Kat
Tosca Lee is a thriller and historical writer who has been in the business for over a decade. We talk about her writing routine (or lack thereof), when she went full-time, what it’s like to write with a partner and how she crossed genres.
You can find more about Tosca Lee on her website.
Her latest book A Single Light here.
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TRANSCRIPTION STARTS HERE:
Kat
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. I’m Kat Caldwell and today I have with me author, I almost said thriller author. But she doesn’t only write thrillers. Her name is Tosca Lee. Thank you for coming on the show, Tosca.
Tosca
You are so very welcome. Thanks for having me.
Kat
Well, before we sort of get into all of your books and all the genres that you write in, can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
Tosca
Sure. I live in Nebraska. Six years ago, I was a single city girl and I married a farmer, and single father of four. I’m talking to you from my upstairs attic office at the farm and my husband is combining right now. They’re harvesting, and so as soon as we get done I’m going to go making some lunch, and that’s about it. I write. I’m a wife. We have 160-pound German shepherd that is probably more popular on all my social media. We love to just have a good time out at the Funny Farm, I call it. And that’s basically my everyday life, right?
Kat
Yeah. Did you grow up in the city or did you grow up in the suburbs?
Tosca
I grew up in Lincoln, the capital. So definitely in the city. It’s really hard not being close by a Trader Joe’s right now, I’ll live. Every now and then, I go into town is stock up.
Kat
Well, I’m glad that you are adjusting. I’m sure Nebraska is beautiful. I think I’ve driven through there.
Tosca
It actually is. It is very beautiful in parts of it you would never guess are in Nebraska.
Kat
Yeah, I think we have some really cool states. I’m on the east coast now, but I grew up in Wisconsin. Try to encourage people, go to the Midwest. It’s actually quite beautiful. So that’s cool. Were you writing before 2014? Before you got married? Was that sort of your job before then?
Tosca
Oh yeah, I’ve been writing full time, since 2010 or 2011. Somewhere in there. It got to a point, I was a consultant with the Gallup Organization and I was a leadership consultant, and I traveled the world and I was trying to write an edit in between and on airplanes and in hotels. It kind of got to a point where, I just accepted a new contract to write a trilogy with Ted Decker, and I was either going to have to turn that down or step away from my job, because the writing demands were too great. So it’s kind of the fork in the road. So I went that way.
Kat
That’s pretty amazing though. So before you are juggling a full time job and you are writing. When you first started writing, did you get traditionally published? Was that something that you were seeking? Like you wanted to be a full time writer at some point?
Tosca
Yeah, for sure. That was always since from the point when I finally made up my mind that I wanted to be a writer, which was in college, it was not the dream that I had growing up. Growing up I wanted to be a ballerina and I devoted all my time to that. So I had no social life. My summers were spent away dancing in different places. But after an injury as a teenager, I went off to college and I came back my freshman year for spring break. And I was having this conversation with my dad about one of my favorite books and how a great book is like a roller coaster with twists and turns. And my dad made me a deal that day. I was supposed to spend that coming summer working as a bank teller for the second summer in a row. And I was not a good bank teller. And my dad made me a deal and he said, okay, Tosc, I will pay you what you would have made working at the bank this summer, if you write your first novel, do it full time like a job. That was a no brainer. So I wrote my first novel in 1989. So ever since then, the dream was to be traditionally published. We didn’t have many self published publishing options back then. So I’ve been at this for a while, but my first novel wasn’t published until 2006 or 2007. All those years from 1989 to 2006, you know, I was writing and writing, and trying.
Kat
Yeah, I think that’s almost the way it should be. I’m going to get flak for that because there are some really incredible young writers, but there’s a whole part of honing your craft and learning more about it and putting pen to paper, even if you’re an avid reader, isn’t always as easy. And a lot of times when that first novel comes quickly, and sometimes the second doesn’t, and you still have to eat.
Tosca
You still have to eat. Yeah. You learn tenacity through those years and you learn to deal with rejection and keep plugging along.
Kat
Yeah. So you were in the years of I mean, self publishing wasn’t a thing. Even like I tried tom I was very sure I was going to do this in the late 90s, and it was still looked down upon as like the thing that people do if they can’t make it. You’re going to have to buy all those books. What was it like to only sort of have that traditionally published route, and the rejection, and how did you find your information? I mean, we forget how easy it is these days.
