Episode 108 - Writing Non-fiction from the Inside with Alexandra Amor
November 30, 2021
Author Alexandra Amor talks about Writing Non-fiction from the Inside, or how she approached the writing of her two non-fiction books, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD and CULT, A LOVE STORY, from the perspective of someone experiencing the topic from the inside, not a scientist examining it from the outside. She shares advice for writers who are deeply interested in a topic but dismiss the idea of writing a book about it because "I'm not an expert." And she discusses how the driving force for creating her books differed between her non-fiction and her fiction.
Alexandra Amor writes both fiction and non-fiction books, all with the themes of love, connection, and the search for understanding. She began her writing career with an Amazon best-selling, award-winning memoir about ten years she spent in a cult in the 1990s. Alexandra lives on Vancouver Island.
"One of the things that really helped me to get past feeling like I needed somebody to hit me on the head with a magic wand and give me permission, was that I really focused on what would help the reader." —Alexandra Amor
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Alexandra Amor. Hey Alexandra, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Alexandra: Hi Matty, I'm very well, thank you for having me.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Alexandra Amor writes fiction and non-fiction books, all with themes of love, connection, and the search for understanding. She began her writing career with an Amazon best-selling award-winning memoir about 10 years she spent in a cult in the 1990s. And Alexandra lives on Vancouver Island. And she is also a repeat guest way back in episode 7. That was the early days, that was going way back. So today we're going to be talking, we talked then about fiction, we're going to talk today about writing fiction from the inside. And Alexandra, give us a little bit of background about what your two non-fiction books are, so we have some context for this conversation.
[00:00:54] Alexandra: Yeah, so the first one like you said, was a memoir about 10 years I spent in a cult in the 1990s. And after I'd gone through almost a decade of healing, kind of getting my feet under me again, I was trying to write a mystery novel, which would have been my first one. And then, the idea for this memoir just kept pushing itself to the forefront. And eventually, I just kind of gave in and thought, okay, this story wants to be told. So that was my first book, and it tells the very personal story of how people get involved in cults, what that looks like, how it happens, and then what the process of leaving and recovery looks like as well. So that was published in 2009. It's still my best-selling book and I still get emails from people about it, which is really interesting. I mean that's I guess another point about non-fiction is that it can be well, all writing I guess, evergreen. If somebody finds the book today, it's brand new to them. So that's that one. And then mostly I focused on writing fiction for the ensuing 10 or 12 years, until very recently.
[00:02:02] And then I wrote this book, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD which I have here, again because I became interested in a field of psychology called The Three Principles about four years ago. And it isn't just about overeating or habits or anything, but I found that I was experiencing a lot of help with an overeating habit because of learning about that field of psychology. So I just wanted to write about my experience and share that with other people interested as well.
[00:02:35] Matty: So you had talked about this a little bit, but in terms of what drove you to write the non-fiction, and I'm just curious, how did that differ from what was driving you to write the fiction? ...
[00:00:06] Alexandra: Hi Matty, I'm very well, thank you for having me.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Alexandra Amor writes fiction and non-fiction books, all with themes of love, connection, and the search for understanding. She began her writing career with an Amazon best-selling award-winning memoir about 10 years she spent in a cult in the 1990s. And Alexandra lives on Vancouver Island. And she is also a repeat guest way back in episode 7. That was the early days, that was going way back. So today we're going to be talking, we talked then about fiction, we're going to talk today about writing fiction from the inside. And Alexandra, give us a little bit of background about what your two non-fiction books are, so we have some context for this conversation.
[00:00:54] Alexandra: Yeah, so the first one like you said, was a memoir about 10 years I spent in a cult in the 1990s. And after I'd gone through almost a decade of healing, kind of getting my feet under me again, I was trying to write a mystery novel, which would have been my first one. And then, the idea for this memoir just kept pushing itself to the forefront. And eventually, I just kind of gave in and thought, okay, this story wants to be told. So that was my first book, and it tells the very personal story of how people get involved in cults, what that looks like, how it happens, and then what the process of leaving and recovery looks like as well. So that was published in 2009. It's still my best-selling book and I still get emails from people about it, which is really interesting. I mean that's I guess another point about non-fiction is that it can be well, all writing I guess, evergreen. If somebody finds the book today, it's brand new to them. So that's that one. And then mostly I focused on writing fiction for the ensuing 10 or 12 years, until very recently.
[00:02:02] And then I wrote this book, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD which I have here, again because I became interested in a field of psychology called The Three Principles about four years ago. And it isn't just about overeating or habits or anything, but I found that I was experiencing a lot of help with an overeating habit because of learning about that field of psychology. So I just wanted to write about my experience and share that with other people interested as well.
[00:02:35] Matty: So you had talked about this a little bit, but in terms of what drove you to write the non-fiction, and I'm just curious, how did that differ from what was driving you to write the fiction? ...
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[00:02:45] Alexandra: Yeah, that's a good question. I think there really is a different driver. I feel like non-fiction for me is always about the audience, the reader, that I feel like I have something I'd like to share that might help people, whereas fiction, I kind of feel like I write it for myself. And of course, people read it, but it's a very inward-facing process somehow, whereas non-fiction feels outward-facing, if that makes sense.
[00:03:15] Matty: Yeah. Well, it's interesting that the way I interpret the internally versus externally is that you're hoping to provide something that's therapeutic, I'm not positive therapeutic is the right word, but for your non-fiction, it's sort of therapeutic for the other person, but in the fiction it's more therapeutic for you. But I imagine there was probably also ... Well, first of all, do you agree with that statement? And then my second part of that is going to be asking, was the process of writing the non-fiction therapeutic for you?
[00:03:43] Alexandra: Yeah, it's such a good question. I think there are both elements in both types of books, for sure. So maybe one just leans one way a little bit more than the other. And for sure, writing the memoir was so incredibly helpful to me and therapeutic, I think that's a really good word for it. Because there were things that I was able to put together about how the cult worked that I hadn't seen until then. So having to write it in a way that other people would understand meant that I had to take a really big step back and explain it. And by doing that, I was able to see some things that I hadn't been able to see otherwise.
[00:04:25] So for example, cult leaders are master manipulators, and I was able to see things that our cult leader did almost like moves on a chess board. And by writing about it, I was able to see, oh, she moved, she did this thing at that point in time, so that 18 months later she could do this other thing, in a manipulative way. And so there was a lot of stuff like that I hadn't been able to see even through years of therapy, so getting that kind of distance from it was really helpful.
