 Are we live? It said we're live. Okay. Do we trust Strayn Yad? I think we do. All right. Well, hi. I'm so excited to be talking to you, Jackie. So this is a wonderful author to a friend of mine, Jackie Jacqueline Pretty. And she just had the release of her book, Powerless. And I'm going to read her bio really quick just before, yeah, just before we start talking. Because I love your bio. It's so good. So Jacqueline Pretty is the author of Powerless, which won the 2022 Killer Nashville Claymore Award for the best unpublished book in the young adult category and was shortlisted for the Chanticleer Book Reviews Dodd Save Rosetti Adult Award. An Australian and a travel addict, Jackie has lived in five countries and traveled to over 40. The fictional city of Catalina in Powerless is inspired by Tallinn, Estonia, where she lived for three years. She currently lives in Melbourne but her dreams of returning to Europe. Beautiful. Thank you for that intro. It's the first time I've heard anyone else read it out loud. So it's like, oh, yeah. I think it's really good. I love that. And we'll talk about it later how you have like the awards for the book and how you went and entered it and all these competitions and things. I think it's super exciting. So really, let's just start off and can you pitch the book for us? Hello. Oh, I should have prepared for this. So Powerless is a young adult sci-fi and it's about a 16 year old girl named Hannah who is the only one in her family who doesn't have superpowers. And one day there is a research leak in her father's lab. Her father is the man who discovered the super gene mutation in this universe. And he uses that as an excuse to force her out of the home with the ultimatum, don't come back until you have powers and then she needs to decide how far she'll go to prove herself. Beautiful. And so it's YA, it's a superhero book and it's kind of like action-adventury, right? Yeah, though I have had because now there are more reviews coming in and there are some who have said it's not as much action as you'd expect in a superhero book. So I feel like it counts as action-adventure. I think that one. And so just on that note, what are your kind of comps that you're going with it? And like, who would like it? When I was querying, oh, it's been a while since I queried, because obviously I decided to self-publish. So I'm trying to remember, the best comp is probably the Renegades trilogy, by Marissa Meyer, which is why the superhero, the two point of view characters, ones from the big superhero conglomerate, the other ones from the villains who still haven't been defeated. And that's a lot of fun. And then in terms of like tone of voice or style, I compare it to the archived by Victoria Schwab as well as Elements of High Society by Ally Carter. I remember thinking of that while I was reading it the first time, especially. Well, I actually, oh, I think we got a little bit of a lag. Oh, can you hear me? I can hear you. You're frozen though. We can keep talking. Maybe you'll come back. Yeah. What was I saying? Yes, especially it's worth the end of the book. I saw the Ally Carter connection. All right. So just for the supporting purposes, where do we go to buy it if we want to just get it right off the front of that information? Yeah, you can get it from anywhere. You can find books online. Amazon's probably the easiest place because it's available anywhere, but it's available in so many different countries, but you can also find it on Barnes and Noble, Waterstones if you're in the UK, Booktopia if you're in Australia, so anywhere where good books are sold. That's awesome. Yeah, I can see that I'm frozen. I don't know why, since I search everywhere for the best wifi. One of the joys of working on the road. I know, we can just keep talking, I guess. And it's really bad to do something, but I have to show it or something more megabyte. So apparently, I'm not sure why we're getting everything, but that's okay, we'll just move on forward. Can you tell us about where the book started? So it started in 2019 when I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. So in fact, it probably started a little bit before that because I used to have a publishing company called Grandma Factory, which turned entrepreneurs into authors. And I'd been running that for about six years, I think. And in May of 2019, I went to this big conference for sort of spirituality and personal development. And the theme of it this year was Expand Your Influence. So I thought, oh, great, I'm gonna find people who wanna write books, it'll be perfect. And then on the second morning of this conference, we did like a guided journaling exercise. And one of the steps was like, imagine where you wanna be in three to five years and then take like a helicopter view of your life and everything you've got going on and then reach out to your future self in three to five years and ask them what you need to let go of in order to be where you want. And where I wanted to be was writing fiction and Future Jackie said, well, you've gotta let go of Grandma Factory. And I was like, this is not why I came to this event. I did not come here to get rid of my business. So I sat on that for a couple of days but realized that I had this thing that was taking up a lot of, yeah, just mostly mental and creative energy and I had to let it go in order to start writing. So that began the process of looking for, like a new owner for the business and the sale was finalized in September, 2019. And then October, 2019, I started Outlining Powerless. So I outlined it in October, then November started writing and by the end of December, I had the first draft. That's such a little story that you, like, thought you didn't really realize you wanted to focus on writing. Yeah, it was, I mean, when I think back to it, I think the reason I started the business was because I wanted to focus on writing because the idea was that the business would be successful enough that I'd buy all this time. And like it was doing well, but it was like the mental and creative energy which I said earlier and, you know, it doesn't be going to hold in your head, especially if you want to be creating other things as well. Yeah, absolutely. I always think about that, like, even if you're not actively working on something at the moment, it's kind of happening in the back of your head. So it's like lying space. It's so hard to concentrate when you have so many different things going on. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay. So what drew you to Superheroes? Because I know there's, there's like science and DNA in the book and it's really exciting to hear about that. I had a dream. So most of my story ideas come from dreams. And this one, so I mentioned earlier that Hannah gets forced out of home because she doesn't have powers. And I actually dreamt of this scene where she's forced out of home. So I dreamt of this like scene around the family dining table when she was given the ultimatum. I saw her going upstairs and then being pursued by one of her siblings who had fire powers. And she was like hiding in the bathroom behind the bath and thought she was safe. And then the, like the sister came in and filled the room with fire. And Hannah's like struggling to get away and forces her way out the window, falls out the window into the rose bush. And then the sister says, don't bother coming back until you have powers. And I actually dreamt of that scene. And that was the start of the book. So that was the idea. And then it was like, well, what sort of story would have that scene? That's so cool. And it's cool to see how it evolved too because in the end the sister with fire powers is in the boiler. She's the one that Hannah's closest to. Yeah, she's the good one. Yeah, she's the good one. And all the other ones. It's so cool how you came up with the powers too. There's like the, is it maximum the pain one? He inflicts the pain onto other people. So it gives you like the heave-jeeves, it's so good. Well, I think, yeah. What's interesting is that it has to be, like he can't just make someone feel pain. It's his pain. So he's often like, you know, injuring himself in some way. So he has that as fuel that he can use to hurt someone else. That's so cool. It's so creative too. And was it easy to come up with the superpower? Did it come with the Flaker? Was it something like a bigger brainstorming process? I, see, this is the problem, like catching up four years after you've written the book. I don't remember it being a big thing. I think it was just, I knew, obviously I knew Maria had to have the firepower because of the dream. And the others I think was just random. Like it was, oh, I think this power will work. And then the scenes developed from there. That's awesome. You started writing it in October of 2018, finished it in December. I remember that. Yes, I outlined in October, and I had this thing, which if you look back at my YouTube channel, you can see I'd like to try out different plotting methods. So that was the first time I had three different methods that I tried out to outline this book. And then, yes, started, I'm guessing on the 1st of November, Banana Rhino. And then November of December wrote the first draft. Yes, I love those videos that way. So there are some of my favorite videos in here. And so then, so we wrote the first draft. Can you kind of take us through just like briefly the process, the number of drafts you had to do, like how much editing, what are your process kind of like? So, I think it'd be helpful to do a distinction between like drafts and versions, because I had a number of versions of Powerless, but when I think of like a new draft, I think of a complete re, or maybe not a complete rewrite, but let's say 50% of the book gets replaced. Like it's significantly different. I don't think Powerless had multiple drafts. It had multiple versions. Like I think version six was probably the one that went to print, but most of what's in the first draft is in the final, still the same story. It's more just been polished. And the process of editing and revising was a lot of adding to it. So, yeah, I think my first draft was maybe 68,000 words in the final printed book is 83, 84,000. So, yeah, most of that, not all of the 68, but most of that 68 is still there. It's just polished and added to. Nice, yeah, I noticed that too. Yeah, it's funny. I would think of it almost the other way, like version being a completely different version of the story and then draft being just like. I have it different in my head. I think it's like version control. Like when you're in corporate and you do like a version of a document, it might just have a few small changes. That's a really good way to think of it. Yeah, that's exactly what I think. It's like basically every through the book where I'm changing things, like think of it as a draft, but version also, version makes sense at Google Doc or whatever it is, version control. Love it. Okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit more about kind of like writing craft things because I love some of this stuff in power. And how you structure it. I give a really cool structure. You use a lot of flashbacks. And I remember you kind of talking about how it maybe worked there from the very beginning or some of them were like it opens the prologue is a beautiful flashback or just writing. So could you tell us a little bit about those and why they were included and how you got there? Yeah, so this was one of the things that was added after the first draft. So one of the things about like a superhero action adventure type of story is that they're very fast paced and one of the struggles with a fast paced story is like when do you have time for the emotional beats? And one of the things I've done through revisions is actually slowed down to have more of those beats that when I was reading through it maybe four or five months after I'd finished the first draft and had been letting it sit. I knew that I wanted the relationship between the sisters, Hannah Maria, to be the heart of the story. And even though I really enjoyed reading it I didn't feel like it was there yet. And the big reason for that is because it's around like the 20, 25% mark I think that Hannah gets kicked out of home. So her sister isn't around for the story which means you don't have a lot of time to build that relationship. So I felt like the flashbacks were a good way to incorporate that. I also did get inspiration for the style of flashbacks from the archives by Victoria Schwab which I mentioned earlier. And I actually, so one of the things I love is learning from books that do things well. And if I find a book that I like it's not uncommon for me to go and create a spreadsheet and map it out, beat by beat or try and figure out what they do well to incorporate in my own writing. And I wanted to look at the archived because that is also partially a sibling story. It follows... Oh, Mack I think Mackenzie is the main character whose brother recently died before the book. So the brother doesn't exactly exist in the book but that pain of his death is like the emotional heart of the story and the way that relationship was conveyed was through a lot of flashbacks. So I sort of read through to see what she'd done and how she did that. And I went, oh, maybe I could do the same thing. So yeah, the idea for the flashbacks was to have more of Hunter and Maria and there were like a couple which the ideas just came out of nowhere. Like, did any of them come out of nowhere? I think it's what you said earlier where like it's still ticking away in the back of your mind but I know that I wanted to add the prologue because I felt like the first couple of chapters are a bit slow and this is a superhero book so we should have something with like superhero powers very early on. So the prologue is when Maria's powers first emerge so that sort of helps set the stage for the type of book it's going to be. There's one of the things that happens in the book is Hunter self-harm and there's a cutting scene and I just randomly had the idea of, oh, it would be really nice to have a flashback for when she'd done it earlier and see how Maria reacts to that. And then there were things that were more, can't think of the word practical or utilitarian is probably a better word, which was like after Hunter's kicked out of home, I added in a scene that wasn't there in the first draft where she and Maria sort of have their goodbye before Hunter needs to leave for good. And one of the things we established in the book is that Hunter hasn't really left the house in a couple of years. So she doesn't know the city around hers. I'm like, okay, well, how can we make it work? So they have a meeting point. So we have this flashback scene where Maria had a big book of maps that they always looked through when they were younger and then that also helps create Maria's character as someone who wants to break free from this life and is dreaming of things outside of her family's household. I think I'm starting to ramble a bit, but the idea was that I wanted to have more time to build up a relationship between the sisters and then the individual flashbacks were