[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult.
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the hybrid.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: Each episode and sign up for your.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Free author pass over at the hybrid author website to discover your writing process.
[00:00:26] Speaker C: Get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www. Dot.
Let's crack on with the episode.
Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in today's interview is with children's author illustrator Kylie Haworth, and we chat her latest graphic novel for kids, Kev and Trev, tips for authors and illustrators looking to adapt work into graphic novel format. Winning the West Australian Premier's Book awards Writers fellowship means for Kylie's work and much more.
So in my author adventure this week, the Kickstarter campaign is ending on the 6 August and at this stage it is just under 50% funded. So unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going ahead. And for me, I feel like there's some glaring reasons as to why. And you know, I'd certainly go again on a Kickstarter, but number one would be I would definitely probably do like a pre launch campaign. I didn't do that. I just kind of launched and that was it. And generally those are about three to four weeks. So effectively like double the time of how you're running your campaign, I suppose. And I drama Pinterest and things like that. And the other thing is, I think I have given up on it probably about a week or two weeks ago and not thinking, oh, this isn't gonna fund, but maybe a little bit of that thinking. I think I kind of felt that way from the beginning that it maybe wasn't gonna succeed or had a low expectations of it or something. For that reason I feel, not that I've self sabotaged it by any means, but that I've got a bit bog down my own thoughts in it and just, yeah, rather than going gangbusters on it, I've just kind of reclused and, and I also feel like I've kind of not shot myself in the foot, but it's Kickstarter. This is the campaign. This is what should have been my focus over, say, a book launch, maybe one or the other, because it's just effectively asking people to do two things. You know, people are asking me about the Kickstarter, and then I'm talking about the Kickstarter and the reason for me running it was because of these book bundles and to get that off the ground. But the book was still going ahead, so there would be a book launch in September, which there is, and then people were like, oh, we can just wait till then. So it's like fund a Kickstarter or come to the book launch. It feels like there was two options there. So really, I feel like maybe a week or so ago I gave up on the Kickstarter and just started focusing on the book launch. So I am having a book launch for my first in series, contemporary women's fiction. The writer, the hairdresser, and the nurse under pseudonym Zara Ellen. If you caught last week's episode, I'm sure I was talking about it. It is going to be held on Thursday, September 5 at the State Library of Western Australia, which is in Perth. 06:00 p.m. for 630, start finishing at 730. It is going to be launched by general fiction author Sasha Wasley, who is also pseudonym Ash Harrier children's fiction, and she writes under SD Wasley as well. So I feel like me and Sasha Ash have a lot in common, being me, being Joanne Morel, Jay Z Morel, and Zara Ellen Izejdehe. So we'll probably have a bit of a chat about our pseudonyms as well. So I'm very, very excited for the launch. I've never had one before, and yeah, I put a post out on social media, so if you've seen that, I was getting very excited and I thought, put a save the date out and then thought, well, you know, I've got the event details, why don't I just create an event? But because it's hosted through writing WA, which is the organization in WA for authors, they support writing, they support all sorts of events and members and things like that. And this is one thing that they do for their members, which is of our free space to have a book launch. And I just love libraries, and the state library is such a great meeting ground, middle meeting ground between south and north for everybody I know. So I'm really looking forward to that. Because of their insurance purposes, they had to create the event. So I had to take down what I'd done and jumped the gun and got ahead. But we commended on my proactivity, which was nice. So writing Wa issued just another event, which is just so it's under their booking system and other artwork and things like, which was just really cool. And yeah, so I'm really looking forward to it. If you are around in Perth, then please come along. I would love to see you and celebrate with you. And I'm really looking forward to it. Raising a glass and just being around bookish people and people I know and love and just really, really clinking a glass and talking about my work and just enjoying, enjoying people buying it and reading it and things like that. So last night I went to visit my book club in the suburb that I used to live in for the last seven years. I started a book club there, and I was really thrilled to go back and visit them and see that they're still thriving. And it was this group of women, and they're amazing. And, you know, it was just cool to sort of look around and think, you know, I did this, I set this up, and the lovely Lisa is still running it and she's doing a fantastic job. And they've read some amazing books and we're very intrigued to hear about my book and kindly bought it as well, which was amazing. The first kind of buyers of my book as well, so I hope they enjoy it. It's a little bit daunting. The fear starts arising, which I'm very well versed in. The author fears and how to overcome them is a book that I have written also, if you're interested, Joanne Morell, check it
