Broaden your mind with Wendy Vella

Wendy Vella is a bestselling Kiwi author of contemporary and historical romance fiction. She is also 1/4 of the SPA girls Podcast. We have a great chat about romance genres, being Indie and getting a little help from friends.

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Transcript

Sarah Williams:            Welcome to Write With Love. I’m Sarah Williams, best selling author, speaker, and creative entrepreneur. Each week, I chat to passionate and inspiring authors about their journey in creative writing. Some are traditionally published.  Some do it themselves. Everyone’s journey is different, and everyone has something interesting to say. We all love love, and love what we do.

Sarah Williams:            Today’s show is brought to you by our amazing fans and supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to help support the show and get some awesome bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/sarahwilliamsauthor to learn more. Now here’s today’s show.

Sarah Williams:            G’day, I’m Sarah Williams, romance author and independent publisher at Serenade Publishing. Today I’m chatting to Wendy Vella. Thanks for joining me today Wendy.

Wendy Vella:                No worries. Thanks for having me on Sarah.

Sarah Williams:            It’s a pleasure. So, tell us how you started out and your writing journey so far.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, I’ve always been … I love romance. I’m an absolutely incurable romantic, and my mother, many years ago, started me on Georgette Heyer and wrenched the book out of my hand and said, You need to try something a little bit … Broaden your mind a little bit. So then I went out to Georgette Heyer, and I never looked back, really. The Regency era has been a particular favorite of mine for many years.

Wendy Vella:                So I wrote for quite a long time. I joined Romance Writers of New Zealand, and did competitions, and just basically spent some time honing my craft. Then I entered competitions, and as I started, I won a few and got Reader’s Choices. I thought, maybe I’m ready to publish. So at one of the conferences I pitched and was picked up by Random House for the Loveswept Line. And, so I published my first book traditionally; it was in November, what am I saying November, it was January 2013.

Wendy Vella:                Then I really had a few problems with trying to get them to pick up another book. What I wanted to write and what they actually wanted to publish were two different things. I had a wonderful group of writing friends who I went on with some of them to do the SpaGirls, which is our podcast we do. And we talked, and they said, Why don’t you have a go at self publishing? That was fairly terrifying.

Wendy Vella:                So I went and got a cover and based on my ability and got someone else to read it and thought okay I’m gonna have a go. So in November 2013 “Duchess by Chance” was published and that went fairly well actually, considering the errors that were still in it. Christmas that year I put out a novella called “Christmas Wishes”. Then I was [inaudible 00:03:11] after that, I really decided that because I write quite quickly I thought this suits me. Being able to adjust and change things and move with the times and covers, and things like that, I thought well okay I really enjoy this.

Wendy Vella:                So I carried on writing in circles for a while and then I thought self publishing allowed me to write across genres and I get bored very easily so the next step for me was I’m going to write some contemporary. I went into contemporary and then published my first contemporary February 2015. Same year I actually retired, not retired, left my job, my day job and worked from home so that was really buzzy, I really, really enjoyed that.

Wendy Vella:                So, yeah, I’ve never really looked back. I’ve got 16 historicals, straight historicals, well not straight as in the traditional scenes, but I have four historical paranormals and I have 8 contemporaries out now, and my first audio came out this year too which is great.

Sarah Williams:            So busy year. So you must write fairly quickly then to have so much.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, I’ve been busy.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, so much in such a short amount of time.

Wendy Vella:                I do write fairly quickly. My first draft is always really quick. I’m not a plotter in any way, I’ve tried many times to plot, because it frustrates me that I quite often will write in circles and go back and change. But, I think my process now, it’s taken me a while to get to the point I’m at, but I know my processes now. I know that when I get to the end of the first draft its very, very rough. A rough, quick first draft. What I do when I write is I need to be able to keep the words on the page so if I find something blocking me I just write in capital letters and that part needed here and carry on because otherwise I’m spending all these hours researching, you know. So, for me that works really well, for me just getting that first draft down.

