Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morrell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid 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 each episode and sign up for your free Author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.
Let's crack on with the episode.
Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you ride and listen to the podcast in. Today's interview is with Moira Pierlo on young adult contemporary fiction, the Lies We Tell Ourselves, Moira's new novel, which is truly a Great read, and WeChat the inspiration behind the Lies We Tell Ourselves, which tackles some deep and personal themes, balancing writing authentically around tough topics while keeping hope and resilience at the heart of the story. At the heart of the story challenges and rewards in crafting stories that resonate with both teens and adults. Moira's advice to other writers navigating the contemporary YA space, particularly those wanting to tackle difficult emotional or social topics in their work, and much more.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: So in.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: My author adventure this week it's if you're in Paris, Western Australia, everybody will be feeling the cold. My fingers and my toes are actually cold. They just feel numb all the time. It has been a bit of a wintery winter, hasn't it? For want of a better word, everybody's sort of talking about it. We've had a lot of rain as well as storms and which is good for this part of the world, which is also obviously always known as dry desert country. The plants at home are thriving, so it's nice to see a bit of greenery, but with that everybody feels it as well. It's a little bit difficult to get out of bed when it's cold and tiptoeing around. So yeah, it's nice but I enjoy it. And we've got like an old style fire which I haven't had on as much as I would like to have on, so I should really utilize that a bit more. But it's, it's lovely to have a log fire with the cold nights and there's just, there's always positives, isn't there? So this week I have some bookstore dates to shop around. The writer, the hairdresser, and the nurse. If you tuned into last week's episode on how to get your indie or hybrid book into bookstores, you'll know I've been sort of busy with that. I'll be talking more about that on Thursday's episode, but very much in the marketing headspace for the Writer, the Hairdresser and the Nurse, which is written under my pseudonym, Zara Ellen, and is a contemporary women's fiction book. If for those of you who don't know, I have plans this week to get back into the writing of my Vineyard romance book, which again, if you've been listening to the podcast or so on social media that I had, was at the beginning of the project thankfully being plotted out, but I lost it due to a software file cleanup and it got deleted. I haven't been able to dive back into it. Like I've needed probably a couple of days, if not a week. I think it's been just to let that sink in and now I'm ready to roll again. So I'm just going to start small. I'm just going to lay out the plot again and then just start the writing. And you know, these things usually free flow back into you, at least they used to when I have been writing in the past and that could be from performing the task of rereading over your writing. So it kind of sticks. But you know, there's definitely in my mind there's lessons learned, there's reasons for everything. And so me starting again is, yeah, just starting again. I've just got to keep going. Freelance writing. I have had a article in mind which I am in the current fact checking stages before pitching to magazines. There'll be more on that later once I get details and the go ahead. We have the Festival of Fiction happening in October, which is fantastic. It's always in the northern suburbs of Perth, which is where I reside, and we never usually get much down here, so I'm really, really happy with the organizers Shout out Tess woods and other people who are involved. They had the pitch sessions open the other day, so best of luck to those who got pitches. I'm kind of limited at the moment on what I can and can't go to. And to be honest, the Festival of Fiction because it's so close and I haven't looked at the full program, but it's got good people I know and I know a lot of people are going and so it would be good for networking, it would be good for learning and it would have been good for pitching as well. I think they went pretty quickly. I still just feel like hibernating and protecting what I'm putting into my brain the thoughts and the opinions of others. With the podcast, I get to connect with people weekly, different people, and hear their stories and learn things. And that's amazing. I'm quite happy being in my little bubble with my head down, my own thoughts and getting on. Sometimes it's good to put yourself out there, to hear from other others and industry and to network. And I've done that for like 10 years. A lot of people know me in different genres and different industry professionals and things, but right now, and in this past year, I've really pulled back. A lot of people might have noticed and just kind of stayed in this little area of mine to figure out my business and what I'm doing and how I want to proceed. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I think that you, you put yourself out there when you want to and that's the beauty of this business. You can close yourself off as well. Sometimes it can feel isolating, but other times it can just feel a bit much and you want that time. So at this stage, and I think the tickets are almost pretty much sold out, that's in October, so there's a little bit away.