[email protected]. dot au books and that talks about all the, you know, self doubt and fear and things that have arisen in my writing career that has tried it could have almost stopped me in my tracks. It's not pleasant. You know, it's such a, it's just such a, it's annoying, if anything now it's, you know, it sort of rises to the front to be like, oh, you know, what will these people think of your work? What will they say? And at the end of the day, they were really proud that I had written a book. They can see the massive achievement that that is. And that's something that I should be focusing on. Not two full stops in the book, you know, not the one flaw I found or anything. You know, why is it that we always go to the flaws and think of them or embellish them rather than all the positives that we've created? I've had this conversation many, many a times, and it's something I'm working, I've worked on and worked through throughout the years. And it's not something I let stop me, as much as uncomfortable as it makes me feel sometimes doing this, not doing this makes me feel even worse. So, you know, I know this is something I'm supposed to be doing and this, it's all part and parcel. I am also starting to book up for events towards the end of the year. I went ahead if you've listened regularly listening to the podcast, I have now hired a virtual assistant, the lovely Gladys. Shout out to you and team. They are busy doing my administration work for me behind the scenes, which just frees me up to be able to create. I actually struggled to let go of this side of the business, actually, which is ridiculous. Just one part, just hand it over to someone else. And already I feel like it's the best thing I've ever done. I have got two events booked towards the end of the year for NaNoWriMo, which is national novel writing monthly. Librarian has booked two of my talks. Well, one's a talk, one's a workshop. So I am going to be on Wednesday the 20 November come along to my discovering rollblocks and writing workshop with me, Joanne Morel. And that's for 04:00 till 05:00 at Amherst Village Library. Or you can join me Friday the 29 November for my getting published talk by me, but also my pseudonym, Zara Ellen. And that's three till 04:00 at Mills Park Library. And this is in Perth, Western Australia. If you are there, come along, I would love to see you. This is events run through the city of Gosnells. So I am also have started plotting the next in series of my women's fiction book, the Lawyer, the singer and the server. So as you can guess, the four books in the series are all going to be professional titles. The characters run on from the first. Well, they're not the same, but in the right of the hairdresser and the nurse, the hairdresser's client, Shailene Parker is a divorce lawyer and she is one of the protagonists. She's the lawyer in the lawyer, the singer of the server in the next book. And these whole books, I think I was talking about it last week, are a celebration of friendship, different kinds of friendships. So the writer, the hairdresser and the nurse is lifelong friends. The lawyer, the singer and the server is new friends. Celebration of that. So their story is starting to unfold. And yeah, I'm really, really excited to dive back into a new set of women. But also, you know, already the characters from the other books feel. I can tell how they're, they come into the second book and I love those styles of books. And you know, worlds that are created and character crossover and really something, something I love. So I'm really excited to be writing like that.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Thorne Creative where beautiful websites for authors are brought to life. No matter what stage you're at with your writing, your stories deserve a dedicated space to shine. Whether you're just starting out or have a bookshelf full of bestsellers, your website is the hub of your author business. Finding everything you and your books offer together, Thorne creative can nurture all aspects of redesigning your old site or start afresh from the initial design. They can provide ongoing hosting and maintenance to marketing your books online, saving you time, money and stress trying to wrangle your site yourself. An author website built by Thornton Thorne Creative can easily direct readers to your favourite retailers, your publisher, or simply set you up to sell to them direct. The options are endless. Thorne Creative have worked with many authors across all genres and know what goes into good, functional working author websites. To sell books, head on over to thorncreative.com dot au websitesforauthors to read author and publisher testimonials and to see what they offer and some of the sites they've created.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Kylie Haworth is an award winning, internationally published children's book author illustrator from Western Australia. She recently won the West Australian Premier's Book Award Writers Fellowship, the Weybo Hoffman Award and Koala Honour Award. She's also been shortlisted for the Squibbie Australian Picture Book Illustrators Award, CBCA Book of the Year Awards, Weybara and YaBbA Awards.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Welcome back to the hybrid author podcast, Kylie.