either random ideas or inserted like based on necessity or things that would help pave the way for present day events. Yeah, I remember reading the one where they kind of stashed the meeting place and then she goes to the meeting place. I thought that was really cool and so much of a better way to like, it was so emotional and a much better way than an info job to be like, come since that you decided they would meet somewhere in an emergency. So I really loved that. And I also love what you said about kind of taking your favorite books and sort of writing down the beats of them. You said you did that for a couple of different ones. Could you show us your process for how you do it all? It's something that I've started to do and I've been like, why have I not been doing this forever? And I would love to hear a little bit more about it. So I think this is my experience at least. When you're a fiction writer, it can feel like there's no method or formula. It's just, that's a really good story and I don't know how they did that. And because of that, I feel like the first craft book you read that sort of breaks down story structure and it doesn't really matter how they break down story structure, but the fact that they're able to break down story structure, it's like this revelatory experience. Like for me, this was Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, which breaks down books into four parts and has like at this percentage point, this thing will happen and so on. I know you love story grid. And for me, because story engineering was my first thing, that's sort of how I think about the overall structure of stories, which these are the four parts. Here are the key beats or turning points in the parts. And when I'm going through a book, I'll often go, okay, how far through am I? That means, okay, the climax is about to start now. Oh, we're getting to the middle, so there's going to be a shift type of thing. So having that framework helps me analyze the things that I'm reading, especially if it happens to be on Kindle, because you get the percentage at the bottom of the screen. So it's like, ooh, 70%, okay, we're coming close to the climax. So when I'm, so and obviously, if I'm really enjoying a story, I don't notice that consciously so much, but if I enjoy it and then go back, that's what I'm looking for. So what are the things that happen at those beats and do they happen like exactly at that point or are they a bit different? Are there a couple of different events that could be the main beats? So I'll usually start with those big events and then just see what slots in around it. And sometimes it's more confusing than useful. Like I find the more complex a book gets the harder it is to shoehorn into these structures, especially when you're getting into multiple points of view or multiple timelines. But I think just thinking about stories is helpful even if you don't draw any conclusions. Yeah, absolutely. It's really cool, even just to read with like a writer's mindset. I've been trying to work on and this is a question I think I was like right on. So it's a good transition about like materiality and emotionality of the characters and how to express, I don't know if you've ever found this but sometimes I'll find when I'm writing adventure stories I'm like, and we're doing this and we're doing this and we're doing this and I don't necessarily have to be able to ever have the character like think about their emotions or share the thought a little bit. So I was doing a character's anonymous recently and I was just kind of reading that writer's perspective and like, oh, look at how they did this or like, look at how they started this how they start all of these chapters and just being sort of the progression is so cool. Absolutely. And now I've got to reread heretics anonymous. Yeah, I really love that book. It's such a great book. Yeah, it's so good. So on that note, so there's a specific page I wanted to talk about. Yes. The page I wanted to talk about. I've got it with me, so. And the reason I wanted to talk about it is because it's an area in the book that I really, really recognize that there was a difference, there was a change. So in the drafts that I read, because I was a beta reader, I don't know if I've mentioned that yet, but I got to read it really quickly. There were about 377 words of Hannah. Basically, she decides she needs to go and try to get powers by kind of getting into trouble. And so in the version that I read, it was 377 words. And she like, and I remember taking it and thinking, well, this is really good, but I don't quite understand it. It's not totally convincing to me. I think I looked back to my comment on the word doc, and I was like, this is convincing. I don't really understand why she wants this. And then in the first version, obviously I read it, and I thought to myself, oh my goodness, this is incredible. She totally fixed it. I believe it now. I think you went through and you, you went through, I think you added, I just want to read a tiny bit of it. It used to kind of be that just that I wanted to get powers. Now you have, her kind of touch makes, like, where did her know this long thought would be flexible? Would it really be possible to go back? And then she remembers what it was like to be there, and you kind of really get her motivation. So I would like to hear a little bit more about that. And that's one area that I noticed, and also if there's any other areas that you really focused in on editing. Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things that came up from like beta reader feedback, and mostly beta reader feedback, and some of the manuscript critiques I had, was not understanding the motivations so well. And for me, I feel like, and this might be, I did a lot of drama in school. So I feel like with characters, I just inhabit them. A lot, and because I, and for me it feels so natural for them to be coming from where they're coming from, that I don't need to explain it. But then it's like when someone's outside of your head, they don't have that same understanding or journey. So a lot of it was just trying to put into words why, yeah, why the characters were doing what they were doing, or why Hannah, because she's the main character. I think that, sorry, I've just lost my train of thought. No worries. It's the end of the day, like I just got home from work before we hopped on to this interview. Yeah, I agree. You said about, yeah, inhabiting the characters' motivations and just remembering to put it on the page. I think then also something else that came up, which isn't really what you asked about, but it is part of what informed this section, is the idea of would this really work and questioning the character's motivation as well. And because there are certain things where, like I would have it on the page and someone would read and go, oh, this doesn't make sense to me or I don't know why she'd believe this. And she's an intelligent person. Maybe she should acknowledge that this doesn't make sense. So there were a few bits where I sort of just added in the acknowledgement that she hoped it would work, that she could also see maybe it wouldn't, that the hope is the only thing she has going for her, if that makes sense. Absolutely. I think that was one of the things I noticed most, the line that I just read out about her thinking to herself. Her thought was kind of laughable. Fix everything for me because you're like, oh, so she's not sure either. That makes total sense and it just kind of right away helps get rid of any believability issues that are worth it. That's great