Tosca
Oh, it’s so easy these days. It was slow. It was really slow, because the way that you would learn how to even get an agent, or the way that you would look up who the agents are is, you’d have to go to the library and get the writer’s market. This giant tone of a book. You’d have to get the I forgot it’s called the book of all the literary agents. And you’d have to look up and see who did what, and you have to do research at the library to figure out because we didn’t have the internet, to figure out which agents represented what kind of books, and what authors, and who was popular, and who was high powered. And so it was slow. And then when you send in your query letter, you send it in the mail with a self-addressed stamped envelope, so they can reject you on your dime.
Kat
Yes, you’re sassy.
Tosca
Yeah. Or they might request the whole thing and you print out the whole thing. It’s a ream of paper, single sided. You put it in a keeper’s paper box and you mail that out with enough postage for them to mail it. Or you say, you have my permission to chuck it if you don’t like it, and you might not hear back for six weeks or three months or more, in which case you’d have to write them again and gently nudge them. There’s a reason it took me so long to get published, I think, but part of it was just the slowness of the process in the mail and the waiting. And that’s how it was.
Kat
Yeah. Imagine now if you look up somebody’s website for an agent, this looks great, and then you click on their Twitters and click the query and you’re like, wait a minute, what? And there was nothing like that. We are open from June to October and you never know if they were already filled. Too bad for you. You got in there a little too late. So, yeah, the youngins have no idea. I was sending those things out from Europe, trying to figure out the postage they would need to bring it up, only to get the rejections for my own rejections.
Tosca
Anyway, that’s how it was. The good old days.
Kat
The good old days. It made us strong, right?
Tosca
Or it wore us down. I don’t know what you want to do.
Kat
Yeah, we’ll move on from there. So what was the genre that you started writing and what kind of caught, I guess, your attention and their attention?
Tosca
So it’s funny because my very first novel, the one I wrote that summer, was an old historical Neolithic, about the people of Stonehenge. I was really interested in that. So that’s where I started. But the one that got published, my very first published one, was I would call it like a supernatural suspense, and it was the story of a fallen angel, telling his story to a Boston editor and their lives becoming meshed and intertwined.
Kat
Wow, that’s cool.
Tosca
Yeah. And I ended up entering the Christian market with that one, actually. And then after that, I started writing biblical fiction because my next book. So when they asked for three books.
Tosca
Oh, they asked for three books?
Tosca
When I signed, they said, we want three books. What else do you have? And I had started just this very brief little thing about a very old Eve, like Adam and Eve, getting ready to tell her life story before she dies. And it was only one page long, but I pulled it out and I was like, I’ve got this thing. And they were like, great, we’ll take down and one more. And they said, I don’t have one more. And they said, you’ll think of something. So that’s what happened. And so I went from the first book was called Demon: a Memoir, which is actually a novel, to Havah: the Story of Eve. And then I went on this biblical fiction track for a while and wrote Iscariot, which is the story of Judas. And then I wrote one about the Queen of Sheba. And then after that I was like, okay, this is really heavy duty research and stuff, so I decided to switch it up because you don’t want to always eat the same things every day and I don’t want to write the same things every day.
Kat
Yeah, for sure. So did you purposely enter the Christian market or was that just sort of like where they put they’re like, you’re like C.S. Lewis, so here?
Tosca
Yeah, well, thanks to, you know, authors like Frank Peretti, who wrote This Present Darkness, because of the success of his books, which were very supernatural and spiritual and very successful in the Christian market. That kind of opened up a new way in for authors with stories like mine. Okay, so I purposely went in there, but I got rejected by every single Christian publisher, at least once, before I finally landed at my publisher, where I’d already been rejected like a year or two, before. But they got a new editor who liked it and wanted it.
Kat
You never know. That’s the moment.
Tosca
You never know.
Kat
Yeah, I forgot about Frank Furedi. I read all those when I was a kid. Snuck them into my bedroom at 3 in the morning. I think it’s interesting. Somehow, I don’t know, maybe I’m just not sort of in that world right now. But it seems to like the thriller market, that seems to have been really heavy in the Christian market in the 90s. Do you think they’re marketing now, specifically Christian? Or maybe I’m just not seeing it. And is it just as popular as it was?