[00:11:43] Speaker D: Hello. Thank you for having me back again.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: We are so thrilled that you can join us once more. But for those who missed the episode, episode 38 that you were on with us last time, which was fairly at the beginning of the podcast, talking about speaking at writers festivals, can you tell us, you know, how did you come to be a writer and illustrator in the children's genre?
[00:12:02] Speaker D: Well, I had a previous life in graphic design and just loved the flexibility. Once I did sort of a three year stint, or maybe more closer to two years in London as a freelancer over there. And so once I'd sort of tasted the freelance life, I came back to Perth and couldn't really bear to go back into the office scenario in Perth, which is quite small in the graphic design world. It's probably grown now. Back then I'd also had my also had two children come along as well. So once I started reading them picture books and wanting to be available for them, I decided to give the picture books a go, because it's flexible work hours. I could, you know, create these things while the babies were sleeping, and that's how I did my first one. And a lot. I've noticed a lot of other graphic designers have actually sort of taken this natural progression into creating books as well.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. And I think, obviously, having children, I think, provides a lot of creativity, ideas and stuff, especially around picture books, doesn't it?
[00:12:59] Speaker D: Oh, all my come from whatever my children are interested in or something they've done. Yeah, it's all come from parenting. I don't know what I'm going to do to write books. Kids, once they're adults, or maybe they'll have to have their own kids and then I'll be okay again.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Well, you've got, like you said, you've got a dog. You could get another puppy.
Well, today we're going to chat about your latest graphic novel book, which is Kev and Trev, and it looks absolutely amazing. Seen a copy? Yeah. Why do you. Did you choose this format for that story? Or was it like the collaboration with the publisher about graphic novel? This idea sounds fantastic. Well, it is fantastic.
[00:13:36] Speaker D: It was kind of. It was sprung from these little lunch books. Mini books. Lunchbox mini books I was doing. Some people might have seen them on instagram a little while ago. My children were really disliking their school readers, so I just started making fun little books for them, popping them in their lunchbox, something that had a twisted ending or was funny. And a few publishers saw those and contacted me and said, oh, you know, how can we get these cool little books into a publishable format? And obviously, printing them tiny like that wasn't a format suitable for publishers. So I actually ended up working with Tash Bezliev from affirm press. And just, like, working together, it's the first time I've worked with a publisher rather than finished a whole thing and sent it to a publisher. It was the first the opportunity to build something from scratch and change it as we go and try and find and the right format together. So to have all these little stories, I think there's sort of, in this book, six short little stories. I needed something to bind all those stories together. And I thought initially of, you know, the two old men in the Muppets that just comment on Muppet shows.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:41] Speaker D: And, like, this book has ended up nothing like them, but just the fact that two characters sort of commenting on these stories. And I put that to my publisher and she said, yeah, this is great, but I kind of think we need to know why. Why are they commenting on these stories? Why are they doing this? And so I realized that they had to be the ones that were writing the stories themselves and they had to go on their own character arc and journey. And in order to do that, I put it into the graphic novel format so that we could see their journey. And then you get to read their short stories throughout the book as well. But the other reason I went for graphic novel is because having two dyslexic children myself, I know it's just such an approachable format for kids, all kids of all reading abilities, and I didn't want to disclude anybody when I created these books. And so, you know, not being faced with this big page full of text and be able to have illustrations and all that sort of thing as well just makes the reading experience a lot easier for kids that age.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: My daughter especially loves graphic novels. It just seems to be what she gravitates to. She's not a huge reader either.