Wendy Vella:                The second draft is a lot slower and a lot more detailed. So that is how my writing process has gotten…

Sarah Williams:            So are you a plotter or…?

Wendy Vella:                I don’t do any plotting at all, no structuring, nothing. I just sit down and go.

Sarah Williams:            So your first draft is pretty much you telling yourself the story really.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah it is. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried the Snowflake method. I’ve tried friends sitting down with me and helping me plot. But I find it’s a really weird thing, I find that it blocks me. I find if I know the story, I really struggle and so I’ve just given up. The latest book I’ve just finished the first draft on and I rewrote the first part three times as I went through the book but that was just the process that needed to be done. You know everyone’s different but that works for me.

Sarah Williams:            That’s brilliant, wow. So your Regency Romance, obviously you’re in New Zealand, so do you do a lot of research, I guess you know a lot about that area and you’ve traveled over there a fair bit?

Wendy Vella:                Yes I have. My family is from England. I do love it over there, really, really love it so I’ve been back. I went on my honeymoon over there with my husband plus my son played rugby over there so we went over there. Then, my first grandchild was born over there, so I’ve had a few trips over there. I will go again because I love the history. We don’t have that here in New Zealand. That history is just so vital and so rich.

Wendy Vella:                I think the Regency era, I love that no one alive was around then, so you have so much [inaudible 00:07:12], even though you’ve got to stick to those, you know because the people will let you know if you get them wrong. Believe me I’ve had a few of those emails. But I just love that you can really play with that era whereas with contemporary, people living today know what it’s all about. But, then you can really have some fun. I really love it.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, absolutely. And you’re a Jane Austen fan? Which one’s your favorite?

Wendy Vella:                My favorite is probably 2017 version of Persuasion, I think it was 2017 or maybe it was 2015, I can’t remember, with Rupert Penry-Jones on the t.v. But, Persuasion is my favorite and I know it’s her last book but I just love that story, it’s great.

Sarah Williams:            It is, it’s gorgeous, I love it too. So what are some of your other favorite authors that write Regency as well?

Wendy Vella:                Some of them are not straight Regency, I know, I love Julia Quinn and of course Elouise James, but she can be more Georgian. There are so many, Lisa Kleypas, I think it’s Kleypas, I can never get her name right, but she also writes contemporary so she’s sort of, I like that she does both. Miss Stephanie Lawrence of course, there’s just so many historical writers out there that are amazing. I’m actually gonna look up on my bookshelf because there’s a million people up there but I can’t quite see the titles from here.

Wendy Vella:                I think as a writer, that was something that I stopped doing was reading, because I was just write, write, write…and then I realized I was really missing it. I realized that it was really vital for my creativity and to getting everything moving to read as well, not just spending time doing your own stuff. So, now I make myself read.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. And of course you’ve got your contemporary series as well. Those ones are mostly based in the United States aren’t they.

Wendy Vella:                Yes they are. I never really had any inkling to write about anything in New Zealand isn’t that terrible? I’m a New Zealander, but I never really had, I’ve always read American based contemporary and I just sort of thought right I’m gonna go do that straight away. So I haven’t editor who can edit the Americanisms in because quite often she’ll come back to me and go I’ve got no clue what that means. Absolutely no clue because it’s a kiwi thing. I think that’s finally important. I do have an American voice which is good. I seem to be able write American. My readers for over the years tell me that I do okay.

Wendy Vella:                You have to be very careful. Something that I’ve realized is that if I don’t know something than I’ll either write away from it and around it or I do the research and find it. You can write most things and then come back and edit in the stuff that needs to be edited.

Sarah Williams:            Fantastic. Your sales in American, are they bigger than they are in Australia and New Zealand?

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, by a long way. America is my biggest audience and then it would be the UK.

Sarah Williams:            That is fantastic. So this year you have a book which you turned into an audio book?