Tosca
The thrillers?
Kat
Yeah. The Christian thrillers.
Tosca
I feel like I’m not seeing quite as many. I’m less solidly in the Christian market these days, because I’ve really moved into trying to straddle both worlds, basically. There’s definitely suspense, I mean, I’ve got friends who write thrillers and suspense in the Christian market, but you see a lot of women’s fiction and a lot of historical fiction in that market, as well.
Kat
Yeah, that’s true. It seems to sort of be weaving back and forth with it. So when you left, sort of, the biblical, those heavy research books, did you go into thrillers, just like non-Christian thrillers?
Tosca
Yeah, I started writing the Progeny. That was my first thriller. And it was so fun. My whole goal was to see how far I could crank up the pace and how late I could keep my readers up. That’s my personal goal. My goal when I started out was to get published, and then my goal was to really try to keep readers go to the page. But when I left the historical stuff, which was not permanent, but when I left the biblical historical stuff, my whole goal was to just, I wanted to tempt readers to devour the whole book in a day.
Kat
What a good personal goal.
Tosca
That is my goal with my suspense and thrillers. So the Progeny was super fun. It has a slight historical twist. It’s about the modern day descendants of real life historical countess, Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathroy, who was known as the Blood Countess because she was purportedly the most prolific serial killer, female serial killer, of all time.
Kat
How did you find this out?
Tosca
I knew about her, the fan who wrote to me once and said, why don’t you do a book about Elizabeth Bathroy? And I was like, ugh, more history. And so I thought, you know, why don’t I do something with modern day, with her descendants? And we’ll have some secret societies and underground stuff and some cabals and stuff like that. So that’s what I did. And in the writing of it, my mother, who’s a lifelong genealogist, informed me that I’m definitely related to Elizabeth Bathroy. So there was that.
Kat
Great timing, mom.
Tosca
Yeah, but it was super fun. My mom and I went traipsing all over Croatia and Hungary and Austria. And so I used to the old Habsburg Empire areas for research and it was super fun. So there was a sequel called Firstborn and then I really like duologies, apparently, because then I did a duology called The Light in Between and a Single Light. And those books both came out in 2019, and they are a pandemic duology. And so the second book came out just like, it came out in September of 2019, right before COVID.
Kat
Right before the pandemic? Oh my gosh.
Tosca
That was crazy.
Kat
You’re the second person I’ve talked to who had a pandemic book come out right before the pandemic.
Tosca
It’s our fault. It’s our fault.
Kat
Just as you were descendant, I’m guessing, somehow.
Tosca
Be careful what you write.
Kat
Yeah, we don’t need any more zombie books, guys, just in case.
Tosca
No. Yeah. But I do love the zombie stories, so those are pretty fun.
Kat
Are you a thriller reader? Is that something that you like to read? Is that how you kind of fell into that?
Tosca
I do like reading thrillers. I love reading pretty much anything. I love reading YA, I love reading historical still. I love reading women’s, I love reading contemporary. I do love a good thriller. So it was just some way to really change it up and do something different.
Kat
But to me it sounds like it’s such a difficult thing to balance. I don’t know, maybe I should challenge myself on this. But I love watching them. I like reading them. But to be able to have those threads and like, to make sure the reader’s not confused, and you have to have, you know, the guys that you know are bad, but they can’t be cartoonishly bad and all these things sort of going together. I don’t know, to me, it sounds very complicated to do. You don’t want to complicate it.
Tosca
That’s how I feel about mysteries, because I think, gosh, I’m not sure I’ve heard of a mystery, which is actually a form of a thriller, really, but I don’t think that the threads, and I know exactly what you’re talking about. I always say writing a book is like trying to make a braid with, like, 50 strands instead of three. So I don’t think it’s that different, really, from when you write, like, your other genres, like historical, for instance, or whatever, because you’re still balancing these subplots and these other storylines, and things still occur to you along the way. That would be cool. I have to plot, okay? I am not a pantser, but I don’t plot 100%. I just need a general roadmap of where I’m going. Otherwise, I’m really going to get lost, and if I’m on a deadline, I’m really going to lose time. And I’ve learned that the hard way. I learned that the hard way with the Line Between, when I wrote that because, that was my 10th published novel, and I thought before that, I wrote some other novels, too. So it’s like my 12th novel overall. And I thought, I don’t need to outline this stuff anymore. I mean, it’s inherent now, right? No, it’s not. Not for me. So I have friends who are very successful at writing by the seat of their pants, and they don’t like plotting because it just kills the story for them. But for me, I’ve learned I need to stay true to what works for me. And I learned that the hard way because I had to go back into that first draft and pull all the wires out and retool the whole thing. And it took an extra several months and delayed publication of the book and everything.