I don't think I'm going to put myself out there into this festival just yet.
So if you are in the Melville area, my speaking gigs August next month. And yeah, I've got speaking gigs that start to kick off. First up is the Discover the power of Podcasting with me. Joanne Zara Ellamorel, City of Melville. So if you're south of the river, Melville Library is hosting me and the workshop that I run. In this session, you'll learn how podcasting can become a pivotal tool for personal and professional growth. Expand your reach and influence through audio, gain strategies to build a loyal audience and establish your voice. Discover how podcasting boosts your brand visibility, sales and unlock key tips for launching your own podcast or being a standout guest on others. The session is perfect for aspiring podcasters, entrepreneurs, authors, creatives, or anyone simply looking to amplify their message and grow their digital platform. So podcasting, obviously a very topic close to my heart. I could talk forever on it. And I really, really love getting to get out there and talk to other people about podcasting. Had some really great sessions with this particular talk and I've been booked a few times. I've been booked a lot actually for this talk upcoming, so that's great. It's hosted by City of Melville Libraries. Shout out Lorraine Horsley 10:30am to 11:30am and that is on the 6th of September. If you're around that area, $7 and you can call the staff on 936-40115 to book your spot. Hope to see you there and you can pick my brains About Podcasting this Podcast the Hybrid Author Podcast if you follow me on social media, you might have seen that my colorful advertisement is circulating announcing that this podcast is currently open for guests. So if you' author or industry professional in the publishing writing world, reach out and pitch me Joanne hybridauthor.com and make sure you're familiar with the podcast content. Episodes are topic based and proactive in encouraging writers to have a hybrid author career which is all inclusive, not just one way of doing things. I look forward to hearing from you soon and sharing further information about how the podcast works if you are successful.
We have a new sponsor joining the Hybrid Author Podcast and I'm very excited to be able to share that information with you soon, but for now, today's episode is sponsored by Sanguine Press. Feel Good Fast paced, emotionally charged women's contemporary fiction the writer, the hairdresser and the nurse intertwines the struggles and dynamics of three women's working, family and romantic relationships, leaning on their longtime friendship to help get them through and my short Nonfiction for Authors, Author Fears and How to Overcome Them how many times have you said your writing's crap or shied away from calling yourself an author? Take comfort in knowing your author fears are valid. Other writers feel the same way you do, but are not letting fear stop them from putting themselves out there. We're all feeling the fear, but doing what we love anyway, and you can too. Quick tips for Fast Success Starting a freelance writing business Place yourself in the pro position before you've met with your first client. Invest one hour gaining 60 quick tips to save yourself time, money and stress discovering the little but important factors previously unconsidered. Having never worked directly with clients before. Books come in ebook, print and some audio and range from 10 to 15 to $28 each.
Moira Pirlo is the author of seven titles for children and young adults and the creator of the award winning web series on youth mental health, Fragments. Moira holds a PhD in Philosophy specialising in ethics and is a qualified art therapist and founder of bookbench Project. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, Moira divides her time between Canberra and Jambouru on the New South Wales south coast where her family grows walnuts, macadamias and avocados. Welcome to the Hybrid Author Podcast.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Moira hi Jo Great to be here.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: We're so thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. You have had quite a career. But can you tell us right from the beginning how you came to be a writer?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Oh, well, I guess it depends what you mean by writer. If you mean author or published author or just someone who writes for a living. Because I've been a bit of both.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: When I grew up. Yeah, both. Okay, well, I'll try to give you the abridged version. Like, we could do a whole episode on just how I became a writer about 10 years ago. I've been writing all my life, essentially, you know, in every job I've had, every career I've had, and there have been many, they've always involved writing in some capacity. And that's not surprising for me because I was one of those kids that grew up loving words, you know, loving reading, just wanting to immerse myself and escape into the pages of a book. I distinctly remember writing notes to people when I was like, five or six. The notes were probably unintelligible, mind you, but in my mind, I was like, okay, you need to know this.