Wendy Vella:                I did. I thought I had to go with it. So I went through Find A Way and they sent out some recordings of a few people doing a little bit of my first contemporary Promise of Home. I did a few audition types and I went through each and I sort of had, I knew where I wanted the voice to go cause when you write something, you have a vision of what characters are like. I knew what I wanted from any audio, anyone who was going to do the reading. I picked a lovely lady and she’s done a fantastic job. It was really weird though, when she said, Oh get on there and have a listen, and I was wow, I don’t know if I want to hear my book read back to me. It’s a very, very unusual feeling when you just sit there and listen to the whole thing.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, no, it’s great, it’s going well. But I think it’s like publishing for the first time on anything whether it’s ebook print until you have something for them to go on to, I’ve not really pushed it hard advertising wise or marketing wise because I would like to get another couple before I start that and then they can roll on to that because unfortunately that’s just the way things seem to be better if you’ve got something for them to go on to.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, absolutely, totally agree. So Kindle Unlimited is your preferred platform. Tell us about your decision to do that.

Wendy Vella:                Well I put my contemporaries wide and I’ve always had them wide since 2015 when I published my first one. They did really, really well, you know, don’t get me wrong but Kindle Unlimited has always been half of my income with my historicals. Page reads are massively important and you know there’s two schools of thought with giving Amazon that much control over your life or going wide, but for me it’s just worked really well so I’ve put everything thing in this year.

Wendy Vella:                I really haven’t looked back, I’ve had some of my bigger months the last few months and the page reads do really well and the sales don’t seem to be affected at all. So yeah it’s going well and if I sort of equated the two from going wide to going into Unlimited money wise then I would be saying that I would be coming out on top.

Wendy Vella:                So it was quite…I haven’t had too much push back from readers of yet. If anyone emails me and says I can’t get your ordinary book anywhere, then I’m [inaudible 00:13:02] them a copy, you know I don’t want people to miss out.

Sarah Williams:            Exactly. So you do the SpaGirls podcast, I’ve heard Cheryl Phibbs on the show which is fantastic. So how long has that been going for now? You’ve racked up quite a few other sites.

Wendy Vella:                I think we’re probably well into the hundreds, you know I don’t have that information they’re going to kill me for that. But the thing about the four of us is we’ve been friends for many years. We started off as a critique group, all of us were unpublished, but I think really, this is about community because it’s such a solid re-occupation you spend all of the time on your own in your own head and being able to have friends that do the same thing is vital. We all work from home now and we all have our own strengths and we’ve been able to carry that. Without them I probably wouldn’t have self published. I might have gotten around to it eventually but they’re pretty special. So that was a natural progression for us to come into the SpaGirls.

Wendy Vella:                We had a lot of people approach us about oh how do you do this and how do you…and we were talking about this and we said well why don’t we just start something to help people out. So we started that and it’s sort of, despite ourselves, gone crazy. We get a lot of wonderful people and we’ve got a lot of wonderful listeners.

Wendy Vella:                Until you start pulling your knowledge, you don’t realize how much you know about it. As soon as we started I thought this is a good thing because there are podcasts out there but there are not that many that are for real outside beginners. You know people that are just starting the journey and that’s what we really like to target.

Wendy Vella:                So we wrote our first book and we get together and we have a lot of laughs and we enjoy each others company too which is vitally important.

Sarah Williams:            You’ve got to interview some great people. I know you’ve talked to Mark Dawson, how was that.

Wendy Vella:                It was amazing. Well, it was quite funny, Cheryl and I went to Florida last year to [inaudible 00:15:09] and we were sick, really sick. We got sick from the minute we got there. Her alarm went off and she said huuh, oh my gosh we’ve got to interview Mark in 20 minutes. Get up, get up. And we just went running through the hotel and there he was what a wonderful man.

Wendy Vella:                I coughed much of the way through it but fantastic, fantastic, humble guy who’s got an amazing knowledge and very happy to share that knowledge. He sat and talked with us for ages and after the podcast had finished, he talked to us for a bit longer and that I think is the thing about this community most people I know are really willing to share their knowledge.