to hear. I'm quite worked. Yeah, having the character kind of question myself. She's a super intelligent character. Yeah, it's interesting because she's very intelligent, but she's very naive. And I think that's what sometimes gets people because those two like intelligence and experience don't necessarily go hand in hand. She's a very book smart. She's worked in the lab. She knows all of the science, but she hasn't really been out in the real world. She's been homeschooled her entire life. She's been very isolated for at least the last couple of years, which is basically for people watching. I have about two years of theory before the book, which is when her father gave up on her getting powers. So we know she's been pretty isolated for the last couple of years. And before that she was 14 or younger. So any experience or interaction she had out in the world, she was much closer to child than young adult, which she is now. Definitely. I think the naivete, I mean that's part of what makes her such an interesting character. I'm sure. She's a friend for readers. The complete having one with not the other. And then she goes into the streets and starts getting it. So it's so exciting. She doesn't think ahead so much either, which leads to interesting situations. She's very intelligent, also very naive, not so great at forward planning. So she'll sort of think like, hey, here's the next action. She's very good at taking action. So here's the next action I need to take. But she doesn't really think like what will happen after that until she sort of takes that action and goes, oh crap, what have I done? Look at the situation I found myself in. I think it's very relatable to a very teenage age to have her be like that. Yeah. Honestly, it's been a long time since I was a teenager and I'm still like that a lot of the time. So I can't really judge. Awesome. The next thing I wanted to chat about, we just talked about Hannah taking action. And I have a little section I want to read just because I'm so impressed by how you write your action scene. So this is again, near the beginning of the book, the same chunk we're talking about. It's like the 25% mark. I think why I'm so enamored with it is because it's really hard to write that sort of transition that like plot point one or like break into two and this is kind of right where it is. Yeah. And the action here is I'm going to read this. So she said, it says, are you wrote? Hannah fell on her backside and cried out, quickly flipping onto all fours to bring back up. But someone snatched her ankle and tugged it from under. Hannah's body slammed to the ground, leaving her winded. Someone crawled on top of her, grabbing a fist full of her hair and lifting her face from the ground. What is wrong with you? McKiel asked. I love that because at every single point I was so sure exactly what was happening and I could see it so easily in my mind what they were doing. And again, I think I'm interested in it because it's something that I also want to work on. I have trouble picturing sort of the body and the movement, the pushing, the pulling, et cetera. And I think you did such a great job with like the senses and the visceralness of it. And I would love like, do you consciously have a strategy for that? How do you approach these sort of questions? Short answer is no. No, I do. I quite like, I like writing things that are immediate. So action and dialogue are probably the things that come most naturally to me. But I'm also like a very physical person just in my life. Like I'm very aware of what's happening in my body. I did a lot of dancing, growing up. So maybe that has something to do with it. But yeah, I know for me, I think it's just, I know where the bits of my body are. So like I do picture, it's really hard to strike because I do think it comes naturally. But yeah, because I am a very physical person, I guess it's easier to write that physicality. One thing I will say is as a reader, if a writer isn't as on top of like where people are situated in the scene, often like I'll hear that they moved. It's like, wait a minute, I didn't realize they were in that part of the room and then I'll go back and try to like catch up and see what I missed. So it is something I noticed when it's not there. But for me, I think like the physical side of the action isn't that difficult. It's more trying to keep up with the emotional side because in fact, there's a fight later in the book, which is in a flashback where Maria and Hannah are training together. And it's really boring until it isn't. But the beginning of the fight is very routine. Like they're going through the motions, sort of punch, kick, duck, and it doesn't feel interesting even though, like if you're watching it, the same things would be happening. And it's because like there's nothing at stake. You don't have that emotion. So one of the things I try to focus on is what is the person feeling in this moment? And I feel like that helps drive the action even more so than the physicality of it. I love that. It's almost the opposite of what I would think when writing a question of like, okay, what are they doing? And that makes sense in real life too, coming from their emotions and focusing their first and going action hope from there. I love that approach. That's really smart. Thank you. And then how did you, because there's a lot of action things in the book despite what apparently some of you review said. I think it's, did you put any conscious kind of effort into differentiating them to make them feel different or have them escalated? No, I think it was not consciously. I think obviously it's an action book. You know that the final climactic battle scene needs to be the biggest one. So I always knew that one was going to be bigger. The others were really driven by the situations. So we've got, and the characters involved, because there are some that have people with superpowers in them, which obviously changes the dynamic. And there are some which don't. So like the very first action scene in the book is actually one that Hannah's not involved in. She's watching a recording of some security, no, not security footage, phone footage taken from a hostage in like the bank situation. And that has like her four siblings who all have superpowers, which who end up fighting against other people who surprisingly have superpowers, which they haven't expected. So that sets up a very different fight to the one you just looked at, which is three people who don't have any powers at all. And it's two grown men and Hannah who's, you know, 16 year old girl who has some training, but bit rusty. She's also a lot smaller than these guys and outnumbered. So that creates a very different dynamic. The first fight in the hostage situation is much more evenly balanced. Whereas the one you were just looking at, that's quite short. Like it's over before it's even begun basically because she's so outnumbered. And they're like, that wasn't a conscious decision. That's just, well, these are the pieces we have on the board and that's what's going to happen. Similarly, there's another one, the one where she's running from her home and her father sets her siblings on her. This is another one where she's far outmatched because she's got four people. So four against one. Four of them all have superpowers. She doesn't. So she is not fighting at all then. Like all she can do is run and try to survive and escape from them to then figure out the next move. So yeah, there wasn't really a conscious effort to increase the stakes each time except for knowing that I was heading towards this big