So I would tell them what I needed to tell them and give it to them. I also remember very distinctly in my 20s, if I was in a relationship and there was some issue and you're trying to navigate, oh, how do we. Maybe the other person, my partner, wasn't a big talker. I would write, like, a letter and everything would come out, and I would never give the letter to the intended recipient because I didn't need to, because the process of writing was so cathartic that it crystallized all the images for me. So I just somehow knew that writing was central to my being, to who I was, to my identity, particularly to how I process emotions and seek clarity. So virtually every job I've had, I've been writing in some capacity. But it's usually. I wouldn't say boring things, but it's usually not what I wanted to write. It could be health policy, medical writing, legislation, advertising, so things that pay the bills. But I've always felt like I had a book in me. I mean, I think every writer does. And I've always been drawn, even in my businesses over the years, to health and mental health issues. So it was only natural, I think, that eventually the planets would align and create a space where I could comfortably say, I'm going to give this a go now.
And I think that can be hard depending on what your age is and, I guess what your other demands are in life. But I had a family quite late. I was 38 when I had my first child, then 40, then 42. We had several businesses. We had three businesses on the go when we finally had kids. And then you feel like you're needed in other capacities for your day job, for your. A few day jobs. And right or wrong, I wanted to be home when the kids got home from school.
So I just really worked hard to try to make that possible. Mind you, they probably rather I wasn't home when they came home from school. That's a separate issue.
But then eventually there was this opening where kids still need you when they're teenagers going through puberty, but they don't need you as much as in those early days. I mean, arguably at times they need you more.
But day to day, the I didn't have as many demands on me. And that's when I snuck away to say, I don't know what will come of this, but I just want to see what happens. I feel like I need to reconnect with my creative self. And I wrote a picture book first and it won several awards. Not that that matters, but it was just because 20, 30 years later, you have imposter syndrome and wonder, what am I doing? And I've been out of the market and maybe this is a pipe dream. So when people seem to be relating to your work, that gave me, I guess, the confidence that I needed to keep going. And I haven't looked back. That was about 10 or so years ago.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Amazing. Oh, I love that. And I can definitely connect with feeling. The written word is a good way for catharsis and how to express yourself and things like that. I love how you used to write little notes and give them to people in your thoughts. I just think that's great.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: I wish I had some of those notes. I'd be curious what they said. It was very urgent on my part. I recall feeling like a sense of intensity related to it. And hopefully that intensity comes through with your, you know, writing. Also that drive to say something.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that. That's amazing. Well, we are here today to talk about your latest YA novel, the Lies We Tell Ourselves. And that tackles some quite deep and personal themes. You know, body image, self esteem, what inspired this particular story and why is it so? Why were those themes important for you to explore?
[00:14:33] Speaker B: There wasn't Jo, any one thing that inspired it. And I often say to myself when I'm starting a new project, I'm going To map out what I'm thinking and why. Because inevitably people say, what was your inspiration? And then once there's a long lag, as you would know, between conceiving an idea and a book, you know, hitting the market. And sometimes, especially if we're older, we look back and think, God, what was I? What frame of mind was I in? How did I even come up with that idea? And I honestly can't remember. But to me, this book. I think I've had this book in me all my life, from high school days.
My working theory is that everyone has shit they're carrying from high school in some capacity, whether they admit it or not. It's the formative years. Adolescence can be wonderfully life affirming, joyous. You know, it's a time of being inquisitive, of experimenting, of living life, of testing and challenging yourself. But it can be debilitating.
