Writing and Selling Stories with Angelique Fawns Podcast By Angelique Fawns cover art

Writing and Selling Stories with Angelique Fawns

Writing and Selling Stories with Angelique Fawns

By: Angelique Fawns
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Season 2 of "Read Me A Nightmare" shifts its focus to conversations with writers, editors, and creators working in and around dark fiction — about craft, career, and the realities of making stories in the world.Visit www.fawns.ca to learn more. Please --if you enjoy the episode, leave a review!

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Episodes
  • Meryl Klemow on Comedy, Envy and Making Podcasting Pay

    Meryl Klemow on Comedy, Envy and Making Podcasting Pay
    Jul 26 2026
    Prefer to video to audio? The full YouTube interview is here.Meryl Klemow and I have worked together creating podcasts, and she might be the most fun human I have ever met. Seriously.And she is so sweet. I know nothing about the stand-up comedy world, and Meryl is one of those brave souls who actually has a career doing that insane thing. This chat takes us into some very real places. Like how envy can affect your mental health, the price of fame, and how to find balance in a chaotic industry.I keep all this gold content free. Because some writers (and comedians!) are struggling. But this single post took six hours to create. Maybe throw a coffee or two my way each month?Here is one of Meryl’s insights on LA:“Everyone is in kindergarten here -- not everyone, but a lot of people, you know, are like, she has this and I don’t have this. I’ve really had to do some healing and adjust myself. Otherwise I was either going to become part of it or let it eat me alive.”AF: You’ve built a podcast booking business alongside your comedy. How did that happen?MK: That’s where I’ve been the most excited in a few years. I come from the production side -- show notes, project management, launching the show, all the nitty-gritty. My strong suit is both booking people onto shows and working with podcasts to book them guests. I decided to flip it around, use more of my PR background, and start booking people on shows -- and to be really intentional about it. Why is someone coming on a show, and what are they really trying to get out of it? With the boom of the past couple of years, it’s easy to spray and be on a million shows, but what’s the actual point?So I take on only about five or six people every three months, so I can really focus on everyone. I’ll be watching a TV show and looking at it through the lens of a booking agent -- everywhere I go, I’m thinking, “This would be good for this.” I teamed up with some longtime PR people and I’m the podcast arm of it. I feel renewed and happy -- and it never would have happened if I hadn’t created the space for it.Check out the agency here!AF: How did it get off the ground?MK: I approached one of my favorite longtime PR friends, Jordan at Julep Publicity. I told her, “This might be a weird idea, feel free to say no, but I envision doing the podcast side of things for you.” She was open to it, and we were off and running last October. That’s the lesson: sometimes you can just create things. It didn’t fully make sense at first, but now it makes sense for everyone.AF: How do you balance the comedy grind, your podcast job, and having a social life?MK: That balance has been ingrained in me since I was young -- one part trying to do the normal-life things, pay my bills, go through school, be serious, and another, more artistic and comedic side. I did radio in San Diego and was part of a local variety TV show called Tonight in San Diego. There was always something a little devilish and expressive on one side while I tried to be a human who could pay her bills on the other. Now they’re converging, and it really is synergistic.I’m relentless about having a life where I can do both. I love comedy, but I don’t need to be out every night as a stand-up. I want to do this long-term, so I’ve chosen to go a little slower at my own pace -- hopefully so I don’t burn out and can be there longer. It’s important to me to actually go to dinner with my friends, or take a night off and watch The West Wing with my boyfriend. Even if it takes longer to hit my goals, I’m happy to have a calm life.AF: Has that pace always been your approach?MK: The writer side of me could be prone to a nervous breakdown -- I’ve had little mini ones over the years. Experiencing my goals, wins, and challenges in a calmer, slower state is so much better for me. I’ve had frantic periods where I met some goals and wasn’t even happy; in fact, I wasn’t feeling well. Moving to Los Angeles, surrounded by so many insanely talented, driven, cutthroat people, I had to choose my own adventure and create my own stuff.AF: You’ve talked about the jealousy in the comedy world. What’s that like?MK: I could never fully communicate the jealousy that goes on among comedians. I’ve had to talk friends down from just staring at other people’s flyers. AF: How do you keep it from getting to you?MK: I always think, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” The reason I seek balance now is that in my younger years I really struggled with anxiety and panic attacks. And when we see people succeeding so much, they’re driven, but a lot of the time it’s from some deep pain, or they’re trying to make their parents love them. We never know why people are accomplishing things. People tell me, “You’re so lucky,” and I think, “If you only knew.” We’re all dealing with so much more than what we see in the above-ground hot tub.(Authorial note: If you listen to the podcast ...
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    26 mins
  • Master Your Marketing for Authors