battle at the end. It was more just knowing the people I had available and what would naturally arise from putting them against each other. Beautiful. And I think that's the way you want it to be done. To be done. I'm really taking this and learning from it. Each of my action scenes. There's been a couple where you're like, and what would they do to me? I like that. That's a great for that. Yeah, they really are. You can get so caught up in the action that, yeah, just keeping an eye on, just focusing on the characters is what I'm really taking away. And I love that approach to it. Speaking of the ending, and I know we can. Oh sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say another note on action scenes is, I think some writers, in fact, when I was much younger trying to write, I did this as well. I think it's very easy to include action for the sake of action because you think, oh, people want big, exciting battle scenes or big, exciting fights. No, they don't. Not if it doesn't mean anything. Like if there's nothing at stake. So there's no point inserting a fight scene or any running scene or any type of action scene that's best for the sake of having it. Like it needs to mean something when it comes to the character or the wider story. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The stakes are huge, I think. And the stakes get so big by the end of your book too. And obviously, I don't want to spoil anything, but kind of right before the climax, there's like a big thing before the climax. I think it's changed a lot from the version that I read. Okay, am I right on? I don't think so. No. Maybe I might have to go, because I've still got the version that you looked at. There's a document. I might need to combine them in a word and see what the changes are. See what the changes are. Yeah, I don't think that changed. Oh, it's really, I'm going to have to like ask you outside of the call so we're not spoiling anyone, to see what you think changed. Because I feel like you basically had the second draft or second version of the book. But I feel like the climax at the end was pretty much the same. I will ask you about that one thing. I don't want to spoil anything. But the thing that I do know, Cheney, and I loved, you made a short video on this that I thought was hilarious. The name of the country and the city. Could you take a little bit of your setting and how you came up with that? Because I think the story is so cool. Yeah. So when I was writing this, I was, so I'm Australian, you can't tell from the accent. And I was living in Tallinn, Estonia, which sort of random journey to how we got there. It started with an Instagram post and ended with a job offer. And when I was originally planning this book, I just imagined it would be based in New York City or something, very Marvel cinematic universe, like Hell's Kitchen, something like that. And I don't even remember when the idea came to me. It was in the planning month that I thought I'm living in this really interesting place that not a lot of people have been to. So why don't I base the book here? And that was the start of it. So the book is based in Sudovia, which is basically Estonia, but I was really lazy. So I gave it a fake name so I wouldn't need to worry about being too accurate, which is why it's this fantasy country instead. But basically the same as Estonia, it's a northeast European country, former member of the USSR. So you have that Soviet history as well. And obviously the Russian mafia, which is lots of fun. Did you want me to get into how I named it? Yeah, that would be great. Let's do it. So it's not that impressive. I just thought it's in that part of Europe. So you've got Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. So I'm like, okay, it needs to have an IA ending. So it sounds like something from there. And I remember just like spitballing different names. And it was with my husband actually. And we landed on Sudovia, which I thought, oh yeah, that sounds like it could be a real place. And so that was the name I gave the country. And then it wasn't until I had one of my manuscripts and the editor got back to me going, so I Googled Sudovia and it was based in Southern Lithuania. Is that what you were going for? And I'm like, no, this imaginary word I came up with was the name of a real historical place. So I ended up leaving it in there because I think it's a funny story, but. I love that. And if you are watching in Chauvinstein, Jackie has a really, it's a hilarious short on it. Just thank you for talking. You're trying to come up with all of the IA ending words. Love it. I'm just going to pause for a second and say hi to people who are in the chat. So thank you for liking it. Actually, we've got a nervous neuron in the chat who is actually another one of my beta readers. She was my like science expert person. That's so cool. It's also awesome that you were able to get someone to do that sort of science read for you. I was really lucky. So I don't know if I should give nervous neurons a real name. So maybe I won't, but nervous neuron. I went to high school with me, actually. We can see your comments. So we went to high school together and she was always interested in like neuroscience and is currently a doctoral candidate at Melbourne University in Australia. And even though the science in the book is mostly genetics focused, I was like, well, this is the closest person I have with expertise in this area. So I asked if she'd mind reading the book and giving me any feedback on the science and yeah, she was great. And even in the most recent versions, there's a scene with a rather sadistic doctor who tortures Hannah and the feedback I got from one of my editors was he thought the scene was good, but because Hannah has an interest in science and genetics, she should be asking him about this, which hadn't even occurred to me. So I was like, okay, so I basically started Googling and went on this, I don't remember the name of the website now, but there's a website where you can look up different genes and see different things they affect basically. So I added this discussion on different genes that could be up or down regulated based on someone's powers and like then send it off to Chris and he said, would you mind checking this? I have no idea if it's accurate or not. And she actually had a colleague who had a, like was studying genetics and gave it to him to give a once over as well. So I was so lucky. That was awesome. So cool. And yeah, you can give people on your network too. I think it's a really good thing to take away. Yeah, absolutely. I also have Ignatius Riley. I'm so excited to see you. Hi, thank you for joining. And we also have D.C. McNeil. So if anybody has any questions for Jackie, please throw them in the chat and send us a couple more and we'll spend, if we have, we'll definitely reserve time right at the end to go over any of these questions you're just watching. But thank you all so much for joining and having fun. Okay. Now in my little plan for this interview, I had three sections. It was sort of like, now I'm switching. And so again, again, I've watched your videos. So over that. Thank you. I've watched your videos. I've watched a little bit about, you know, the process, but how did you come to the decision? Could you talk a little bit about sort of what brought you to the publishing when you originally wanted to, you were originally doing some query? Yeah. So I originally wanted to get a traditional publishing deal and there were two main reasons for that. One was that I wanted validations. I wanted someone with a traditional