It can be a time of despair, loneliness, alienation, not fitting in, not belonging, questioning who you are, right or wrong. I'm wired to think deep. I've just always been like that. I mean, we could try to slap a label on it or a diagnosis or a hashtag. I don't bother because I think all of those things limit us. You know, we all have stuff, we all look at the world differently, we all experience things differently. But I just know that I had a certain intensity of thought and I. I felt more solace in meaningful ideas and fundamental and deep ideas than the superficial, I guess, layer that most people, or that many people, I should say, operate on the chit. Chatty, small talky, how are you? Great. You look amazing.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: I'd rather go deep and work out, why are things like this? How can we fix these things? So with high school, I probably looked like I belonged. I had really great friends. They're still very good friends to this day. I had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun times. But I think existentially I felt like I'm just not like other people. I don't fit into any of these groups. I had a lot of issues about probably who I was, what I look like, how I presented to the world what I wanted out of life. And I think I carried that through my 20s, my 30s. Even though we don't think of it consciously, I think that time of adolescence can wire our brain and somehow not dictate, but influence quite heavily how we perceive ourselves and how we present to the world. When I look at books, there's some fabulous books on the market. Seems like it's a Never ending supply. Every third person I bump into, even if they don't write, is writing a book, you know, and the more the merrier. There's room for everyone. But at the same time, I think there's a tendency in a very commercial, very saturated market to oversimplify things. So it's essentially commercial. People want to move stock, we want to make sales. Books are commodities. We need to know what genre, because we need to know where it's going to fit on the shelf, how we're going to market it. And there's a tendency to say, especially for young adult work, like, okay, we want to convey the complexity of adolescence, but not too much. You know, we don't want to. There's gatekeepers. And we don't want it to be like, too many issues. That's confusing. We need to make it a smooth experience for the reader. Pick one. Depression. And I even had that issue with this book. Quite a few publishers early on were saying, like, oh, my God, like, we laughed and we cried, and you nailed the mean girls and the high school. It was so real.
But, oh, there's just so much stuff happening. And I'm like, but that's life. Yeah, that's like, her grandmother died, her parents are fighting, her best friends turned toxic.
There's other things that are happening that I don't want to give away. There's lots of stuff, and it's that overwhelming crescendo of like, oh, my God, I'm getting hit by every direction. That's what life is, the messiness of it all. And that's what adolescence is. So why are we trying to oversimplify it? To present it to readers. That's not giving them an authentic reflection. And right or wrong, that's fine. If that's the way the market is, I'm not going to change it. But I don't want to write that. That doesn't move me to put pen to paper. I had a lot of close calls with this book in terms of publishing. If there was an award for the book most likely to be published on so many occasions with so many publishers for so long under consideration, this would definitely be a front runner. But in the end, no matter how much the publishers loved it, the editorial team, inevitably, when marketing and sales heard they even got a whiff of eating related issues or body image, they immediately said, no.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Why?
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Categorically no. Oh, God, no. No, no, no, no. They'd say, no. Sorry, no can do. And I remember one publisher in tears because they fought hard. And I worked with Them for probably close to two years tweaking. I didn't want to change substantially the book, but just things to make them happy. I think there's some delicate language and sensitivities around eating issues more and eating issues, particularly body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia.
There's a whole cluster are diagnosed mental health disorders. But even though they fall under that umbrella, there seems to be a heightened sensitivity around them.
More so than anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm not quite sure why that is. I know they're complex. I'm not trying to oversimplify and I'm not trying to say we should just, just carelessly talk about them, come what may. We need to be careful. But I don't think that should preempt or prevent publication. In fact, I think when you look at the incidence of these issues, it's more reason why we need to and should be talking about them and publishing work in this area rather than standing off for commercial reasons. So I had a very big reality check. I've run a lot of businesses. I'm a realist. Like I'm not naive, but I never imagined it was so kind of black and white. One publisher said to me, your problem is, you know, your benefit or I forget how they worded it. Is your curse that you're writing ahead of the market.