Kat
Right. I think it’s really important to figure out how you’re a writer. There’s so much advice out there. Right? And everyone gives the advice with good intention, plotter, pantser, whatever. But like you said, it’s more about figuring out how your brain works and being a mom of four with a lot of land and a farmer and a husband and all that, I forget stuff. So I am always with my phone recording things, and I have to at least think and talk out the plot line to myself. I don’t understand how to use things like plotter and putting it on a timeline. I can’t really do that. But I do have to talk about the whole plot line to myself. Otherwise I forget. He was going to do something. What was he going to do? I don’t remember.
Tosca
It only gets worse the older you get, it really does. If I don’t write it down, it is gone. I think that’s absolutely right. I teach on writing quite a bit. And one of the things that I always say and always preach on is, you’ve got to find out what works best for you. Don’t let other people say, this worked for me, it’ll work for you, too, because it may not, because our brains don’t work the same. I have friends who make elaborate soundtracks for each book that they write, and I think that’s super cool. But I can’t write to music, so everybody’s some people write really well in coffee shops, but if I did that, I’d be eating the whole time and eavesdropping on conversations. I wouldn’t get anything done. It has to be dead silent. So everybody’s got their ways. And I think the most important thing is honoring, first discovering and then honoring what those are for you.
Kat
Yeah, very true. I think for me, the music will change my mood, which will then change how I’m writing, which is not always great. Like, no, this is supposed to be somber. This is supposed to be happy. Anyway. So did you write these three Sovereign Mortals Forbidden with Ted Dekker? How is that to write with another writer?
Tosca
Yeah, so every writing duo I’ve ever met seems to do it totally different from everybody else. And I actually just finished co-authoring another book that’s going to come out next year. And that partnership is totally different from the way that I wrote with Ted. You know, it was interesting because when you start, our voices were so totally different, and he had just come off writing serial killer thrillers, and I had just come off writing Havah: the Story of Eve, which is on the lines of literary fiction. So it’s totally different. And so we had to work really hard to merge our voice into one voice. And we joked often about the fact that it took longer to write the first book, for the two of us to do it, than if either one of us had done it alone. And we wrote rewrote and kept rewriting, each other just like layers of a veneer, layers of a lacquer, all the layers, just to get it smooth. And I think when people write together, they have to really come into the partnership understanding what strengths they’re bringing to the partnership and how they can complement one another. And then after that, it’s just, I think, a situation of building trust. And as that trust grows, we noticed over the trilogy, that was the trilogy, that each book became faster and faster. We wrote the last one in, somewhere between two and four months or something. Very quick. Yeah, very quick. And the last one is not a small novel, because the process was down by then.
Tosca
And was that sold already? Like, you didn’t really have the option to quit? My first question, what made you stick to it? If it’s sort of like this different, this sort of uncomfortable process to go through.
Tosca
Well, it’s always uncomfortable to work with somebody because you have to compromise on things, and there were things where it’s like, I think we should do this, and I think we should do this. He has a bigger name than me, so he usually won, but, yeah, we had contracted it already, so these books had deadlines, and they had pub-dates. Got to get it done. So it’s kind of like learning how to write again with somebody else. So you have to start from scratch, almost.
Kat
Yeah. But you liked it enough to do it again for a book.
Tosca
Yeah. I never say never. So when my friend Marcus Brotherton approached me about working on a totally different World War II book, it’s about the Batan Death March. So it’s about three young teenage friends from Mobile, Alabama, who enlist in 1941, right before Pearl Harbor. They’re shipped off to the Philippines, and then Pearl Harbor happens, war breaks out right away in the Philippines right after that, and they are fighting for months, and then the largest American surrender happens over there, and they become POWs for years. It’s a survival story, and it’s a story of friendship. Anyway, so Marcus was like, hey, I want to do this. And I was like, sounds good. So I’m glad, I’m glad that I did, because I think this is a chapter of history a lot of people haven’t heard of. I hadn’t heard of it. The Batan Death March. And it’s an important story to tell.