[00:15:42] Speaker D: But between picture books and chapter books, I think it's just an easier step for them than jumping straight into a chapter book.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's your first graphic novel, isn't it?
[00:15:52] Speaker D: Yes, I have done before and chapter books before, but, yeah, my first graphic novel. So I didn't know what I was before when I thought, yeah, I'll just make a graphic novel.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: And how did you find. It was heaps of work.
[00:16:05] Speaker D: I think it was a lot more work than I expected. I had a few writerly, illustratorly friends who'd done graphic novels and they warned me that it was a marathon and I was like, yeah, well, how hard could it be? It's a kind of somewhere in between doing a picture book and an illustrated chapter book. I'm sure it'll be fine. But it did take a lot more work because each page has several panels, so you're doing several illustrations on each page and handling the text as well, so. And this one's quite. This one's 240 pages, which is sort of the longer end of graphic novels. But the reason it's that long is because I wanted to limit it, limit how much text was on each page, so it just wasn't overwhelming for readers. So that meant that the story was extended out over 240 pages. Yeah.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. So how long has the process been since you sort of got picked up with the publisher there and the collaboration to the actual finished product or ballpark, putting you on the spot?
[00:16:59] Speaker D: Three years.
And. Yeah, three years and towards the end of it, the most amount of work that I've ever done, I was drawing for 13 hours a day.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Oh, you must get cramped months in the end. Yeah.
[00:17:14] Speaker D: Because it took so much longer. Just draw it all out than I expected. Now I'm starting the process of working on the second book, and that one I should be able to, because we've got the characters and the world and the design and everything set, it should be a lot quicker, and I should be able to do that one within the year rather than the three years that the first one took.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And can you draw upon, obviously, what you've already got? You can reuse some of that stuff as well?
[00:17:37] Speaker D: Yeah. So, I mean, designs are done and the page layouts and that sort of thing is, is done because that was all set in book one. So there'll just be a couple of new characters that will need designing and there'll be a different sort of background because they'll be in a different environment. But so much of it's like the, the tones of each sort of color is set and that sort of thing, so it will save me a lot of time. And I found that with chapter books I've done previously, the first 1 may have taken, you know, maybe a year or two years. The second one might have been down to six months to a year. And the third chapter book I did, I pretty much wrote it in six weeks, but then the illustration took longer. So, yeah, every. Every book in the series takes a shorter amount of time each time you do it.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. And how many books are going to be in this one, this series, do you think?
[00:18:25] Speaker D: I don't know. It's open ended.
I've got a contract for the first two, but, yeah, I hope that it goes really well. And who knows? I'm noticing a lot of series out there seem to be getting cut off at book number three, I think, because generally the sales of book one is always going to be the highest of all the books, and then it sort of tapers off after that. So, for example, with my fish kid, chapter books publisher said, hope there was going to be a fourth book. And I get people emailing me all the time saying, when's book four coming? And I just say, oh, how about you email my publisher about that?
But, yeah, they were like, well, those two, the last two came out in a pandemic. I think that's why the sales dropped off towards the end there. But the publisher sort of encouraged me to start a new series. So you get that new first new high sort of sale for the first book. But if you hit it and you get it right, maybe it can just keep going and going. Who knows?
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Maybe. And who knows? If you ever get your rights back one day, you could always do the fourth book yourself.
[00:19:26] Speaker D: You could.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: So do you want to tell us a little bit about Kevin Trev? Just like what it's about?