The market isn't there yet, but how long do you wait when you have a book that you think can and you know has already helped many people. So right or wrong, I made the decision to self publish after many years of trying to get it published and coming very close. And yeah, I'm very happy with that decision.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: No, you should be. The book is absolutely fantastic. And I'm surprised about that actually, you know, with the topics being not touching them or something like that. But the way that you write is. And I reading it myself, I just, I thought it was fantastic. I was reading it thinking this is a great read for that target audience and I think that they would really enjoy it. And it was. Although it's quite strong themes, I felt like you wrote it with a light hearted tone and you know, do you.
Is there parts of you with the main character Harley? Is there parts of you that you can concur came from you within?
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
And it's interesting you say that because no one's actually drawn that link. You know, I haven't advertised that. And a few publishers early on said, oh, is this an owned story? And I'm like, well it's not Really a known story, because it's not autobiographical. I've never had a diagnosed eating disorder. I've definitely had disordered eating. And I could make a bold statement and say, I think everyone I know at some point has had some issue with food, where they probably weren't eating wisely or well. So I don't think that's, you know, that doesn't fall under that umbrella. But I definitely have body dysmorphia and probably always have had. And the interesting thing is, you could look at me. I'm stand up on your podcast. I'm not big. I'm not overweight. I have a normal BMI, a normal weight. I'm actually 8 kilos over my normal weight. No one would tell people and go, what? No, you're crazy. You look good sewing clothes. Yeah, I look fine. But it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with weight or whether it's true or not. It's just this distorted perception that your flaws are much more extreme than they are in fact.
And that in my case, without going too into it more so for time, I had a lot of traumatic experiences growing up. So I think when you grow up in the Bronx, you see a lot of things you probably shouldn't see as a child. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's just different things that happen. And you grow up young, and I think sometimes that can also affect how you're wired and how you move through the world.
So there could be lots of reasons that I have that kind of distortion somewhat. It's not at a high state of dysfunction. I mean, no one would know it looking at me, but I could definitely relate to being a young woman who didn't like her body, who was convinced it looked far different than it looked in real life.
And that goes to. Without giving too much away, readers will eventually question the reliability of. Of the protagonist, of the narrator in this story.
So I didn't want to write a book about someone who wants to lose weight specifically, or is overweight and needs to lose weight. There's a lot of really good books with female protagonists like that. I wanted to write a book about something a little bit more subtle and a little bit more complex. Someone who isn't really big, but has a disconnect in their mind and is drawn into a very dangerous world of perception versus reality. That's compounded, obviously, by the digital life that we live today, where nothing is as it seems, losing her sense of self, disconnecting from friends and Family, ironically, the people who could help her most, and then finally clawing her way back with a sense of hope and resilience to start another, more compelling journey.
So I tried to do that in a very subtle way that was credible, believable, authentic, with an authentic voice.
I made it a point of not actually describing Harley too much in terms of what she looked like, because I want readers to bring their own biases and presuppositions to the page.
And having had a lot of eyes on the manuscript in earlier iterations, I could say readers. I mean, the beautiful thing is some. Some of them are assuming from page one, no, she's probably not even overweight at all. She probably just has issues. Others are assuming she's quite big, you know, and that's why she's gone on this journey. And maybe later in the book go, oh, no, I'm actually questioning that they bring their own experiences and their own presuppositions to the page. I don't want to tell them what to think or what she looks like, because then it's just a bit didactic and formulaic and commercially satisfying. But in my view, it doesn't go to the heart of the issues, which are gray and complex and odd shaped with rough edges. That's what I want to get my teeth into.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you've absolutely nailed it. The subtleties and the way that you wove the story, for sure. So congratulations on that. You mentioned.
Have you had some feedback from teens or anything like that? You mentioned helping people or.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Well, they've been close to.
I'm going to say, easily over 60 or 70. And part of I should try to like, like, literally find every person, every email and count because I think it's close to 100, because the work was so long in the works. Like, the first draft won a national award. Like a very, very early draft. And then another early draft, I was selected for another opportunity and it kept building from that. And publishers were interested, and then I would tweak, one would pass, I would submit elsewhere, they were interested, I'd tweak. And sometimes polar opposite way, exactly different to what I had just been told. But meanwhile, I'm sending it out to beta readers widely as as much as I can through other sources. And right or wrong, when most people, I think, send out to beta readers, they send that to people they know or people in their networks. Obviously they have to be known to them. I sent it out to people that I knew, but their instructions were to send it out to people that I didn't know.