[00:04:58] So yeah, I think I'd almost like to write a book about memoir because it's such an interesting process in that you begin with yourself, but you have to walk this razor-sharp line of making sure that it is about the reader as well. I've read memoirs that are far too internally focused, sort of me, me, me the whole time. And so yeah, there is that balance that you have to strike for sure in non-fiction.
[00:05:25] Matty: Yeah, I'm just scanning through the list to find the episode, so Episode 69 was WRITING MEMOIR with Beth Kephart. I'll include a link to that in the show notes for anyone who is also interested in memoir. It made me think when you were talking about the master manipulator, that's also a great background for fiction, character development. You want to know like moves on a chess board, right? You kind of want to understand how your characters are planning their own moves. Did you explicitly or implicitly make that jump when you started on the fiction?
[00:05:58] Alexandra: Not in exactly that way. What I do notice is that cult leader types do show up in my mystery novels every once in a while. So, I wrote a novella for my series featuring Freddy Lark, who's a private investigator, and the bad guy in that book is kind of a cult leader. And then there's another novel I wrote as well, where I noticed there was lots of elements of that, of a character who was very cult-like. But as far as the other characters, no, I don't, I haven't thought about it that way.
[00:06:30] Matty: The two non-fiction books you've written, on the surface, you could kind of imagine the one about the cult as being I'll say a cautionary tale, and the one about IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD being more of a how to book. Is that accurate at all in the sort of sub-genres of non-fiction that they fall into?
[00:06:51] Alexandra: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the cult memoir, that's a cautionary tale, that's a really good way to put it for sure. And I wrote it specifically so that people who had been in a cult might understand their experience a little better. When I was in recovery, sort of in the early stages, there were hardly any memoirs like that, and I ended up reading a lot of sociological texts and psychological texts, which were really great and really helpful, but I wanted somebody's personal story. You know, how I got in how I got out sort of thing. And so I ended up writing the book that I wanted to read, which is very often the case with me and with many writers, I think.
[00:07:34] So then when it came to IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, same sort of idea. I wanted to write a book focused on this field of psychology, but specifically focused on overeating habits. And again, I wrote the book that I would have liked to have read a couple of years ago.
[00:07:51] Matty: Well, that's a really nice entree to what we had agreed would be the overarching theme of our discussion, which is writing non-fiction from the inside. And so, you had mentioned reading some sociological texts or, one assumes, maybe by experts in the sense that they had gotten degrees or something like that in that area. So tell us about the experience of writing a non-fiction book as a non-expert, in the sense of someone who has experienced it from the inside, but doesn't have that, you know, letters after your name that might provide immediate sense of expertise for a potential reader.
[00:08:27] Alexandra: Yeah, I think it's such a good question, and I'm so glad you wanted to talk about this because it's so important I think, for anyone who's interested in writing non-fiction to get their head around this idea. And I think for the memoir, it was much easier, because memoir means "my story." So I didn't quite feel as much pressure maybe to have a degree in psychology or whatever to write it. It was a long time ago, too. I'm sure imposter syndrome came up a little bit.
[00:08:56] But then, with the recent one, that came up much more, and so I was acting on this past weekend before we started to record. And I think one of the things that really helped me to get past feeling like I needed somebody to hit me on the head with a magic wand and give me permission, I think the way I got past that was going back to what we said earlier, was that I really focused on what would help the reader. One of the great things about the independent author movement is that our books can be informal, that's the one word I'd like to use. And this one is really comprised of my experience, plus explaining what I understand of the field of psychology called The Three Principles.
[00:09:41] And again, I just really tried to focus on the reader, what would help them. If I was sitting down with a friend for example, and they wanted to understand, and I was trying to explain, I sort of took that approach. So not having to speak to somebody from on high, but just sharing my experience, as it were.
[00:10:04] Matty: Was there a friend that you were talking through these things with, or did you have a virtual person in mind that you mentally worked through this with?
[00:10:12] Alexandra: Yeah, and it was me, from two years ago, let's say. And every once in a while, I would get a little bit freaked out about the writing, as we do, just a little nervous. Is this good enough? Is it hitting the right note? Are people going to get something out of this? And I would just think back to myself a couple of years ago and think, well, what would I have liked to have heard? Where were there gaps in my knowledge, maybe? What would have maybe got through to me, with a metaphor or something like that? So that's the person I always keep in mind. And it was the same with the memoir. I thought back to the very early days of my recovery and just thought, what would have been helpful for me to hear at that time?
[00:10:59] Matty: So you had mentioned The Three Principles as being sort of the foundation of IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD. So can you talk just enough about that Three Principles idea to illustrate where you drew the line between maybe a diligent compliance with whatever the experts were saying about The Three Principles and where you thought, okay, that's enough, that's enough of that, now I want to switch to my own experience. At what point did you feel like you had provided enough information to establish your credentials or establish a connection with the reader, and then you could sort of set that aside and move on to your own personal story?
[00:11:39] Alexandra: Yeah, that's a great question. The interesting thing about The Three Principles is that the field is taught via description rather than prescription. And I'm new at explaining this, so forgive me if I stumble around a little bit, but it's a field of psychology that, rather than explaining what people should do, it's pointing toward how we tend to work as human beings, in terms of how our experience comes to life within us, our thinking and that kind of thing. And so that was actually the part that I found the trickiest about writing this book, because it's not five steps to do such and such.
[00:12:22] And for the first time in a long time, I found myself really floundering in terms of how to find my own writing voice when it came to writing about this field and pointing in the direction that it's pointing in. And the interesting thing about writing is, this is a bit of a digression, but I think we just have to do the best we can at the time. And I think new writers do tend to get paralyzed about how any piece of writing needs to be perfect, it needs to really address perhaps someone's needs and it needs to be the be-all and end-all answer to whatever the question is or the problem that the person is having.
[00:13:06] What I finally eventually realized was that it is true that at some point you just have to move on, publish the book and move on, and that it's not going to address everybody's questions or answers. It's not going to be everything to everybody all the time. And that has to be okay. But that comes along with a bit of practice. It's something I wrestle with every time I release a book. I know it's flawed and not perfect, but you get as close to perfect as you can, and then you just kind of have to move on.
[00:13:36] So finding the balance between explaining that field of psychology and then talking about my own personal experience was actually really important to me, because I often find that sometimes in non-fiction, when it's kind of a how to, it can get really dry and boring in a way. And there's some statistic about how often people finish non-fiction books and it's not very often. They get part of the way through and then you give up, and that's certainly been my experience.