Kat
Yeah, I mean, World War II has come back in the mainstream, right?
Tosca
Oh, gosh. There’s so many World War II books.
Kat
Right. But they’re all in Europe, which is interesting.
Tosca
It’s very heavy on the European theater. Though I will say, I’ve got three friends who just did a book also set in Batan, about the nurses that were involved in that war, that’s Susan Meister, Ariel Lawn, and Christina McMorris wrote that one. Three writers writing together. So I’m wondering what their process was like when they passed it. They’re all wonderful writers and very wonderful people, and I think that book’s coming out very soon. I’m really excited for it.
Kat
Okay. So maybe we’ll get a little bit more I think that that theater is a little more complicated. It’s easy in the European theater to be like good versus evil, because it’s kind of obvious, but the Japanese theater or the Pacific theater, I guess, is what we call it. It’s just sort of like humans in war. We just make these decisions, and then there’s repercussions on the citizens.
Tosca
There’s definitely a lot going on. A lot, yeah, a lot of that kind of, you know, what is the most ethical decision? Right, yeah, but that’s work for you, too?
Kat
Sure. Absolutely. But that’s an interesting book so when does that come out?
Tosca
May 2, next year.
Kat
Okay, so that’s traditionally published, correct?
Tosca
Yes.
Kat
Are all your books traditionally published?
Tosca
Yes.
Kat
Okay, so what is it like? If you’re traditionally published, the book is done coming up to book launch. So, like, in the indie world, it’s kind of all on the author. But what do you have to do as a traditionally published author? Do you get to sit back and relax or is there sort of no, never.
Tosca
No. I think these days and I’ve had many discussions with many of my author friends on this. I think even if you’re traditionally published, you have to hustle like you’re an indie author. If you’re fortunate, you may have a publisher who is willing to put some money into marketing or some effort into publicity. And if you are, then you’re fortunate. For me, I like to take suggestions to my publisher and say, can you be sure to send the press release to here, here, and here in addition to your regular list? I like to take marketing suggestions. I like to fire up my street team and see how many ARCs I can get them so that I can get them going and yeah. And in between books, a personal publicist myself for several years. And so I continue to work on marketing. And the next one is not until 2023, so I purposely continue to hack away at that stuff all the time.
Kat
OK, so in between writing and marketing and sort of getting those things up, what do you think your time is split into?
Tosca
Oh, it’s so much easier to just jump on social media. Or, I’m going to take this opportunity to host this Facebook page, or this readers group, or there are times when my time is 100% focused on marketing and publicity, in between projects. If I’m really working on a project hard, it might be 90-10 because you still have to keep that hum of stuff going. But if I’m really working hard for weeks or a couple of months or a few months at a time, but in between, it’s a lot of and actually, my first two books, Demon and Havah, I’ve just received the rights back to, and so I’m going to be rereleasing them myself. So now I will have the chance to dive in and indie publish those. And I’m really excited to get to push the buttons myself and to change the price if I want to and not have to go to a publisher and say, I think you overpriced this. Whatever. So I’m really stoked about that.
Kat
Yeah. And what I love about books is that they don’t ever really go out of style. And so if you can get your rights back, you can just relaunch it. And there’s thousands of people out there, who haven’t read your book yet, and it’s like a new book to them.
Tosca
Yeah. We’re getting all new cover art and I’m going to. Throw in some formerly deleted chapters from Havah the story, which used to be bonus content, but now it’s going to go in there and just really excited.
Kat
Yeah, that’ll be fun. That’s wonderful. I’m glad that we get all these sort of options these days. As a traditionally published author, then anybody looking to be traditionally published these days, you would recommend letting them know that the hustle is pretty much the same.
Tosca
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Kat
I think the only thing is with you guys, your deadlines are imposed by the publishers.
Tosca
And I kind of need that personally, because I’ve missed several deadlines in the past or had to push them due to different things. And if I were completely indie published, I don’t know if I have twelve books out, honestly, long nights. Some really long nights trying to hit that deadline. But for me, that’s been a good thing.