So there couldn't be, there had to be many degrees of separation because I didn't want anyone, it couldn't have been anyone I had ever spoken to or met in my life. I wanted someone to read it blind and to just say, oh, that didn't work for me at all. Or though that made no sense. Oh, I love this part.
And what I kept hearing from people from a very early stage and especially younger people, but it was also women and fathers of, of teenagers. The young people, particularly girls, said, oh my God, you're on my bus, you're in my head. How do you do that? So they, they definitely seem to relate to it quite strongly that that's what happened. That's my friend. So Talia, the character of Talia, who is Harley's best friend or, you know, best female friend, seemed to resonate with a lot of young girls. I had a young man about 17 say to me, you just wrote, that's my son, sister. Like, that's my sister's story. I had a father say, I don't know if I meant to be contacting you because my wife is a better reader and I don't know if you're meant to know that, but I picked it up because I was curious because of how she was talking.
And I went into my daughter's room and I asked her to read it and then we talked about the issues because apparently the daughter was experiencing some sort of eating related disordered behavior. Yeah. But wouldn't talk about it. Not in a, not at a crisis stage. But the parents, you know, as a parent, something's up. But your teenager comes home and slams the door or doesn't want to talk and everything's fine. But if they have a book that they relate to, sometimes you could just say, have you ever felt like that, you know?
Yeah. Do you, do you feel like, can you understand where Harley's coming from? Do you know anyone who's going through this? Yeah, I am. You know, yes, I do understand how that feels. So it, sometimes books can just mediate those issues. They can close the gap and bridge the distance and give parents an in. Because sometimes, no matter what you say when you're a parent, there's nothing you can say that your teenager will tolerate. Your simple fact of existence is annoying to them. And no matter how you phrase a well meaning, well intentioned question, it'll backfire. But a book is almost like a gift in many ways.
It's something that you can share and discuss and it's like the Young person thinks they're talking about themselves, but because they're talking about themselves, mediated through a character, it's a safe distance.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I found a lot of very favorable. I received a lot of very favorable feedback that made me think that the book was striking a chord with people of all ages, parents of teens, women especially.
I don't know any woman who loves their body.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: No, that's right.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: And if they say they do, I don't know. I would probably. I know I sound cynical, but I would question it.
So most people. And you can have things you want to change. My nose is too long. Not long enough. I hate my freckles. Whatever. That's normal.
But for many women, there's something that's just so intensely, you know, just unacceptable that it takes up too much space in their mind. And then how they dress, how they present to the world, how they perceive their self becomes this toxic baggage, just from one thread that isn't quite connecting. So I wanted to, I guess, try to unpack that as best I can in a read that hopefully people would relate to.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing as well. And when you spoke about your first picture and then sort of winning awards and things, and that giving you confidence to pursue this, I guess, with this book and all this feedback that you're getting with the connection from the story, is that doing the same. That's obviously not getting picked up by a publisher, but going ahead and doing it yourself. It's just reaffirming. Yes, this book's important. It needed to be out there. You've done the right thing.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah. That's really what's guided me through the whole journey and the whole journey from when I first picked up a pen, although it was a typewriter. I mean, a typewriter gone. I'm aging myself now. A computer typer. I used to. I did a typewriter for my Ph.D. like, two fingers. So that took a while. Yeah, look, that does keep me going. And I think for every setback, I just had this tremendous gut feeling. And I'm not trying to sound like I sound slightly delusional. I think you don't want to be like, oh, I just knew it would hit the mark. There's some people that are going, if you don't like these kind of books, you're probably not going to gravitate towards it. If you want action, car chases. If you want lots of plot, like, plot driven, if you're not into character driven, if you're not into kind of like the humor, but then morphing into something more tragic and then ultimately hopeful. If that's not your arc, you're probably not going to gravitate towards it. But I just had a strong sense from the feedback that I was getting, that was what was keeping me going through all the obstacles.