[00:14:04] So I just really try to reflect on the non-fiction books that I do get to the end of, what makes me do that. What is it that compels me to keep turning the pages? And I think one of those things that really comes to mind is, connecting to a character in this case, it's the author when it's a first-person experience, but similarly to when we write fiction, we're human beings and so we really connect to characters and to their dilemmas and challenges and problems and that kind of thing. So I really made a conscious effort to weave my experience into the book, partly as a way just to illustrate the points I was trying to make, but also to help the reader to connect to the story and to want to continue to turn the pages.
[00:14:54] Matty: It sounds like that's an area where the informality that you described is beneficial, and that the willingness to share personal stories to engage people in that way is important. How hard was it for you to get what was probably some very personal and in some cases painful experiences onto the page?
[00:15:17] Alexandra: Yeah, it's so true that there is such a vulnerability about writing any kind of personal story. And yet, that is the thing that readers connect to. And so I think, when I know when I've been reading non-fiction and I feel like I'm being spoken to on high, those are the books that I give up on. It is tricky and vulnerable. It's funny, I guess I'm just realizing with both of those non-fiction books, during the writing process, I don't have any trouble sharing and I'm just trying to make what I'm sharing interesting and helpful, and that kind of thing. And then there's seems to be a point, and I remember it with my memoir and with this book, where it goes out into the world and suddenly it hits me, oh, people are going to read this, they're going to hear my story.
[00:16:03] With my memoir, I vividly remember it was all done, and I think it was maybe with the editor at the time, so it was kind of out of my hands and it would be out of my hands for a week or two, and then we were getting close to publishing. And I was driving down a highway and all of a sudden realized what was happening and that the book was going to be out there and had kind of like a little bit of a panic attack. I suddenly started to cry, and it was a little bit dangerous because I was driving on this highway, but I just kind of let that happen, had a little bit of a freak-out, and then it passed. It was over and I kept going and felt very comfortable after that point with what people were going to read.
[00:16:49] And with this most recent one, it happened when I put a message on Facebook. When I was changing my Facebook banner to have the book in the banner, and stuff like that, and just mentioning that the book was on sale, and that was the moment that it struck me, oh, wait a second, people are going to read this!
[00:17:05] So yeah, there's these funny little stages that we seem to go through. And it is a hard thing to do, to be vulnerable, and it's such a paradox because, like I say, that is the thing that readers connect to. And I know for myself some of my favorite memoirs are that way because the author was willing to be honest and vulnerable, so I don't really have a lot of advice about what people can do about that but knowing that vulnerability is going to be there and just taking care of yourself. I guess there's an edge which we might reach and knowing where that is and what we're willing to share and not willing to share would be important, for sure.
[00:17:46] Matty: It's reminding me of another episode. I always love when I can tie episodes together, but Episode 95 was FINDING AND BEING A GHOSTWRITER with Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer. And it reminds me of that because Mikal, who was representing the being the ghost writer perspective on things, was describing exactly the scenario where a client said, oh yeah, I want this to be very personal. But then when it came right down to it, was really not willing to share, and even Mikal said, it turned out to be a pretty bland book because the person rethought, once they were in the project, rethought, maybe that's not really the path I want to go down after all.
[00:18:20] Alexandra: Oh, interesting, heathland every author just has to find their comfort place with what they're willing to share, and that might change too over time.
[00:19:03] Matty: Would you ever consider looping back on either of your non-fiction books, if you had sort of an epiphany or you thought of additional information, like having subsequent editions? Or they're out there and you kind of want them to stay as they are?
[00:19:18] Alexandra: Well, it's so interesting that you say that because for the memoir, there have been things that have happened after I published it. So I've actually been able to include three updates at three different periods of time after the book was published, and the most recent one was I think 2019. So the book was published in 2009, so 10 years later. And so this is the awesome thing about independent publishing. So I wrote this sort of addendum or epilogue or whatever you'd call it, three different times, had them edited and then republished the book each time with that addition.
[00:19:54] So in that case, because it was a story, I guess, about a community which would get attached to the people in the story, myself but the other characters as well, it felt important to update them about what was going on. So it was nice to be able to do that. And then with the most recent one, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, I feel like I wouldn't go in necessarily and change that one, I might write the next book.
[00:20:19] Matty: It also calls out an interesting distinction that CULT: A LOVE STORY is, by its nature, about you and other people, whereas IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, it could be all about you, like you don't really have to worry about giving away other people's secrets the way you might with the cult book. How did you find the difference in weighing those considerations?
[00:20:40] Alexandra: Yeah, the memoir was pretty tricky, and I wrestled with it for quite a while about how to tell the story honestly, while at the same time respecting the privacy of the people, the other people who were involved. And the way that I handled that was, I changed everybody's name in the book, except my own, and I changed some locations, like just sort of disguised where things took place a little bit. And yeah, that was really important, and every person who writes a memoir, and perhaps you address this with the episode you did on memoir, I think every memoirist has to figure out what lines they're willing to cross that way. And I know people approach it all different ways, like they might have, for example, if there were episodes about family members in the book, they might have the family member read that part and just give their approval. I didn't have that luxury of course, because I was completely cut off from all the people who were in the cult, and they wouldn't have wanted to read it anyway. So that was the choice I made for that one.
[00:21:43] And then it didn't really come up in IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, just because that was about me and my journey and that kind of thing, understanding.
[00:21:52] Matty: What was the different editorial processes or the same editorial processes? Did you have an editor for both of your non-fiction books?
[00:22:01] Alexandra: Yeah, and because the memoir was my first one, I really, as we do the first time around very often, I made a bunch of mistakes. I hired someone who was a developmental editor that a friend had used, and it turned out she wasn't all that helpful and didn't have that much experience. And that was just my inexperience, I just tried to find somebody sort of by word of mouth. And then, and this is a funny thing too, and then I had a copy editor who was Canadian, which is what I am, but had been living in England for years, and she had just recently moved back to Vancouver, which is where I was at the time. And she was a professional and she belonged to the Editors' Association of Canada and all that stuff, which was great, and we had a good working relationship.
[00:22:50] But one of the things she said before we started editing was, you make a choice about what kind of spelling you want. And in my fiction, for example, I always use American spelling, because if I don't, American readers sometimes tend to point out "typos". It's just because the American audience is so huge, I've just found it's better to use American spelling. But with a memoir, I wanted to use Canadian spelling, because it was my story set in Canada, and that kind of thing.