Wendy Vella:                Roxanne St. Claire was the same, she was amazing/ And we just meet so many people that have just been so supportive of us. Once you get over that fear of asking someone, you know if you think about it everyone wants to talk about themselves and share that information don’t they? So why not do it?

Sarah Williams:            It’s funny, I’ve recently been asking a lot of different people and really bulking up my schedule on podcasts, and no one says no.

Wendy Vella:                It does…it just does. You’ve got to get over that fear yourself of asking. But as soon as you do, we’ve got some great cases coming up so it’s good. I really enjoy it and I think people enjoy listening to it as well.

Sarah Williams:            It is, and I’ve heard Mark Dawson on his own podcast and other peoples podcasts. It’s always something different, I’m sure I learn something different about him and his experiences listening to him on your podcast than I did on anything else I’ve listened to.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, I know, he’s a great guy and as I said, willing to give, and that’s a good thing about this community I think.

Sarah Williams:            It is…it is. It’s fantastic. It’s amazing too, like we write romance and Mark Dawson writes thrillers but you’ll still learn things. The publishing industry is the way it is.

Wendy Vella:                It’s evolving isn’t it.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah and it’s incredible what works for people in thrillers can still work for people in romance and vice versa.

Wendy Vella:                Absolutely.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, fantastic. So you’re a member of the Romance Writers of New Zealand? So you’ve been with them for a few years?

Wendy Vella:                Many, many, many, many, many, many years. So when I was unpublished I just used to go along and just feed off of the wonderful people there again giving up their time. I think it has evolved so quickly this publishing industry that England’s learned quite a lot with self publishing. Other viewings it’s been great they understand that and all of their authors, they cater pretty much to everyone and the evidence is Bella Andre coming to conference this year, one of the big guns of self publishing. So yeah I love RWNZ they’ve been really good and they’re a great source of knowledge.

Sarah Williams:            Brilliant, so conference is coming up in August this year, in Oakland, which of course I’ll be going to. I’m very excited and I just got confirmation I will get to talk to Bella Andre for the podcast. You guys are probably going to try to hit her up as well?

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, we will I think.

Sarah Williams:            That will be awesome. Brilliant. So are there any other conferences that you’re planning on going to or you’ve been to recently?

Wendy Vella:                I haven’t actually. Smart artists I would like to go to and maybe, I always get it wrong, the 20 books of 50K. I really want to go to that as well. This SpaGirls, we’ve actually discussed going next year. So whether we get around to doing it or not I don’t know but we’ve got a few things planned for ourselves you know that we want to implement as SpaGirls as well. So moving forward we definitely want to go somewhere, we’re just not sure where we’ll end up yet. But Trudy went this year to Smart Artists and enjoyed it very much.

Sarah Williams:            So I know the 20 books to 50K have sold out their Vegas conference, sold out within something like 24 hours.

Wendy Vella:                Very quickly. I really would like to go there. I mean I enjoyed other RWNZ, but not sure, that as a self published writer, that I got as much out of it as I would have thought. That could also been because I was unwell.

Sarah Williams:            So that was Romance Writers of America. That was in Florida in 2017.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, that’s right.

Sarah Williams:            Brilliant, what a shame you were sick for that though.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, I know. The crew doctor helped.

Sarah Williams:            Cool, and you’ve got a great list of tools and resources and books on your website for new wannabe writers. It’s great that you’ve done that.

Wendy Vella:                It’s worth having a good look. It really is. I’ve got a wonderful assistant and she’s fantastic and she does [inaudible 00:20:15] and she does all of those sort of things for me. We have massive discussions and she’s a really smart cookie, so she’s the one who helps me with all of that and getting things working.

Wendy Vella:                We’re all about trying to help other writers too, starting out. We didn’t have that so much when we were starting out because that was a few years ago but now I think it’s really evolved and I think it’s important to help people get on that journey the right way. Because there’s a lot of raw, bad knowledge out there. There’s a lot of people who will ask you for money and then not actually do it all for you.