    Master Your Marketing for Authors
    Jul 19 2026
    Watch 👀 this interview on Youtube.If you’ve been following along with my writing adventures, you know I’ve been trying to figure out how to market my upcoming novels. I’ve been playing in the short story game since 2018, but now I want to make a little more money, and the only way to do that seems to be going all-in on series. Get readers hooked on what you create, and give them a reason to keep coming back.How do I learn how to do this? Well, you take advice from experts.That’s exactly why I felt so lucky to attend the Spring Writing Retreat in Collingwood with Write Way Escapes last month with Kelley Armstrong, Christine d’Abo, and today’s guest, Lilith Darville.Lilith graciously agreed to join me for this episode, so let me tell you a bit about her. She’s a USA Today and internationally bestselling romance author with novels across dark, paranormal, and contemporary romance, publishing since 2015. Before that, she built a career as a magazine columnist, a textbook writer, and a communications and marketing consultant.She also spent years as a college instructor in English and Communications, and these days she mentors emerging and established authors in craft, branding, and career development. Sitting in Lilith’s classroom reminded me of school in the ‘80s. You behave, listen, and above all… learn.I picked her brain about marketing, about how she’s found success writing in series, and why you need a plan if you want this to actually work.Going back to school has never been more enjoyable than it has been with Lilith Darville.One of the things Lilith was helping me with?My Roxie Vega Kickstarter:Check it out here!If you enjoy this content, please consider joining the next tier! I keep most of my stuff free so every author can access it, but a few $$$ does help.AF: What’s the secret to your success as a spicy author?LD: Continuous hard work and passion for writing, learning my craft, and just write, write, write, and learn, learn, learn. I don’t think I have any big secrets. It’s a lot of hard work. Butt in chair, as we say. Head down, learning and practicing our craft.AF: I know we’re not supposed to say we write for money, but I’d like to earn some money!LD: I’ll disagree with the framing there. Genre authors definitely write for money. Literary folks are the ones who’ll say they don’t. We still have passion for the craft, and writing is in our blood, but so is the desire to make money as genre fiction authors.AF: When you read, is it strictly romance, or do you range wider?LD: If I’m learning craft, I’m not reading fiction--I’m reading things like K.M. Weiland’s books on story structure. All story has the same kind of structure: a beginning, a middle, an end, pinch points, turning points. For market information, I follow people like Jane Friedman, and I subscribe to K-lytics for data and analysis. For fiction, I read every day. If I don’t have my reading fix, I can’t survive. A lot of that’s romance, because I love it, that’s one of the reasons I write it. But I also read things like Lee Child’s Reacher series. For non-fiction, I read a lot of self-help, because I use things like IFS (Internal Family Systems) and Brené Brown’s work on shame in my writing.AF: I’m about to launch my space opera Roxie Vega on Kickstarter, then Amazon. Advertising feels overwhelming. Where do I even start?LD: There’s a checklist of things you want in place while you’re working toward putting five to ten books out. At least five are critical. One is a website, and the big one is your newsletter. We talk about things like BookFunnel and techniques to build your readership while you’re getting content out there, so you have something for readers to read through. Because if you only have one book, you have nothing to market. Once they’ve read that one book, if you don’t have something else for them to buy while they’re looking for the next thing, you’ve basically just lost that sale.Having a Plan (Which I need. Focus? What’s focus? SQUIRREL!)AF: Originally, I was planning to launch Roxy Vega as two novellas, one feeding into the next. But… after some research… I don’t think there’s much of a market for novellas. Am I wrong?LD: There is a market for novellas, but readers look for a fast re-release with them. A lot of the people I know who do novellas do one a month at around 20,000 words. I know an author--I think this is Alyse Anders--who did a sci-fi romance series with twelve women who end up stranded on a planet with aliens. (Authorial note. Aluse Anders writes erotic fiction)Twelve books, one a month for a year, each one a short story about one woman connecting with her alien. One of the things I’d recommend, above everything, is having a plan. How many novels do you plan for your series?(Another Authorial Note. I have no real plan for the series. Roxie keeps flying… ABACUS keeps helping her out. They both keep getting into ...
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    36 mins
  • Writing Your Own Story with J.D. Barker