[00:23:18] So she made the point of asking me, what kind of spelling do you want? So I said Canadian, and then she went through, I guess it was just reflexive because she'd been working in England, she made the spelling British, sometimes but not all the time. So that was a bit of a mess, and so it ended up a few years later, and this again, I love this about independent publishing, in the meantime, I had found a really great editor that I work with who's Canadian and she edits all my fiction. So I had her take a pass at the book. So there were kind of these several different passes that we made, and in the end got it right.
[00:23:53] But it took a little bit of doing. And then, now that I'm more experienced, it's 12 years later with the most recent book, I just sent it to Jen, my editor in Toronto, and she goes ahead and yeah, it was a piece of cake.
[00:24:06] Matty: It's good to get some payback for the painful episodes by having a nice smooth episode later on.
[00:24:14] Alexandra: Yeah, well, it's just a case of, we don't know what we don't know at the beginning, and you kind of stumble around until you figure it out, which is fine.
[00:24:21] Matty: So you had gone ahead, and you'd made the decision, even though you didn't have the graduate degree or the letters after your name or whatever, that you were the person to write this story. If there are listeners who have a similar kind of topic that they feel very passionately about, but they don't have those professional credentials, what advice would you give them about moving forward or not moving forward with that project?
[00:24:44] Alexandra: Yeah, first of all I would say, if you feel moved to write a book about something that you're passionate about, then definitely do it. Disclaimers are a great thing to remember, so I have disclaimers in both books, but especially about the most recent one, that I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a doctor, and the book is not intended as advice, it's intended as sharing my personal experience, so that's important too.
[00:25:09] And I guess there are a few different ways people could go. I mean, if you're brand new to writing and it's the first thing that you're putting out there, you might want to have someone you really trust give it a read, just kind of as a beta reader for example, to make sure that you're striking the note that you want to. And two, sort of a caveat with that is, be really cautious about doing that, because at the beginning, when we're first writing, I think sharing our writing can be a bit of a dangerous thing to do, because we need to be specific about the kind of feedback that we're looking for. And you have to find the right sort of person who's going to respect that and give you the kind of feedback you're going to look for. And your friends and family, who of course may love you, may not be the right person to do that. So there's that.
[00:26:02] I think there's something that I saw, somebody mentioned that if you've read three or four or five books about this subject, then you likely know more than the person who's going to read your book. And so I think that's another hurdle that we often hit, is that we think we need to have a PhD in a subject in order to share about it, and that's not really true. People who know absolutely nothing about the subject that you want to write about, are really going to benefit from someone who's not on the PhD track, who's maybe just a little way ahead of them on the path, as it were.
[00:26:40] And I too, especially with this most recent book, felt like it would be really beneficial. And I might even say this in the book, to just be writing as a person, I'm down here in the trenches as well, trying to figure this out, so we're together in this in a way, and I'm sharing what I see and what I understand, and hopefully that will help the reader. But I'm not trying to provide therapy or anything like that, or a panacea for whatever ails you.
[00:27:14] Matty: Well, it is interesting that I can imagine your book being a resource for those people who are doing the academic study, because if the person is about to write their PhD thesis about cults, or about how people do and don't successfully manage their weight, then that kind of resource is great for them too.
[00:27:32] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the cult memoir is now one of the textbooks at a university in Iowa. They started using it last year, which I thought was really cool.
[00:27:43] Matty: How did you get that opportunity?
[00:27:46] Alexandra: The professor was interested in this subject. She's a sociology professor, but she wanted to teach a class on cults, and so she pitched it to her superiors. And then she literally just went on Amazon and started looking through books about cults and read a bunch of them and picked a few, and mine was one of them, so that was kind of fun.
[00:28:07] Matty: That is pretty fun, that's very exciting!
[00:28:10] Alexandra: Yeah, and I even got to speak to the class. So back in, I think it was March, so we did a Zoom call and each of the students had to ask a question and I was on with them for about an hour. It was really fun; they were really engaged. It was pretty cool.
[00:28:24] Matty: In many cases, in-person events are still limited, here we are in mid-March of 2021 and the situation is different in all different places but nonetheless, in-person events are still more limited than they were before the pandemic. I would think that for a book like IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, being in front of a group of people would have a real benefit in terms of establishing that rapport and empathy that you want to have in your reader base. Do you agree with that, and if you do, how are you getting around that?
[00:28:53] Alexandra: Yeah, I think it's so much easier in a way to talk about non-fiction in a situation like this when you're promoting a book. So I do have some webinars lined up with people who are studying the field, that field of psychology. I think, even if we weren't in a pandemic, I don't know that I would do actual live, in-person events about this book, because it just feels like the people who might be interested in it, it's a narrower swath of the human race, in a way. I'm not sure. It's funny, I hadn't thought about that, and now I feel kind of different about it.
[00:29:30] But with the memoir, it's a story that people haven't heard very often. And I did do a lot of in-person readings in libraries and that kind of thing. And it was really fun, and people were really fascinated, and it's not something you run into every day, someone talking about their cult experience.
[00:29:48] So in that way, yeah, I did at the beginning, when the book was coming out, I made an effort to book those kinds of events, libraries, and bookstores and that kind of thing. And yeah, with this food book, I think, I'm talking to people who are interested in the Three Principles, sort of starting there at the middle of the circle, and then maybe I'll be able to work my way out a little bit with podcasts and that kind of thing, like this one.
[00:30:16] Matty: Well, I would think that any resource that talks about how people interact with food has an almost limitless potential population out there, so don't underestimate the interest people have in that topic.
[00:30:30] Alexandra: No, I guess I shouldn't, and it's kind of funny as I was saying that, I thought, why do I feel that way? Because of course, lots of people are interested in this subject. I don't know. Maybe it is because of the whole thing about being new at it, and yeah, I'll have to think about that a little bit.
[00:30:45] Matty: Because it does seem like you tap into what I imagine is quite a large industry of eating-related events, groups of people who have that as their focus and would like another perspective. I don't know, I'd be curious to hear from you. You can come back periodically to the webpage and let us know what's going on with the promotion of the book.
[00:31:07] Alexandra: Yeah, and I mean, speaking of that, I've done a few Amazon ads, and I kept my focus really narrow, because I knew that the weight loss field is so competitive, starting really wide and competing with people like Dr. Phil or whoever has a weight loss book out there wasn't the way to go, so I went really small and then I'll just work on my ad strategy and see how it goes.