Wendy Vella:                It’s good to use the resources and talk to people who you know and who you trust.

Sarah Williams:            Exactly, and of course, if anyone listening is still an aspiring it’s important just to get their craft down and get your voice and all this.

Wendy Vella:                Absolutely. People don’t want to hear that actually a lot. They want to finish their book and they want to publish it. They want to, wow I’m going to be number one and I completely get that, but if you’re in this journey for the long game, then you really need to understand you have to put the product out there and you have to keep writing. Unless you’re an absolute outlier that’s going to come out like, I don’t know, Fifty Shades of Gray, and go bang…it doesn’t happen that often.

Wendy Vella:                More often than not if you actually talk to someone that it does happen to they’ve been writing for a long time hiding their craft. I think tempering expectations is vital when you come into this game. I think if you come into this game thinking you’re going to make a massive living and it’s going to start for you straight away, again, you’re not coming in for the right reasons. Same as if you think you’re going to write a book just because you decided you think it’s you even though you haven’t written romance or whatever. Even then again it’s not going to work. You need to do your due diligence. You really do.

Sarah Williams:            There’s a lot of people out there who want to write a book and absolutely you should write a book. But, it is a process. It took me two years to just get the craft sorted out when I wrote my first book and I know a lot of people it’s taken many more years than that.

Wendy Vella:                Absolutely.  I think also coming to the understanding of why you’re writing. If you want to write you’re [inaudible 00:22:39] book of your heart but it’s not going to fit into any genre because it’s poetry about [inaudible 00:22:46]. It doesn’t mean to say it’s not a wonderful thing and someone’s gonna love it, but it’s probably not going to sell as well as if you’re writing a book that is in the marketplace, it fits somewhere and millions of women want to read it everywhere, or men.

Wendy Vella:                I think you’ve got to be aware of your reasons for writing and temper your expectations accordingly. I really think that that’s quite vital because it can be quite a tough business to be in. Rewarding, and I love every minute of it, but it is quite a hard business.

Sarah Williams:            It is. Absolutely. So what are you working on at the moment Wendy?

Wendy Vella:                Well I just released the fourth book in my Sinclair & Raven series last month which is going well. Now I have just finished the second book in my second contemporary series, which I don’t have a title for, in the Ryker Falls series and that’s set in Colorado. So I’ve just finished that very rough first draft on that one.

Wendy Vella:                Then after that I will be writing the final book in the Langley Sisters series which I get a lot of emails, people telling me that they’ve been waiting a long time for it and it’s time that I write it and complete the series. They let me know quite a lot.

Wendy Vella:                So I have a plan and I need to sit at my [inaudible 00:24:10] because I can fall off track very easily, so I need to be very structured or strict on myself. Cause I can be very lazy, should I be required to be.

Sarah Williams:            So it’s easy to get distracted.

Wendy Vella:                Yeah, very.

Sarah Williams:            Well that’s awesome. Where can we find you online?

Wendy Vella:                Well you can go to www.wendyvella.com or Facebook, author Wendy Vella, you can find me there and I’ve got an email newsletter you can sign up for on Facebook or on my website, which I send out once, sometimes twice a month, mainly once. But those are my main two platforms that I spend time on.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. Well that was great. Thank you so much for that Wendy.

Wendy Vella:                No worries, thanks for having me. It was very enjoyable.

Sarah Williams:            We’ll see you at RWNZ.

Wendy Vella:                Okay!

Sarah Williams:            Thanks for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed the show. Jump on to my website sarahwilliamsauthor.com and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my book for lots of inspiration. If you like the show and want it to continue you can become a sponsor for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/sarahwilliamsauthor to find out more. Remember to follow me on Facebook, twitter, and Instagram. Don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel and leave a review of the podcast. I’ll be back next week with another love dump episode. Bye.