publishing background to tell me that this book was good enough to publish because obviously there are no gatekeepers with self publishing. So it's very easy to self publish something that's not great. And the second reason was because I wanted the marketing support of a traditional publishing house because I hadn't tried to like market a book to sell books before. So I didn't really know how to drive book sales. And I know that the amount of marketing support you can get from a traditional publishing house, but I figured even if they weren't doing much, at least there might be someone I could talk to who could give me some pointers about things I could do on my own. And I started querying in, I think, August 2021 and did not have any luck. So I got some lovely rejection letters, but most of the time it was no response or rejection. And then at the beginning of 2022, I thought, okay, why don't I start entering this competition for unpublished books? And my thinking was that if I got an award or if I got shortlisted, that might generate some interest from traditional publishing houses. So entered a bunch of competitions. And then in August, which was quite funny actually the timing, so I had just quit my job. So this was like July and maybe a week later, I got an email going, oh, I don't know if you saw, but you were actually a finalist in this competition you entered. And we'd love it if you could come to our awards dinner. And I checked the date and the awards dinner was like the day after I was finishing my current job. So it sort of felt like it was meant to be. So I left my job. I was living in Switzerland at the time, so I left the job, got on a plane the next day, went to Nashville, went to the awards dinner, won the award. And that sort of provided the validation I was originally hoping for from traditional publishing. So one of the two things like had this big tick and admittedly I did use that as an excuse to resend a bunch of queries that where I hadn't gone to response and to send a bunch of new queries. And I did actually get a request from that round, but unfortunately, oh, no, I got a request and then I also had an independent publisher who was interested in the book that we spent over a month trying to organize a phone call and I thought if it's this hard to organize a phone call, how hard is it going to be to publish the book? So didn't end up pursuing that. But yeah, part one was the validation which I got. And there were another couple of things that happened which were just more validation, which was nice. And the second piece was the marketing and that independent publisher who was interested, part of the submission I had to do for them was a marketing plan for the book. So actually doing that exercise made me think, oh, maybe I do know how to do this or maybe I could do this myself. So just through the process of querying, I actually addressed the things that I was hoping to get from traditional publishing. So I came to the point where I was like, okay, well, by the end of 2022, if I haven't gotten any interest, I'm just going to self publish. And here we are. Amazing. I love that story, especially the whole like, left job, left job, kind of done like, what a national, what a word at dinner. Like so cool. Okay, we have some questions from Nervis Naran, who I know is your friend. Oh, hi, Danny. I just saw his comment. Hey, Danny. That is, I'm just going to make a friend of yours. Danny is one of my, yes, a friend, but also one of my former colleagues from Switzerland. Very nice. Sorry, we've got an international crowd. I love it, I love it. So this is the question I think if it's been really perfectly, did your background help with the writing and the marketing of the book? Because of course, you said at the very beginning of the interview you had a literal like, book publishing kind of business to help entrepreneur. Yeah, so, didn't help with the writing because all of the writing I'd done professionally was non-fiction. So I had a background, like a corporate background in copywriting and content marketing. And then my business was non-fiction publishing. So lots of how to type of books. So it didn't help with writing the book. It definitely helped with publishing the book because I knew how to create a book. I knew how to breathe the cover design and where to find designers. I knew how to set up my book for distribution. So print on demand and e-books. So the actual publishing process I knew about from my business, which was very helpful. Marketing the book is, it might open a can of worms. The experience I had in my business was for marketing books for a very different purpose. So the books that my clients wrote were more like business cards rather than a product for sales. So the author business model is your product is the book and you're selling the book for profit and that's how you make your income. The entrepreneurial author business model was I'm going to write a book that will establish me as a leader in my field and I'm going to use that book to get new clients, keynote speaking opportunities, media coverage, interviews, things like that. So the entrepreneurial author is probably willing to give away 50, 100, 200 books knowing that if they give a book to the right person that's going to be a 10 or 20 or $50,000 client depending on the business. When you're an author the book is the product. So you're trying to sell a lot more books. So there was some experience marketing books in the previous business that it was marketing books to get them into the hands of the right people rather than trying to sell large quantities of books if that makes sense. So I'm not going to say it wasn't helpful because I think everything we do sort of builds your knowledge and contributes to where you are today but it wasn't like a template that I could just lift and apply to this book. This book is a very different proposition, very different market as well. Amazing. It's really cool to hear you talk about the differences between them. I need to think about the sort of entrepreneur business model of the book as a business part. It's so different than how we approach it. It's so really cool though. Yes, and we did some great books as well. Like one of the things I mean again this is the self publishing thing because there aren't gatekeepers there are a lot of also great books out there but yeah my business we had a team like you'd find at a traditional publishing house like we had professional editors and designers and we would like often rewrite books for our clients if they needed rewriting so we did a lot of great books. So cool. And then we have another question also I'm nervous now on here and I think it's a great question because I also used to have this misconception too. How do you get books in bookstore if you're self published? Is it self publishing with books but it looks like you know So well I recently did a reel where I go into a bookstore and remove someone else's books from the shelf and then put mine in their place so that's one way to get your book in stores. Doing it legitimately it is okay so let's clarify so self publishing isn't necessarily just e-books you can self publish physical like hard covers and paperbacks as well. The main difference between you self publishing versus going with the traditional publisher is self publishing you're the one funding it that like I mentioned with my former business you can still access a lot of the same services you can still access professional cover designers editors printers if you want to do a local print run distributors and so on. So first part of the