The issue I had, even though I thought I was savvy and a realist, was because the manuscript, it won awards, it was shortlisted, runner up, long listed and getting such great feedback early on, I just assumed it would be published. It was like, oh, yeah, of course, of course someone will pick this up because look at all, everyone loves it. No, it doesn't work that way at all. Someone can actually love it. Many publishers can love it it, but still make a business decision, a commercial decision not to publish. Sometimes that decision's made for them through marketing and sales. I guess it depends on the company. But yeah, there's a chasm between the two. I'd love to see publishers take more of a punt on books about issues like this that really do matter, that can help people. Yeah, if. If written well in an entertaining but provocative but authentic way, they might not be bestsellers, they might have to be marketed differently. They might need a little bit more support because the author's not very well known, but maybe they can be subsidized by some of the celebrity books that fly off the shelves, you know, so there's a moral responsibility, I think, for everyone in business. When I produced Fragments, where the Fragments started off as a stage play and then I had funding to make it into a web series and then a feature length anthology, I went to local businesses in Canberra and Fragments is eight interrelated stories, all on mental health themes. So anxiety, depression, there's autism spectrum, cultural alienation, eating related issues and so forth. And my argument to these businesses, which had nothing to do with theater, was you have a moral responsibility to give back to the community that you're based in, that you're doing business in, because your workers, whether they're telling you or not, there'd be a percentage that are struggling. And in today's world, and that was the motif and the through line of fragments, everyone's struggling, these young people, but they're so busy struggling and in their heads they don't see their friends as struggling too. And the answer somehow is in moving from that place of disconnection to connection.
And they agreed and they. I had government funding, but they provided support, substantial funding for that reason. And I guess maybe it's not a good analogy, but I think publishers, not that they're making money hand over fist. Or maybe they are, I don't know, I've never been one. But I think they have a responsibility to maybe subsidize quieter books that can be life changing for many people.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely agree there. How have you. Would you gold us wrote again? Having now gone down self publishing and done it, would you. Would you do this again for another project or.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: I would. I feel like I'm learning the ropes. I was just knee deep in a few issues related to self publishing that I'm trying to nut out. The problem that I have is the, the benefit of self publishing through a platform like Ingram or even Amazon. Let's just use the Ingram for an example is it gets your book out there in terms of metadata.
So if it's priced right with the right margin and it's attractive to booksellers, they'll pick it up and you could Google this title or my name and it'll come up on virtually any platform and you go, wow, that's great. Because if I did a print run probably in China because it would be way too expensive to do it in Australia, it just wouldn't stack. Sadly that's another issue. But if I did it overseas and I had to get a distributor and they had to hold stock, then they would use their sales agent to go around. It would be slow going. So Ingram, wow. Like worldwide.
But the problem is, even if it's on every bookseller's website, no one will find it unless they know about it because there's 483,000 other titles. So you know, keywords come in handy if you're looking for a title, maybe Mental health, maybe body image, maybe ya, but they'll still be 312,000. So no one will know. No bookshop will stock it because they don't stock self published titles. Their bookshelves are dominated by the top players. Understandably, that's how the market works.
But at the same time, no one will walk in asking for a book or looking online for this book. They might find it in looking for something else. They might hear word of mouth, they might hear if there's good reviews on Goodreads, they might hear through marketing locally.
But in terms of getting the book out there, I don't know how sustainable that is. So I wish, I wish I had a more optimistic outlook. It's just hard because you can spend lots of money doing PR but you'll never get that money back in book sales. So that doesn't make sense from a business point of View. It's a bit of a catch 22, isn't it?
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I can, like you said, you're a realist. I can understand what you're saying completely, for sure.