[00:19:31] Speaker D: Kevin Trev are two very funny friends. One's a cockatoo, a surfy cockatoo, and one's a marine iguana. She's quite resourceful, living their life. They've got the best life. No jobs, no school, no homework, no problems. But unfortunately, their houseboat is falling to bits, so they need to come up with a way to make some money or get a new houseboat, pretty much. So they decide, and this is a bit of a sort of play on being an author and what I know about being an author. And they think that, oh, hey, let's just write a book and we'll be rich and famous, as a lot of people think, you know, happens when you write a book, but it's not the truth. But anyway, we follow them on their journey of writing a book and getting it published, and they decide to write about sea creatures in this first book. And so each of their stories are the sort of short, little funny, rhyming stories, kind of in the style of my lunchbox mini books. And so they've got to go on an ocean adventure to try and find sea creatures to write about. They do hook up with a publisher who's not a publisher. They found out that she's actually a Puglisher.
She said in order to publish their book, they have to include a Merpug story. So they set off across the ocean trying to find Merpugs to find out if they're real and you know, what they can find out about to write about them.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's fantastic. I absolutely love it. Very imaginative. And you can just know that kids are going to go absolutely crazy for it. And it sounds very educational as well. On par for the schools, too. So is this book. Congratulations on recently winning the West Australian Premiers Book awards writers fellowship. That is absolutely amazing. Is this book. Is this book part of this or. No, this is something completely separate that you will be working on in lieu with that award fellowship.
[00:21:23] Speaker D: Sorry, applying for the fellowship is kind of like applying for a grant or something like that and pitch what you would do with your fellowship time and budget. And I did pitch to write the second book in the Kev and Trev series. So that's what I'm going to be doing over the next year. And I also included a trip to Melbourne, which I'm doing next week, to go and sign Kevin Trev books in all the Melbourne stores. So that's really exciting. And finally meet my publishing house team in person because being in Perth, you know, sort of everything's done via email and Zoom and I'm really excited about stepping foot in the office.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. I wonder how you'll be welcomed.
Maybe they'll do a big display.
[00:22:05] Speaker D: Well, they are driving me around to the stores and to sign the books and having a lunch with the team and a dinner and talking about the second book and how that's going to go and where the story might go for that. So, yeah, I'm really happy.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah, how exciting. Oh, that's absolutely wonderful. And yeah, we can't wait for the second book also, and for everyone to go out and read the first one and buy it as well. But do you have any for our audience listening who would like to get into the graphic novel side of things? I guess, whether it's commissioning an illustrator or illustrating their own work. Have you got any author tips, author illustrator tips that, you know, after this experience that you're thinking, well, you'd like.
[00:22:46] Speaker D: To share, of course. Just be prepared that it is a marathon.
It is a lot of work. So particularly for the illustrator, there's a lot of work for the writer as well. But the illustration seems to take the bulk of the time, I think. So just be prepared that it is going to possibly take you longer than you first expect. And as part of that, you need to, if you are the person.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: You.
[00:23:13] Speaker D: Need to make sure you breaks when you're illustrating. Because if you spend three or four months doing 13 hours drawing days, inevitably your neck will not deal well with it. So you'll end up spending your advance on physio.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: You should have put in the fellowship massages in there.
[00:23:30] Speaker D: Now I know sort of how much work is at the end of, you know, doing the final art. I'll pace myself a lot differently this time around. But I guess my tip is if you're just writing the book and you're not going to be the illustrator, one thing I found is that I will write, hey, I think this will happen here, blah, blah, blah. Okay, next page. On this page, this will happen. But when I came to draw it, I found that you needed a lot more panels and pages than I expected for, you know, a couple of sentences. So if you're not sort of drawing it out yourself, perhaps visualize it, pretend it's a movie in your head. And once you can sort of see how many, like, if a character walks in and sits at the table and has breakfast, you've got to have them possibly opening the door, walking across, sitting down, pouring the breakfast, starting to eat it. Like, there's a lot more steps than you might think when you just write, hey, they walk in and start their breakfast kind of thing. So just be mindful of how long things take to illustrate how many panels. So I guess the other tip is to read lots of graphic novels because there are a lot of different ways to do that. There's a lot of different sort of ways to do the speech bubbles. I mean, mine's completely dialogue, but you can save a lot of time if you have some prose in there as well, where you can just say, oh, and blah, blah, blah, the character did this. Yeah. There are different ways to save pages if you don't want it to end up being 240 pages like mine. And that's the other two, make sure it's less than 200 pages just because it's long to produce. But I think every graphic novelist sort of does it a different way. So you just have to find the way that works for you. And at the moment, having been through it once and starting to try and do a second book, I'm finding if I sort of rough it out and write it at the same time across that amount of pages, it's working better for me than just writing out a manuscript and then trying to draw it. So just pacing it out across the pages as I go.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: So do you think, like, if someone. Sorry, if someone had a short story or a story that they wanted to adapt to graphic novel style, would that.