question is formats you can do physical formats even if you're self publishing the stores question is a little bit more complex because obviously there are I don't even know how many books in the world millions of books in the world and physical bookstores have very limited space so that means not all of the books are going to be able to fit in the bookstore and even when it comes to traditionally published books not all of them will go in certain bookstores because there's limited space. What that means for self published authors is most of them won't be in physical bookstores unless they become like uber successful like EL James 50 shades of gray successful then you'll get stocked everywhere but if you're like me and no one really knows you yet probably not going to be in physical bookstores where your book will appear is in online stores so Amazon Booktopia the online version of bounce and mobile so the website rather than the physical stores and the reason you can do that is because the distributor so the main distributor that people use for physical books is Ingram spark they basically have a network of I think it's 40,000 different book retailers and the way it works is you will upload your digital files so PDF of the pages of your book the PDF of the cover of your book you will upload it to their dashboard and then they will feed those files out to all of the bookstores which will then populate the information on their website and then when someone orders it they will print a copy using those files and send it out so does that answer the question I think it does I think it does we'll see if they reply in the comments here but yeah it's so much stuff that I had no idea about publishing as well and cool to hear you kind of dive into that so one other thing I wanted to ask about specifically we got a yes yes it answered the question great love feedback love feedback one thing I wanted to ask specifically about was the cover because the cover of Powerlist is beautiful you can see it on the the nail where is it behind you too can you talk a little bit about it I'm interested in hearing some of the Easter eggs in it and the cool things it represents yeah so I worked with so for my cover design I worked with a designer who I worked with in my former job in Switzerland who is incredible I didn't know what I wanted on the cover which made things interesting that when I briefed him in I knew I had a lot of references for covers in a similar space and a similar genre targeting similar readers so I did have a lot of information for him to work with I just didn't have a description of I want two hands on the cover one holding a gun one holding a beaker type of thing so one of the concepts he suggested was it's very close to what we have now the main thing that changed is the colours we have two hands one is holding a gun one is holding a beaker and what we wanted to communicate with that was the sort of two different worlds that Hanna inhabits in this story because the first one is the very sterile environment of her father's lab so that's the beaker the other one is this more grittier world of the brotherhood which is the Russian mafia so that's the gun so that's the first image then as you look closer and closer you start to see all of these little details I keep looking down because I've got a copy of the book in front of me so I don't forget anything but first the beaker is on fire this means a couple of things one of them refers to her sister's fire powers another thing is that in the first chapter there is an accident in the lab where Hanna accidentally sets one of her petri dishes on fire so fire has this meaning in the story that's sort of the thing that kicks off the story there is blood dripping from around the rim of the beaker which speaks to the violence in the book as well as Hanna's tendency to self-harm the text on the beaker is in Cyrillic so a little nod to the location and the fact that this is country right next to Russia and then around her wrists I don't think it's going to be possible to see it oh yeah you can see around her wrists we've got this sort of chain it's really like spiky DNA and the reason for that is because like I think we mentioned earlier there is a gene mutation that leads people to develop superpowers so there's this DNA element her father's the geneticist who discovers this Hanna wants to be a geneticist when she grows up so this is a significant part of the book and a part of this character but it's also spiky because it's this thing that's hurting her because she has this mutation she doesn't have powers and she's an outcast because of it she also wants to be a geneticist like her father but her father wants nothing to do with her because she's sort of this faulty product almost in his eyes so it's this thing that she's passionate about but it's also causing her a lot of pain then we get into the background so in the background you can see like there's a silhouette of oh this is really hard to do in reverse like a silhouette of Hanna's head behind the hands and behind her head we can see sort of the sterile environment in the lab that I mentioned earlier and then behind that again we can see some of the European buildings so these are just different shots of Estonia but in this world Sudovia I was, okay my answer was the question I was like what are these buildings like did you have a specific line there's a building that comes into play that's all kind of old and classic later in the book I was like is that what it's meant to be well the old classic building that comes into play later in the book is a fictional building so it doesn't actually exist in real life Estonia but no that's not actually how I, so we're talking about Engelhardt's auction house I assume that's not actually how I picture the auction house with the towers so I see this and I just think of like the old town of Caxlina Lovely I'm treating it too because I made a very brief visit to Estonia oh my god like ten years ago 16 and we obviously went to an island and I remember the old town and there's a hill and there's kind of the town of Estonia so it was really cool to read it and to hear about that in the book and yeah going back to the cover again I think it's brilliant love all the Easter eggs and the fun love all like nods what the book is really about and also the colors can we talk about the colors for one second because I love that like the purple pink orange it's so cool yeah I love the colors the original version of this cover was actually all red and I didn't feel like it's interesting because he chose red because like of the fire and the blood type of thing and I'm like well if this was a book about Maria's point of view maybe because she's the one with the fire powers but I feel like you know the fire doesn't have a big enough like it is significant because it's Hannah's sister and who really struggles with being a super and having these powers but it's not a significant enough element of the story to influence the entire cover like color scheme so I basically gave that feedback and said look maybe something with a bit more blues or navy's and he came back with three different color versions one which was sort of more green one which was blue and one which was the purple which we went for and I love it, I love it so much he did an amazing job amazing we have a couple questions or comments in the chat here before I get to my last couple questions a question for Jackie from Australia we have a big cultural issue with speculative fiction here no one buys it, I'm interested in that I didn't know that did the genre