Well, you have absolutely shared so much already. Moira, do you have any advice, you final advice you want to share for anyone who wants to write for YA or the children's genre or even the self publishing that you've gone through that you'd like to share?
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think in terms of advice it would be know who your audience is, know why you're writing, are you writing for yourself, you know you're writing for yourself, your own journey or are you writing to actually achieve some sort of outcome for a specific sector and back yourself? So if you're writing for children, nya, just back yourself. And if you believe in your work, it's. This sounds so trite I almost can't believe I'm saying it because I used to go to conferences where people would say things like this that sounded trite and I would roll my eyes. As an early like someone, an emerging writer, you think like, oh yeah, well how do you. But how do you do that?
I guess what I'm trying to say is there's so many things in the industry that are broken or that are suboptimal. Let's say that it's like you're driving your car and people are throwing, there's a tree falling down and people are throwing rocks on the road and you can just stop and go, I give up, it's too hard. Or you can just get a four wheel drive and power through. You have to power through. You're going to learn a lot along the way. You're going to be surprised by how things work.
But I think if you have something that you believe in, authentic, well written, market tested, that seems to be resonating, don't let those roadblocks stand in your way. You have to believe in yourself and just keep going.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah, no, well said there. And I agree. I just as well. I thought I've definitely gotten my four wheel drive, I'm still in it.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Are you with a crush on it?
[00:39:10] Speaker A: That's it. Yeah. Well thank you so much Moira. The book is absolutely fantastic, fantastic. And your message is extremely strong and I'm glad it's being well received and yeah, no, that's amazing. Our listeners are dying to know where can they discover your book, everything you do on and offline.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well I think you'll probably be posting socials like on Instagram, Maura Pirlo, underscore author. I'm on Tick Tock. I'm on Facebook, I have a website, maurapirlo.com or if they look up my link tree which is, is just linktr ee and then forward stroke my name. There's just endless stockists that will stalk the lies we tell ourself. Which is available in paperback, audiobook and also ebook. And I thought that was important I guess for a young adult market too. Not everyone like I, I'm old fashioned. I love an actual book, but not everyone does. So I'm trying to make it available as widely in as many formats as I can. Or even if you just search my name or the title of the book and my name online, there'll be endless possibilities for how you could get your hand on it.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: That's amazing. Are you selling direct as well from your website or.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I will sell direct. It's not my option of choice because the postage costs in Australia are just horrendous. It costs over $10 to post a book that's $22 which, which I still can't reconcile in my mind. In the States it would be probably less than half the cost to print here and the postage costs would be like $4.
So I, it's, I will sell direct to people if they prefer. But there's so many options, whether it's big companies that some people don't like, always go indie. If you can, you know, third party booksellers, there's so many options that I think they'd be able to find something that works for them or to contact me directly. I'm more than happy to post the book.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time, Moira. That was fantastic.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Thanks so much Jo. Thanks for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: So there you have it folks, the truly marvellous Moira Pirlo. Fantastic chat with Moira there. She's so knowledgeable in industry, her books are absolutely fantastic. So go check out the lies we tell ourselves right now. Next time on the Hybrid Author Podcast we have Johan Dutoy chatting When Only Today Matters. Writing truth, emotion and short fiction. Johann Dutuy grew up in a remote community eight hours drive from Cape Town in South Africa. He immigrated to Australia with his family in 1994. Through membership of a writers group, Johann found an opportunity to write short fiction. His two collections, Meandering Road and When Only Today Matters have been published in collaborations with Broadcast Books. The eight stories chosen for When Only Today Matters were shaped by Johan's personal journey. The human truth element came from a place of gratitude or a sense that tomorrow may be a better day. There are stories fueled by injustice and frustration. Others with a whisper of hope. Outstanding interview coming up with Johan I wish you well in your author adventure this week. That's it from me, Spy for now. That's the end for now. Authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening and I hope hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the Hybrid Author website at www.hybridauthor.com au to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