[00:31:31] Matty: Well, I had another question that this is a good lead into because, when I was putting together the intro to introduce you for the episode, I went to your web page, and I read through it and there really wasn't much about your fiction books. I mean, it was very specifically focused on IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, and then I went to your Amazon page and similarly, you know, good job, your bios match! But it neither one did you really, I mean, you mentioned that you write fiction, but you didn't give any background about it, and I'm wondering, is that an intentional switch? Are you positioning yourself intentionally now more as a non-fiction author, or it's just this kind of a more temporary positioning in the immediate aftermath of the launch of the book?
[00:32:14] Alexandra: I wish I had an answer. So, I mean, this is the thing I've struggled with for a while. I've always wondered if I should put my non-fiction under another name, like Joanna Penn does. She has JF Penn as her fiction name and Joanna Penn is her non-fiction, and so many authors do that. But then others don't, like Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the brand, and I always kind of think of her as a good example, and she writes both fiction and non-fiction, and as a reader, you just pick and choose what you prefer. I don't like her fiction, nothing against it, it's just not my cup of tea. So I did make a deliberate choice when I was launching this book that I changed my bio everywhere, did a bit of a renovation at my website, really focused on the non-fiction side of things, with an aim toward teaching maybe some online classes about this and that kind of thing. And so where does my fiction find its home in there? And I think I don't quite know yet. I'm not quite sure what to do, so it's a bit of a dog's breakfast at the moment, but I think it'll work its way out. I'll figure out how to deal with that. I may go the two names route, I'm not sure.
[00:33:26] Matty: Do you think you would subsequently go back, if you had to rebrand either your fiction or non-fiction, which one would you rebrand?
[00:33:32] Alexandra: Probably the non-fiction because there's less of it, so it would be a smaller job, yeah.
[00:33:38] Matty: You just have to watch out if you do initials, because I can imagine that initial Amor might end up being weird, like "I.M. Amor".
[00:33:48] Alexandra: That's right, yeah! When you're in Amazon specifically, and you search for an author that has initials, sometimes it won't find it for you, and it's because the author has put initial, period, and then the last name. And so that's a challenge as well, I'm not sure how to address that.
[00:34:05] Matty: Well, there are all sorts of things that I think the listeners are going to want to know more about, and so you're going to have to promise to come back to the webpage periodically and let us know how things are going, but Alexandra, thank you so much. This was so much food for thought, and I appreciate you being so open about the experience of writing both your fiction and non-fiction. So please let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:34:26] Alexandra: So people can go to AlexandraAmor.com and everything is there as we've just said, fiction and non-fiction, and the new book IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD is available in paperback, ebook, large print, and audiobook, wherever they find books.
[00:34:43] Matty: Great, thank you again, Alexandra.
[00:34:45] Alexandra: Thank you so much, Matty. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you today.
[00:03:15] Matty: Yeah. Well, it's interesting that the way I interpret the internally versus externally is that you're hoping to provide something that's therapeutic, I'm not positive therapeutic is the right word, but for your non-fiction, it's sort of therapeutic for the other person, but in the fiction it's more therapeutic for you. But I imagine there was probably also ... Well, first of all, do you agree with that statement? And then my second part of that is going to be asking, was the process of writing the non-fiction therapeutic for you?
[00:03:43] Alexandra: Yeah, it's such a good question. I think there are both elements in both types of books, for sure. So maybe one just leans one way a little bit more than the other. And for sure, writing the memoir was so incredibly helpful to me and therapeutic, I think that's a really good word for it. Because there were things that I was able to put together about how the cult worked that I hadn't seen until then. So having to write it in a way that other people would understand meant that I had to take a really big step back and explain it. And by doing that, I was able to see some things that I hadn't been able to see otherwise.
[00:04:25] So for example, cult leaders are master manipulators, and I was able to see things that our cult leader did almost like moves on a chess board. And by writing about it, I was able to see, oh, she moved, she did this thing at that point in time, so that 18 months later she could do this other thing, in a manipulative way. And so there was a lot of stuff like that I hadn't been able to see even through years of therapy, so getting that kind of distance from it was really helpful.
[00:04:58] So yeah, I think I'd almost like to write a book about memoir because it's such an interesting process in that you begin with yourself, but you have to walk this razor-sharp line of making sure that it is about the reader as well. I've read memoirs that are far too internally focused, sort of me, me, me the whole time. And so yeah, there is that balance that you have to strike for sure in non-fiction.
[00:05:25] Matty: Yeah, I'm just scanning through the list to find the episode, so Episode 69 was WRITING MEMOIR with Beth Kephart. I'll include a link to that in the show notes for anyone who is also interested in memoir. It made me think when you were talking about the master manipulator, that's also a great background for fiction, character development. You want to know like moves on a chess board, right? You kind of want to understand how your characters are planning their own moves. Did you explicitly or implicitly make that jump when you started on the fiction?
[00:05:58] Alexandra: Not in exactly that way. What I do notice is that cult leader types do show up in my mystery novels every once in a while. So, I wrote a novella for my series featuring Freddy Lark, who's a private investigator, and the bad guy in that book is kind of a cult leader. And then there's another novel I wrote as well, where I noticed there was lots of elements of that, of a character who was very cult-like. But as far as the other characters, no, I don't, I haven't thought about it that way.
[00:06:30] Matty: The two non-fiction books you've written, on the surface, you could kind of imagine the one about the cult as being I'll say a cautionary tale, and the one about IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD being more of a how to book. Is that accurate at all in the sort of sub-genres of non-fiction that they fall into?
[00:06:51] Alexandra: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the cult memoir, that's a cautionary tale, that's a really good way to put it for sure. And I wrote it specifically so that people who had been in a cult might understand their experience a little better. When I was in recovery, sort of in the early stages, there were hardly any memoirs like that, and I ended up reading a lot of sociological texts and psychological texts, which were really great and really helpful, but I wanted somebody's personal story. You know, how I got in how I got out sort of thing. And so I ended up writing the book that I wanted to read, which is very often the case with me and with many writers, I think.
[00:07:34] So then when it came to IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, same sort of idea. I wanted to write a book focused on this field of psychology, but specifically focused on overeating habits. And again, I wrote the book that I would have liked to have read a couple of years ago.
[00:07:51] Matty: Well, that's a really nice entree to what we had agreed would be the overarching theme of our discussion, which is writing non-fiction from the inside. And so, you had mentioned reading some sociological texts or, one assumes, maybe by experts in the sense that they had gotten degrees or something like that in that area. So tell us about the experience of writing a non-fiction book as a non-expert, in the sense of someone who has experienced it from the inside, but doesn't have that, you know, letters after your name that might provide immediate sense of expertise for a potential reader.