    Writing Your Own Story with J.D. Barker
    Jun 7 2026
    Sometimes strange, auspicious coincidences happen, and you wonder if it’s fate nudging you in the right direction.Like, for example, when I was sitting down reading Confessions of the Dead, co-written by James Patterson and J.D. Barker, getting really into the dark and twisted tale… and an email popped up in my inbox the next day asking if I’d like to interview J.D. Barker.I was like, hell yes. But of course, it also felt a little suspicious.Hadn’t I just been telling my husband how much I loved this book? Was my phone spying on me, feeding information to some scammer? They’re so advanced these days, who knows?I didn’t fully believe it. But I double-checked with my friend Mark Leslie Lefebvre , who confirmed J.D.’s publicist was real and that he was doing podcasts to help promote a prequel in his 4MK series.And that, folks, is why we all get to enjoy this amazing interview with horror writer J.D. Barker. His career is enviable, I enjoyed every second of our chat, and I hope you will too.You can watch the interview on YouTube here.Or listen to the podcast up above.Here is a recapped version of the interview below:Enjoy!AF: I have to say, when your publicist reached out to me, I thought it was a scam. And what was so surreal — I was reading Confessions of the Dead when the email came in.JDB: She is fantastic. I’ve worked with a ton of publicists over the years, and my model has completely changed. Early on I hired a firm in New York — Dean Koontz recommended them — and I paid a $20,000 retainer. That first month, they got me two blog reviews, one website mention, and a blurb in a magazine. Nothing for $20,000, and there was no accountability.Now I’ve got everyone on an à la carte basis. I give them a list of what they can go get and a price point for each — a podcast gets this much, a magazine gets this much. They can work as hard or as little as they want. I pay for actual results. My current publicist is out of the Philippines and she is phenomenal. Every time I’ve got a new release, everybody seems to know about it.AF: I’m a huge fan. Your connection with Stephen King, your collaborations with James Patterson — you’ve somehow found the zeitgeist.JDB: I tend to get in front of a lot of people and bug the hell out of them until they either agree to work with me or they issue a restraining order. I heard a long time ago: if you don’t ask the question, you’re never going to know the answer. I’d rather hear someone say no than not ask at all.I used to teach at ThrillerFest quite a bit. If you go, you’re eventually going to end up in an elevator with a famous author. You’ve got 15 seconds to either make an introduction or stand there staring at the numbers and watch that person walk away. I am not the kind of guy who ever watched somebody just walk away. AF: I loved hearing about what you do at cons. You don’t sit behind the table selling books — you give them away for free.JDB: I’m in a unique situation. I’ve got my own imprint at Simon & Schuster, so my production costs are very low. I can produce a hardcover for a fraction of what I was paying through IngramSpark. And I’ve got books sitting in a warehouse because we tend to overprint — 50, 60, 70,000 copies. Eventually the dust settles, and I’ve got to find something to do with them.I looked at what indie authors do — they’ve always been ahead of the curve — and for years they’ve given away the first book in a series as an ebook. You’re basically a glorified drug dealer. You’re hooking them with a taste, hoping they come back for more. I just took it to the next level and started giving away hardcovers.Think about it from the reader’s perspective. They come to these events and it’s awkward. They’re walking past tables with authors staring at them with that please buy my book look. They’re afraid to approach because they don’t want to commit. So instead I put a book in everybody’s bag for free. They all come to the table, it keeps me busy, they walk away with that taste, and most of them end up buying another book after that.At Author Nation, I gave away 2,000 or 2,200 books. A good chunk of those people went home and started buying my other titles. That’s how you move the needle. You’ve got to approach everything as a business — how are you going to get people to come back and buy your next widget?AF: At what point do the cons stop being useful?JDB: My first big one was the Writer’s Digest conference — the last one I went to before I got a publishing deal. I learned a lot. But everything tends to be geared toward the early author trying to get that first book out there. When I was on the board with ITW, I noticed everything was built for two groups: debut authors and the big names. Everybody else is stuck in the middle. You can only hear how to write a compelling first sentence so many times.What actually attracted me to Author Nation is that it fills that void. ...
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    27 mins
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