’m sure it’s happened to someone. Someone out there has had it happen.
Kat
If it’s happened to you, come on my podcast. Whoever’s listening.
Mary
Tell us what you did.
Kat
So with the Book Incubator. So you can be whatever, like seeking whatever publishing goals. What about writing goals? Like, do you only work with fiction? Do you only work with a certain genre of fiction? How does that work?
Mary
We work with all genres of fiction. But we have had a few memoirists come in and I’ve been happy to support them, but as best I can. But I’m trying to move away from that just because it really is tailored toward fiction. Our lessons are really so I end up feeling a little bad because I’m trying to explain to them how to apply it to memoir. And I’m like, I hope this works. Anyway, so we have had a couple that are coming in, but we’re really focused primarily on fiction, all genres. So we recently took a survey and we have kind of people just to kind of truly scattered across genres. I think literary fiction is our biggest genre, which surprised me a little bit. Women’s fiction is also really big. And then YA is pretty big too. And by big, I mean like 15 writers. It’s a pretty small group.
Kat
That’s all right. Are they categorized as women’s fiction or literary fiction or like a cross between them?
Mary
Mine are categorized as contemporary fiction. And then I think they’ve been categorized as women’s fiction too, just because I’m a woman generally marketing. They’re so weird.
Kat
I envy the people who write thriller, mystery, right? Where’s my book? I really don’t want to go literary because I want people to actually read it and not right. I’m not that good with turn of phrase. But I have a contemporary when people ask me, I was at a conference in London, they’re like, what do you write as a contemporary? That sounds so boring. What does that even mean?
Mary
I know same. And I always say that because it feels the most accurate. But you can tell people, they kind of look at you like, what?
Kat
What is it about? I don’t know. Okay, give me 2 seconds, and I’ll tell you what it’s about. All right. But you guys are working with I think it’s really cool. I talk even on the podcast a lot about brainstorming. So it sounds like you get to even come in and brainstorm something, because otherwise with your computer and you’re like, I think this works. I don’t know. And I don’t know how many times it’s, like, one in the morning. And I’m like, that totally doesn’t work.
Mary
Yes.
Kat
After the scene is written. So I think that’s really cool that people can interact. It’s not just, like, go home and write it.
Mary
Exactly. Because I feel like we end up having, as writers, a fair amount of interaction after we already have right. Because you can share and then get feedback. But yeah, I feel like the interaction can be the most helpful when you’re just talking before you even have written a word. Just like, let me bounce some ideas so they’re not just in my own brain.
Kat
Right. And other people can ask questions of, like, well, why would they be married in the first place? Why would she be in jail?
Mary
This conversation is making me want to do even more of that myself because I just think it’s so helpful.
Kat
It is. It is very helpful. And I’m, like, just encouraging people to find that I don’t know, wherever. But this sounds pretty cool with the Book Incubator. And do people mostly interact with you and those who work with you, or do you guys have, like, a Facebook group or where the writers interact together, or is it mostly just writer with the professional?
Mary
They all interact together, but we’re on Mighty Networks. I don’t know if you know what that is. It’s not Facebook, but it’s kind of like that. Like there’s a forum, a little more personal. And it’s separate, private. Exactly, it’s private.
Kat
That’s nice. I’m on two of those, but I kind of forget about it when I’m talking to other people.
Mary
There’s the downside. It’s not like somewhere people are already going, like, Facebook, that I feel like that’s the downside. They have to remember to go there.
Kat
Right? Yeah. But still, once you remember it I do think they came out with an app, didn’t they?
Mary
They do. They have an app. So that’s helpful.
Kat
Exactly. All right. Very cool. So people, we’re going to have the links in the show notes. Where do they go to look at the Book Incubator. And to apply. If they want to start with you.
Mary
They can just go to thebookincubator.com. Yeah, and they can apply there. And if they want to just kind of see a little bit of my teaching and stuff first. I also have a YouTube channel now. They could just search my name there, and it should pop up. It’s Mary Adkins with a “D”. And I do some teaching on my YouTube channel, too.
Kat
Awesome. Very cool. So we will have the links in the show notes for thebookincubator.com and then you guys can find out more about mary@maryadkinswriter.com and then I’ll have the link in the show notes to YouTube, especially for everyone listening and that doesn’t have a pen right now. Thank you so much Mary, for coming on and talking to us about the book incubator and your novels.
Mary
Thanks Kat. It was so funny.