[00:08:27] Alexandra: Yeah, I think it's such a good question, and I'm so glad you wanted to talk about this because it's so important I think, for anyone who's interested in writing non-fiction to get their head around this idea. And I think for the memoir, it was much easier, because memoir means "my story." So I didn't quite feel as much pressure maybe to have a degree in psychology or whatever to write it. It was a long time ago, too. I'm sure imposter syndrome came up a little bit.
[00:08:56] But then, with the recent one, that came up much more, and so I was acting on this past weekend before we started to record. And I think one of the things that really helped me to get past feeling like I needed somebody to hit me on the head with a magic wand and give me permission, I think the way I got past that was going back to what we said earlier, was that I really focused on what would help the reader. One of the great things about the independent author movement is that our books can be informal, that's the one word I'd like to use. And this one is really comprised of my experience, plus explaining what I understand of the field of psychology called The Three Principles.
[00:09:41] And again, I just really tried to focus on the reader, what would help them. If I was sitting down with a friend for example, and they wanted to understand, and I was trying to explain, I sort of took that approach. So not having to speak to somebody from on high, but just sharing my experience, as it were.
[00:10:04] Matty: Was there a friend that you were talking through these things with, or did you have a virtual person in mind that you mentally worked through this with?
[00:10:12] Alexandra: Yeah, and it was me, from two years ago, let's say. And every once in a while, I would get a little bit freaked out about the writing, as we do, just a little nervous. Is this good enough? Is it hitting the right note? Are people going to get something out of this? And I would just think back to myself a couple of years ago and think, well, what would I have liked to have heard? Where were there gaps in my knowledge, maybe? What would have maybe got through to me, with a metaphor or something like that? So that's the person I always keep in mind. And it was the same with the memoir. I thought back to the very early days of my recovery and just thought, what would have been helpful for me to hear at that time?
[00:10:59] Matty: So you had mentioned The Three Principles as being sort of the foundation of IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD. So can you talk just enough about that Three Principles idea to illustrate where you drew the line between maybe a diligent compliance with whatever the experts were saying about The Three Principles and where you thought, okay, that's enough, that's enough of that, now I want to switch to my own experience. At what point did you feel like you had provided enough information to establish your credentials or establish a connection with the reader, and then you could sort of set that aside and move on to your own personal story?
[00:11:39] Alexandra: Yeah, that's a great question. The interesting thing about The Three Principles is that the field is taught via description rather than prescription. And I'm new at explaining this, so forgive me if I stumble around a little bit, but it's a field of psychology that, rather than explaining what people should do, it's pointing toward how we tend to work as human beings, in terms of how our experience comes to life within us, our thinking and that kind of thing. And so that was actually the part that I found the trickiest about writing this book, because it's not five steps to do such and such.
[00:12:22] And for the first time in a long time, I found myself really floundering in terms of how to find my own writing voice when it came to writing about this field and pointing in the direction that it's pointing in. And the interesting thing about writing is, this is a bit of a digression, but I think we just have to do the best we can at the time. And I think new writers do tend to get paralyzed about how any piece of writing needs to be perfect, it needs to really address perhaps someone's needs and it needs to be the be-all and end-all answer to whatever the question is or the problem that the person is having.
[00:13:06] What I finally eventually realized was that it is true that at some point you just have to move on, publish the book and move on, and that it's not going to address everybody's questions or answers. It's not going to be everything to everybody all the time. And that has to be okay. But that comes along with a bit of practice. It's something I wrestle with every time I release a book. I know it's flawed and not perfect, but you get as close to perfect as you can, and then you just kind of have to move on.
[00:13:36] So finding the balance between explaining that field of psychology and then talking about my own personal experience was actually really important to me, because I often find that sometimes in non-fiction, when it's kind of a how to, it can get really dry and boring in a way. And there's some statistic about how often people finish non-fiction books and it's not very often. They get part of the way through and then you give up, and that's certainly been my experience.
[00:14:04] So I just really try to reflect on the non-fiction books that I do get to the end of, what makes me do that. What is it that compels me to keep turning the pages? And I think one of those things that really comes to mind is, connecting to a character in this case, it's the author when it's a first-person experience, but similarly to when we write fiction, we're human beings and so we really connect to characters and to their dilemmas and challenges and problems and that kind of thing. So I really made a conscious effort to weave my experience into the book, partly as a way just to illustrate the points I was trying to make, but also to help the reader to connect to the story and to want to continue to turn the pages.
[00:14:54] Matty: It sounds like that's an area where the informality that you described is beneficial, and that the willingness to share personal stories to engage people in that way is important. How hard was it for you to get what was probably some very personal and in some cases painful experiences onto the page?
[00:15:17] Alexandra: Yeah, it's so true that there is such a vulnerability about writing any kind of personal story. And yet, that is the thing that readers connect to. And so I think, when I know when I've been reading non-fiction and I feel like I'm being spoken to on high, those are the books that I give up on. It is tricky and vulnerable. It's funny, I guess I'm just realizing with both of those non-fiction books, during the writing process, I don't have any trouble sharing and I'm just trying to make what I'm sharing interesting and helpful, and that kind of thing. And then there's seems to be a point, and I remember it with my memoir and with this book, where it goes out into the world and suddenly it hits me, oh, people are going to read this, they're going to hear my story.
[00:16:03] With my memoir, I vividly remember it was all done, and I think it was maybe with the editor at the time, so it was kind of out of my hands and it would be out of my hands for a week or two, and then we were getting close to publishing. And I was driving down a highway and all of a sudden realized what was happening and that the book was going to be out there and had kind of like a little bit of a panic attack. I suddenly started to cry, and it was a little bit dangerous because I was driving on this highway, but I just kind of let that happen, had a little bit of a freak-out, and then it passed. It was over and I kept going and felt very comfortable after that point with what people were going to read.
[00:16:49] And with this most recent one, it happened when I put a message on Facebook. When I was changing my Facebook banner to have the book in the banner, and stuff like that, and just mentioning that the book was on sale, and that was the moment that it struck me, oh, wait a second, people are going to read this!
[00:17:05] So yeah, there's these funny little stages that we seem to go through. And it is a hard thing to do, to be vulnerable, and it's such a paradox because, like I say, that is the thing that readers connect to. And I know for myself some of my favorite memoirs are that way because the author was willing to be honest and vulnerable, so I don't really have a lot of advice about what people can do about that but knowing that vulnerability is going to be there and just taking care of yourself. I guess there's an edge which we might reach and knowing where that is and what we're willing to share and not willing to share would be important, for sure.