[00:25:29] Speaker C: Effectively be harder than if you had.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: A brand new sort of idea, then fleshing out as you go? Or do you think it just works on everybody's individual kind of style?
[00:25:37] Speaker D: I think it's always different every time you do it. Even every book I attempt to do sort of works differently each way. Sometimes I start with ideas for characters. Sometimes I've got an idea for a story. But I know a lot of graphic designers, or a lot of authors of graphic novels keep saying graphic designer when I mean graphic novel, I'm not even.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Picking up, I just hear graphic and you know what you're talking about.
[00:25:59] Speaker D: Yeah, but authors of graphic novels, and I know a lot of them, write it as if it's a play or a script.
Quite effective. When I'm writing mine, I sort of treat them as a movie and I write them in acts. I have act one, act two, act three and work out where the highlights and climaxes need to be. That works for me. But I think everybody does it differently and if you do it slightly differently, going to be your voice and it might be your unique selling angle as well. So, yeah, I think just give it a go.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Now that's awesome. That's some really good tips as well. And I know that that genre, the graphic novels, is very, very popular at the moment. So I think yours is going to make an absolutely wonderful addition to the shelves. Oh, I'm sure it will. So can you tell our listeners where they're going to be able to get Kev and Trev and all the books that you do right now? Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker D: Kevin Trev should be in all good bookstores coming out on the 30 July. It's just in time for book week, so I'll be showing it off at all my book week visits which happen throughout this, which is actually book term rather than book week, which is great. I'm going to be having a launch at paper bird books in Perth, in Fremantle. And that's on Sunday the 11 August. You can always look my books up on my website, which is kyliehoworth.com. get into your local bookstore and if they don't have Kevin Trev, ask them why not.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: No, definitely. It should be there.
[00:27:23] Speaker D: Yeah, I think the publisher has printed quite a few so I think it's going to be popping up everywhere. That's the hope.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure that's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Kylie, for your time, expertise and sharing your story with us. It's been lovely.
[00:27:37] Speaker D: Oh, thank you for having me.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: So there you have it, folks, the truly inspirational Kylie Howard. I have a copy of Kevin Trev and it's pretty special. Go out and get yourself one for your kids Christmas, whatever. Join Kylie for her workshop and it's just a fabulous book. Kids are absolutely going to go nutsy over it as well as adults. So it's a really fun read. Beautiful cover. Absolutely amazing. So go and check that out and everything Kiley does. Next time on the Hybrid Author podcast, we have Will Yemen, CEO of Writing Wade, Western Australia's peak body for the writing sectar. Prior to that, he was a journalist at the West Australian for nearly 20 years, where he was variously literary editor, senior arts writer and a travel writer. He's still a freelancer for that same publication as well as for limelight and gramophone magazines. Will is also a festival director and has been artistic director for Perth Festival Writers Week, York Festival, York Regional Writers Weekend and New Norshire Writers Festival, and he's going to chat to us on writing as a career. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it for me. Bye for now.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: That's the end for now.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Authors.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: I hope you're further forward in your.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Author adventure after listening, and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Hybrid author website at www.hybridauthor.com dot au to get your free author pass.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: It's bye for now.