Kat
Yeah, absolutely. So with your ARC teams, have you found it difficult to be switching genres like that? Like the historical into the thriller back, into I guess, historical?
Tosca
I’ve got some pretty fabulous readers, and I hear from them all the time. They’re like, Havah is my favorite. Or, you know, your book about Judas Iscariot was my favorite. Or the Line Between, my pandemic one, that’s my favorite one. And so they all have their favorites, and they’re all different. And, you know, they’ve really just been a really intrepid group and willing to kind of go wherever. I’m like, okay, come on, guys, we’re going to go on a new adventure. They pack up their gear and they go, and they’ve always been awesome that way.
Kat
Okay. Maybe it’s just like gathering the people who like, who read like you do you just read wide?
Tosca
II think so. And I’m fortunate enough to have some readers who they definitely have their preferences, but who are willing to, if I come out of left field with something like World War II book, which I’ve never done before, I think they will embrace it and jump on the ride.
Kat
Yeah, that’s cool. So note to traditionally published authors, you still need a newsletter and an ARC team, right?
Tosca
You got it. I hate to say it, I like to romanticize what it might have been like being an author in the 70s or the 80s, maybe the 80s, where everything’s done by mail. We talked about how long it took and how it was forever and all that stuff, but you didn’t have all this junk on the sides, the noise of social media. And authors, I think, are really scrambling, trying to figure out, should I be on TikTok? Should I be doing this? Do I need to make reels? Do I need to cut out all this time for my writing day or my personal life to try to master this stuff? And just think back in the 80s where you get fan letters in the mail. But that said, I have been particularly grateful this last couple of years during the pandemic for social media and the ability to spend time with my readers. We spent over 60 some nights every night consecutively in a row where I jump on live and I read three whole books of mine today, a chapter two every single night. And we got to spend time together. And so it’s really grateful for that because I really like my readers and I like spending time with them.
Tosca
So that’s the upside and that’s the reward.
Kat
To find that connection. That’s true.
Tosca
To have that connection.
Kat
Yeah. Day-to-day, it can feel like a lot and I always feel like I’m running behind people. I’m trying. I’m coming. I haven’t posted in forever.
Tosca
But I know today I was scrolling through my pictures going, do I have anything that would make a halfway decent interesting? You know, I’m still alive because it’s been a while and a few weeks ago we had COVID and all this stuff and I didn’t post anything forever because there was nothing interesting.
Kat
Yes, I know. Even as writers we can feel like there’s nothing happening in my life. Guys, is there such a thing?
Tosca
I don’t feel clever today. In fact, I feel stupid and I’m not going to have anything cool.
Kat
Our art is not very fun to make little reels of. I’m jealous of the ceramics people and the painters. I get mesmerized by their little things going around and around. I’m like, yeah, I can’t do that with mine it’s so boring to watch me stare at a screen. I’ve tried to make it interesting at different angles and I’m like, this is just lame. I’m just not going to do this anymore. So what is on your plate now? We’re going into the busiest season, do you have time to write in the fall with all your family things going on and a book coming out?
Tosca
Yeah, I have to. I’m going to have to because I really need to work on this new project. But I am also trying to rerelease Havah by year’s end and early next year in January, I’ve got a short story short. It’s 11,000 words, short story coming out in an anthology, that’s edited by Kathryn Coulter. So I will be promoting that because it’s all women, thriller writers and the proceeds, a portion of the proceeds go to benefit breast cancer research.
Kat
Oh, fun. What is that anthology going to be called?
Tosca
It’s in January and I can’t remember what it’s called. I have not seen the final PDF yet, but it’s coming up. But that one’s kind of close to my heart because one of my sisters is battling breast cancer right now. So I’ll be promoting that one. But in between, definitely writing and I got a new medieval thriller. So going back in history now, finally.
Kat
Very cool. So you’re like combining history and thrillers.
Tosca
Yeah, why not, right? I mean, I’m addicted to the pacing, so I really don’t want to slow back down too much.
Kat
Yeah. So do you come up with these or do you have to, like, do you have to pitch, like, a new one every single time, or does the publisher expect you to come up with one a year? How does that sort of work?