[00:17:46] Matty: It's reminding me of another episode. I always love when I can tie episodes together, but Episode 95 was FINDING AND BEING A GHOSTWRITER with Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer. And it reminds me of that because Mikal, who was representing the being the ghost writer perspective on things, was describing exactly the scenario where a client said, oh yeah, I want this to be very personal. But then when it came right down to it, was really not willing to share, and even Mikal said, it turned out to be a pretty bland book because the person rethought, once they were in the project, rethought, maybe that's not really the path I want to go down after all.
[00:18:20] Alexandra: Oh, interesting, heathland every author just has to find their comfort place with what they're willing to share, and that might change too over time.
[00:19:03] Matty: Would you ever consider looping back on either of your non-fiction books, if you had sort of an epiphany or you thought of additional information, like having subsequent editions? Or they're out there and you kind of want them to stay as they are?
[00:19:18] Alexandra: Well, it's so interesting that you say that because for the memoir, there have been things that have happened after I published it. So I've actually been able to include three updates at three different periods of time after the book was published, and the most recent one was I think 2019. So the book was published in 2009, so 10 years later. And so this is the awesome thing about independent publishing. So I wrote this sort of addendum or epilogue or whatever you'd call it, three different times, had them edited and then republished the book each time with that addition.
[00:19:54] So in that case, because it was a story, I guess, about a community which would get attached to the people in the story, myself but the other characters as well, it felt important to update them about what was going on. So it was nice to be able to do that. And then with the most recent one, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, I feel like I wouldn't go in necessarily and change that one, I might write the next book.
[00:20:19] Matty: It also calls out an interesting distinction that CULT: A LOVE STORY is, by its nature, about you and other people, whereas IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, it could be all about you, like you don't really have to worry about giving away other people's secrets the way you might with the cult book. How did you find the difference in weighing those considerations?
[00:20:40] Alexandra: Yeah, the memoir was pretty tricky, and I wrestled with it for quite a while about how to tell the story honestly, while at the same time respecting the privacy of the people, the other people who were involved. And the way that I handled that was, I changed everybody's name in the book, except my own, and I changed some locations, like just sort of disguised where things took place a little bit. And yeah, that was really important, and every person who writes a memoir, and perhaps you address this with the episode you did on memoir, I think every memoirist has to figure out what lines they're willing to cross that way. And I know people approach it all different ways, like they might have, for example, if there were episodes about family members in the book, they might have the family member read that part and just give their approval. I didn't have that luxury of course, because I was completely cut off from all the people who were in the cult, and they wouldn't have wanted to read it anyway. So that was the choice I made for that one.
[00:21:43] And then it didn't really come up in IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, just because that was about me and my journey and that kind of thing, understanding.
[00:21:52] Matty: What was the different editorial processes or the same editorial processes? Did you have an editor for both of your non-fiction books?
[00:22:01] Alexandra: Yeah, and because the memoir was my first one, I really, as we do the first time around very often, I made a bunch of mistakes. I hired someone who was a developmental editor that a friend had used, and it turned out she wasn't all that helpful and didn't have that much experience. And that was just my inexperience, I just tried to find somebody sort of by word of mouth. And then, and this is a funny thing too, and then I had a copy editor who was Canadian, which is what I am, but had been living in England for years, and she had just recently moved back to Vancouver, which is where I was at the time. And she was a professional and she belonged to the Editors' Association of Canada and all that stuff, which was great, and we had a good working relationship.
[00:22:50] But one of the things she said before we started editing was, you make a choice about what kind of spelling you want. And in my fiction, for example, I always use American spelling, because if I don't, American readers sometimes tend to point out "typos". It's just because the American audience is so huge, I've just found it's better to use American spelling. But with a memoir, I wanted to use Canadian spelling, because it was my story set in Canada, and that kind of thing.
[00:23:18] So she made the point of asking me, what kind of spelling do you want? So I said Canadian, and then she went through, I guess it was just reflexive because she'd been working in England, she made the spelling British, sometimes but not all the time. So that was a bit of a mess, and so it ended up a few years later, and this again, I love this about independent publishing, in the meantime, I had found a really great editor that I work with who's Canadian and she edits all my fiction. So I had her take a pass at the book. So there were kind of these several different passes that we made, and in the end got it right.
[00:23:53] But it took a little bit of doing. And then, now that I'm more experienced, it's 12 years later with the most recent book, I just sent it to Jen, my editor in Toronto, and she goes ahead and yeah, it was a piece of cake.
[00:24:06] Matty: It's good to get some payback for the painful episodes by having a nice smooth episode later on.
[00:24:14] Alexandra: Yeah, well, it's just a case of, we don't know what we don't know at the beginning, and you kind of stumble around until you figure it out, which is fine.
[00:24:21] Matty: So you had gone ahead, and you'd made the decision, even though you didn't have the graduate degree or the letters after your name or whatever, that you were the person to write this story. If there are listeners who have a similar kind of topic that they feel very passionately about, but they don't have those professional credentials, what advice would you give them about moving forward or not moving forward with that project?
[00:24:44] Alexandra: Yeah, first of all I would say, if you feel moved to write a book about something that you're passionate about, then definitely do it. Disclaimers are a great thing to remember, so I have disclaimers in both books, but especially about the most recent one, that I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a doctor, and the book is not intended as advice, it's intended as sharing my personal experience, so that's important too.
[00:25:09] And I guess there are a few different ways people could go. I mean, if you're brand new to writing and it's the first thing that you're putting out there, you might want to have someone you really trust give it a read, just kind of as a beta reader for example, to make sure that you're striking the note that you want to. And two, sort of a caveat with that is, be really cautious about doing that, because at the beginning, when we're first writing, I think sharing our writing can be a bit of a dangerous thing to do, because we need to be specific about the kind of feedback that we're looking for. And you have to find the right sort of person who's going to respect that and give you the kind of feedback you're going to look for. And your friends and family, who of course may love you, may not be the right person to do that. So there's that.
[00:26:02] I think there's something that I saw, somebody mentioned that if you've read three or four or five books about this subject, then you likely know more than the person who's going to read your book. And so I think that's another hurdle that we often hit, is that we think we need to have a PhD in a subject in order to share about it, and that's not really true. People who know absolutely nothing about the subject that you want to write about, are really going to benefit from someone who's not on the PhD track, who's maybe just a little way ahead of them on the path, as it were.
[00:26:40] And I too, especially with this most recent book, felt like it would be really beneficial. And I might even say this in the book, to just be writing as a person, I'm down here in the trenches as well, trying to figure this out, so we're together in this in a way, and I'm sharing what I see and what I understand, and hopefully that will help the reader. But I'm not trying to provide therapy or anything like that, or a panacea for whatever ails you.