about your book find you I think I like to I was going to say I like to write what I like to read but honestly I read everything so that might not be so true but I've always since like I was quite young early high school have loved speculative fiction, I've loved fantasy I've loved sci-fi I've loved the idea of being able to escape and go on adventures so those have always been the stories I wanted to tell but there's also an element of the story choosing me like I mentioned earlier in this call I literally had a dream of one of the scenes in this book and in the scene that I dreamt like there was someone who had fire powers so clearly this was going I mean if I say fire powers on its own that could also be like a sort of a magic system that it was also like more in a modern setting so it felt more like superhero sci-fi so yeah this particular story chose me I think through that dream that in general I do like telling speculative fiction and I feel like you know maybe it won't do as well in Australia because people don't buy it but when it comes to writing I want to write in a way that's sustainable and where I can keep doing it for the long term and I feel like it's going to be easier to keep writing for the long term if I'm writing things that I'm genuinely interested in and excited about. Absolutely I think writing what you're excited about is the number one thing to do I get the classic kind of case of writing for what you're interested in versus the market sort of. Yeah and the market changes as well. Yeah Come on Australia Thank you I'm glad you'll be buying it. Oh love it we don't even have that got a reader I'm just going to say I think it's so funny that Australia that area doesn't find a lot of speculative fiction because in my opinion a lot of like fantasy stories are like films there Yeah it's like the land of New Zealand It's like the land of Lord of the Rings The Chronicles of Narnia It's so funny Yeah I mean when I go to the bookstore like especially in the young adult section there is a lot of speculative fiction but I think what I've noticed is if you're trying to get published here there's a real focus on like more very Australian focused fiction or like literary fiction I didn't even bother querying in Australia because there was no one interested in these types of books. All of my querying was the US and the UK That's really cool to hear actually because a lot of there's a similar thing I think in Canada a lot of the I mean we sell a lot of fantasy and stuff a lot of the like Canadian fiction that you'll see on the bookstore that she's like a classmate of Canadian it is very literary and it tends to be very issue peppy and kind of a like hard read you know kind of like yeah the literary and like the pretty stuff it's going to take a while to read because you kind of have to put it down and go watch some comedy in between that kind of thing and it's kind of cool to see the parallels there I'm also a little bit disloyal to Australia I guess because most things I write tend to be set in Europe or somewhere Europe like that's awesome I mean I'm also writing a story but in Europe so it's boiled in Canada I guess this comment I think is fun it spells Cadovia for us look Cidopia S-U-D-O-V-I-A yeah it's beautiful but I also think the P-S-E was probably the best one to Cidopia love it kind of last couple questions I have for you here is how does it feel to have your book out in the world it's your first section that you published how does it feel this is probably not the answer that people want but it's a little anticlimactic to be honest I think the publishing process is exciting and the different milestones you have so when I first saw the designs for the internal pages and the chapter headings have this DNA ornamentation which looks so good and when we like cited on the cover that was really exciting and then when I got my first printed books like that was like oh wow this is a big thing that when I think that what happened on release day which was Tuesday all that really changed was the buttons on Amazon and the other websites went from pre-order to order so it's like nothing really changed all of the work had already been done the book had been ready to go for a few months so it almost doesn't feel any different so I do, there is a bit happening on Instagram at the moment with people sharing it which is that's been really exciting that's so exciting I don't use Instagram but I do have an account I can log into occasionally and so I may have been looking at your Instagram pages the book's the grammar is taking pictures of it with all the flowers and stuff I know that's been like oh my god I need to up my skills to make my book look this good I looked at that and I was like I could never so beautiful too alright so last question is what are you working on now I'm working on the sequel to powerless so I have three projects that are in the works and I've been rotating between them so I'll do one for a certain period then I'll put it aside and marinate a bit and then go on to another one so I wrote the first draft of the sequel to powerless over Christmas in January and then put it aside because I had like a few events coming up and I needed to work on something else in preparation for a retreat and I just picked it up again about let's say three weeks ago and it's a lot rougher than the first draft of powerless one was which is a little bit worrying but I do have ideas about how to fix it so I'm feeling very optimistic that's so exciting I can't wait to read the sequel and eventually publish that overall love powerless I'm so excited for you I'm so excited that other people get to read this awesome book I did reread it by the way as soon as you sent me the message going page 99 I love what you did here I had to go and look at what was on page 99 to figure out what you were talking about so I knew you'd reread it I had a whole bunch of things little pages turned over of my favorite lines and favorite bits it's so exciting I'm also very excited thank you for mentioning me in the acknowledgments too I might have gone around to my friends and family and like shown them a wine night at my friend's house I was like what what was that about so yeah I'm just excited for you thank you and thank you for your help with it as well because you were one of the first readers back in what 2020 and you gave me such good feedback which has then shaped the final version of the books I really appreciate it no worries at all so I'm going to wrap this up here if you want to let us know maybe one more time where we get the book, where we find you I know it's also in our descriptions in case we need to go look at it right now yep so you can find me at jackallinpretty.com if you're curious about Powerless you can also sign up to get the first three chapters of the book there for free if you have already decided and it's so amazing that you need to buy it now the best place to buy it or the easiest place is Amazon where you can get all three versions so there's the paperback, the hardcover and the ebook just go to Amazon and search for Powerless Jackallinpretty and we'll also pop the link in the description for you amazing well thank you so much for coming to me I really appreciate it thank you for having me this was great sorry for the slight technical difficulties I think we've gotten a little bit better as the interview's gone on definitely and leave reviews yes please leave reviews, hopefully good ones but even if you don't like it bad reviews help as well so any reviews are good incredible alright thanks everyone hope to leave thanks everyone