Tosca
Well, I was with Simon and Schuster for a long time, so all of my books to date are with Simon and Schuster. But my new book is coming out from a publisher in a print called Ravel. That was a one-book contract. So this new one I will be pitching. So I don’t know where it’s going to land, but I think for me, in order to pitch it, I think I’m going to have to write the bulk of it. So that’s what I need to get that done so I can keep the pipeline filled going.
Kat
I think some newer authors don’t understand or don’t know that a lot of times. I mean, you got your first contract with 3 books, right? But sometimes after that, sometimes the agent moves on or the editor moves on, and you have to repitch it. And you’re like actors. You have to keep selling.
Tosca
You do. I mean, if you have like a three-year I’ve had a four-book deal before, too, where they’ll say, okay, I say, here’s my idea for this book and this next book. And they’ll say, okay, plus three more. And then you do have to pitch it to your publisher and say, okay, the last time I did that, I went in, I went to New York, I met with my publisher, and I took a list of ten ideas, and they were like, oh, really cool, I like this one and this one. I think you should combine them. And that became the Line Between actually, because I had two books left in that contract. But after that it was like, well, I had this book I’d been working on with Marcus Brotherton, and it was done because I wrote it in between some other stuff. And so it was like, we’ve got this whole thing. So what now shall we do with this? I pushed it to this other publisher.
Kat
Very cool. That’s still another, like, line of work, though, you know, like pitching and selling it.
Tosca
At least you don’t have to send it in the mail with a self-addressed envelope. Sending that off to the team that, there just felt like a breeze.
Kat
Especially with prices of mailing. Although I have to say, when I used to go into Kinko’s, trying to sell my first book, I was like, yes, it’s a buck nothing. Okay, this is a buck. I don’t know why I was just so proud of it. Anyway, so you have all these different things going on. Do you feel like as a writer? Do you like writing every single day? Is that you have to do something now?
Tosca
You know, I know you’re supposed to or whatever, but I don’t write every single day. If I’m in between projects, I may not be writing, but if I’m writing, that’s probably about all I’m doing. So there’s that 90-10 where, like, I’m writing, and then I might throw something on social media or something just to keep things from dying there. But if I’m writing, I’m writing. I don’t wash my hair. When I finished, a Single Life the sequel to the Line Between, I climbed in the bed in the morning because I always seemed to finish in the morning. Got in the bed next to my husband, I said, I’m done, I finished. He’s like, that’s great, honey. Can you bathe now? When I’m in it, it’s like, I don’t have time for that.
Kat
And you married after you already had, like, these writer habits, right? So there was no hope for him to change the mold.
Tosca
Had no idea what he was getting into.
Kat
It’ll be fine. She’s so cute. She’s up there writing. He doesn’t eat when you write?
Tosca
I eat, but washing my hair and all that stuff, I don’t care about. You know, I wear the same thing for three days in a row. I don’t care about that. I’m definitely not doing my makeup or anything.
Kat
You’re just in the zone. I like that. I think I should change my family’s point of view. Momma’s in the zone. How long do you think about a book and the plot of a book before you get into that writing zone?
Tosca
Years.
Kat
Okay.
Tosca
Years. I’ve got ideas right now that I’ve been carrying around for years. When I wrote Iscariot, the book about Judas, I carried the first line around with me for about three years, and I knew the first line. And then with the Progeny, too, I knew what the first line would be. I just didn’t know exactly what the rest of that first part would be, but I knew the first line.
Kat
You’re just sort of thinking about it. So at what point do you realize that you have enough to start writing?
Tosca
Never. Because I’m not one of those people that get struck by lightning or has a dream or what. My dreams are like weird acid trips. I don’t know how people get books out of dreams, so I don’t have that. I enter a book with a premise, okay? Like, you know, what if the descendants of Elizabeth Bathroy are alive today.
Kat
Carrying on her weird…
Tosca
You know what? They’re alive today! Okay? The premise might be the Queen of Sheba, okay? I’m going to write a book about her, or Eve. Oh, yeah, I did write a book about her, and that’s all I’ve got. I got nothing. And then I have to start plotting it, and then I start making notes and I brainstorm. And when I get enough of, it’s not an outline, it’s just a list of ideas and events, mostly in order, then I see.
Kat
You don’t need to have, like, the climax or how you’re going to end it or anything like that. You just have something.
Tosca
No, I don’t know any of that stuff. And actually, when I write my duology, I write the first book and I have applauded the second book.
Kat
So you are kind of a panster.
Tosca
I’m like a hybrid, because every time, I’ve written two duologies and I get to the end of the first one and I take a breather, and then I gear up to write the second one, and I’m like, oh, crap, because I wrote myself into a corner and how am I going to get out of this now? And every time I’m like, if I was smarter about this, I would have plotted out both books at the same time, but I’m too lazy or too undisciplined or something.
Kat
Or maybe they would end up being too contrived. You never know. Because I bet you’re in a corner either way. Like, if you plot yourself into a corner, you’re still in there.
Tosca
You still have to plot your way out.
Kat
Maybe that’s what sort of makes the book more interesting, as you as a writer have to figure out. Okay, let’s start digging.
Tosca
Which is excruciating. My husband is a really good brainstormer, though, luckily.
Kat
See, as I tell my listeners all the time, we shouldn’t be doing this alone. You at least need somebody to brainstorm with.
Tosca
You at least need that. You need people. You need a tribe. You need friends. You need people for the journey. I’m a big believer. I teach on that all the time.
Kat
Well, we are definitely in agreement on that. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is as you’ve moved from Christian fiction into not really Christian fiction, and not sort of like, at least not specifically, right? So have you found, like, are those two different reading groups or like, how did they accept that when you sort of moved? Or how do you manage that marketing wise?
Tosca
That’s really interesting. These days I’ve got kind of 1ft in each world, and these days I write books that will, I hope, appeal to my mainstream readers and to my Christian readers. When it comes to the Christian market, I think there’s two basic kinds of readers. There’s the kind that only reads Christian fiction, and they go to the Christian market for clean reads, meaning no gratuitous sex or explicit sex, no gratuitous violence, no swearing, things like that. And they read solely in that market because that’s the kind of clean read they want. But there’s also readers of Christian books who also read widely in the mainstream market as well. So I try to write books that will appeal to both.
Kat
Right, so you’re not specifically looking for Christian tropes or anything like that. Do you have an inspirational theme at all, or is that just not really something you’re thinking about right now?
Tosca
It’s important for me to have themes that are inspirational or redemptive. It’s important to me to write characters that can inspire. I try to steer away from certain tropes. I definitely don’t ever want to preach or anything like that. It’s not my style.
Kat
And that would definitely put you more in the Christian section, right?
Tosca
Yeah. Christian fiction has been evolved over the decades, for sure, but I just really want to tell a good story that people can feel satisfied at the end of and maybe miss a little bit when they close the back cover. And that will make them glad they spent their money on it and their time in that world, and that will make them feel that they were well entertained and they were glad for that, and somehow it added to their life. If I can do that, and keep them up all night, which is my other big goal, then I feel like I’ve done my job.
Kat
Yeah, I think you need a t-shirt that says.
Tosca
Every time somebody writes, or writes to me or whatever and says, you know, I called in sick to work because of this or whatever, I secretly high five. Yes.
Kat
You should have, like, a running tab on your wallet.
Tosca
Like a little notch in my belt or whatever. Yeah. In my mind, I have that.
Kat
I like that. I think this is a great goal for every author to have, keep them up at night. That’s definitely going to make the pace go faster on your book. So where can people find you? Make sure that you’re still alive, even though when you’re in the zone writing and find your books.
Tosca
Yeah. So wherever books are sold, my website is toscalee.com. I’m on Instagram. I’m on Facebook. I’m on TikTok. I don’t do the stuff. I just post pictures and videos, and I’m on Twitter. You can find me on that there.
Kat
Yes. And if they ever want to be part of your ARC or your newsletter, I assume you go to your website.
Tosca
Yeah, go to my website. You can write to me there, and you can sign up for my newsletter there. So it’s all there. My calendar is there, all my teaching and appearances and all that stuff.
Kat
Perfect. And we will have the links in the show notes, of course. So whatever social media you’re on, you can find Tusca Lee there and you can go to her website. We’ll have it in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today.
Tosca
Absolutely. It was a ball. I appreciate it. So thank you.