[00:27:14] Matty: Well, it is interesting that I can imagine your book being a resource for those people who are doing the academic study, because if the person is about to write their PhD thesis about cults, or about how people do and don't successfully manage their weight, then that kind of resource is great for them too.
[00:27:32] Alexandra: Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the cult memoir is now one of the textbooks at a university in Iowa. They started using it last year, which I thought was really cool.
[00:27:43] Matty: How did you get that opportunity?
[00:27:46] Alexandra: The professor was interested in this subject. She's a sociology professor, but she wanted to teach a class on cults, and so she pitched it to her superiors. And then she literally just went on Amazon and started looking through books about cults and read a bunch of them and picked a few, and mine was one of them, so that was kind of fun.
[00:28:07] Matty: That is pretty fun, that's very exciting!
[00:28:10] Alexandra: Yeah, and I even got to speak to the class. So back in, I think it was March, so we did a Zoom call and each of the students had to ask a question and I was on with them for about an hour. It was really fun; they were really engaged. It was pretty cool.
[00:28:24] Matty: In many cases, in-person events are still limited, here we are in mid-March of 2021 and the situation is different in all different places but nonetheless, in-person events are still more limited than they were before the pandemic. I would think that for a book like IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, being in front of a group of people would have a real benefit in terms of establishing that rapport and empathy that you want to have in your reader base. Do you agree with that, and if you do, how are you getting around that?
[00:28:53] Alexandra: Yeah, I think it's so much easier in a way to talk about non-fiction in a situation like this when you're promoting a book. So I do have some webinars lined up with people who are studying the field, that field of psychology. I think, even if we weren't in a pandemic, I don't know that I would do actual live, in-person events about this book, because it just feels like the people who might be interested in it, it's a narrower swath of the human race, in a way. I'm not sure. It's funny, I hadn't thought about that, and now I feel kind of different about it.
[00:29:30] But with the memoir, it's a story that people haven't heard very often. And I did do a lot of in-person readings in libraries and that kind of thing. And it was really fun, and people were really fascinated, and it's not something you run into every day, someone talking about their cult experience.
[00:29:48] So in that way, yeah, I did at the beginning, when the book was coming out, I made an effort to book those kinds of events, libraries, and bookstores and that kind of thing. And yeah, with this food book, I think, I'm talking to people who are interested in the Three Principles, sort of starting there at the middle of the circle, and then maybe I'll be able to work my way out a little bit with podcasts and that kind of thing, like this one.
[00:30:16] Matty: Well, I would think that any resource that talks about how people interact with food has an almost limitless potential population out there, so don't underestimate the interest people have in that topic.
[00:30:30] Alexandra: No, I guess I shouldn't, and it's kind of funny as I was saying that, I thought, why do I feel that way? Because of course, lots of people are interested in this subject. I don't know. Maybe it is because of the whole thing about being new at it, and yeah, I'll have to think about that a little bit.
[00:30:45] Matty: Because it does seem like you tap into what I imagine is quite a large industry of eating-related events, groups of people who have that as their focus and would like another perspective. I don't know, I'd be curious to hear from you. You can come back periodically to the webpage and let us know what's going on with the promotion of the book.
[00:31:07] Alexandra: Yeah, and I mean, speaking of that, I've done a few Amazon ads, and I kept my focus really narrow, because I knew that the weight loss field is so competitive, starting really wide and competing with people like Dr. Phil or whoever has a weight loss book out there wasn't the way to go, so I went really small and then I'll just work on my ad strategy and see how it goes.
[00:31:31] Matty: Well, I had another question that this is a good lead into because, when I was putting together the intro to introduce you for the episode, I went to your web page, and I read through it and there really wasn't much about your fiction books. I mean, it was very specifically focused on IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD, and then I went to your Amazon page and similarly, you know, good job, your bios match! But it neither one did you really, I mean, you mentioned that you write fiction, but you didn't give any background about it, and I'm wondering, is that an intentional switch? Are you positioning yourself intentionally now more as a non-fiction author, or it's just this kind of a more temporary positioning in the immediate aftermath of the launch of the book?
[00:32:14] Alexandra: I wish I had an answer. So, I mean, this is the thing I've struggled with for a while. I've always wondered if I should put my non-fiction under another name, like Joanna Penn does. She has JF Penn as her fiction name and Joanna Penn is her non-fiction, and so many authors do that. But then others don't, like Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the brand, and I always kind of think of her as a good example, and she writes both fiction and non-fiction, and as a reader, you just pick and choose what you prefer. I don't like her fiction, nothing against it, it's just not my cup of tea. So I did make a deliberate choice when I was launching this book that I changed my bio everywhere, did a bit of a renovation at my website, really focused on the non-fiction side of things, with an aim toward teaching maybe some online classes about this and that kind of thing. And so where does my fiction find its home in there? And I think I don't quite know yet. I'm not quite sure what to do, so it's a bit of a dog's breakfast at the moment, but I think it'll work its way out. I'll figure out how to deal with that. I may go the two names route, I'm not sure.
[00:33:26] Matty: Do you think you would subsequently go back, if you had to rebrand either your fiction or non-fiction, which one would you rebrand?
[00:33:32] Alexandra: Probably the non-fiction because there's less of it, so it would be a smaller job, yeah.
[00:33:38] Matty: You just have to watch out if you do initials, because I can imagine that initial Amor might end up being weird, like "I.M. Amor".
[00:33:48] Alexandra: That's right, yeah! When you're in Amazon specifically, and you search for an author that has initials, sometimes it won't find it for you, and it's because the author has put initial, period, and then the last name. And so that's a challenge as well, I'm not sure how to address that.
[00:34:05] Matty: Well, there are all sorts of things that I think the listeners are going to want to know more about, and so you're going to have to promise to come back to the webpage periodically and let us know how things are going, but Alexandra, thank you so much. This was so much food for thought, and I appreciate you being so open about the experience of writing both your fiction and non-fiction. So please let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:34:26] Alexandra: So people can go to AlexandraAmor.com and everything is there as we've just said, fiction and non-fiction, and the new book IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD is available in paperback, ebook, large print, and audiobook, wherever they find books.
[00:34:43] Matty: Great, thank you again, Alexandra.
[00:34:45] Alexandra: Thank you so much, Matty. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you today.
Links
From the personal update:
Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross
Episode 097 - Taking the Long View for Publishing Success with JK Ellem
Episode 092 - Finding a Crew for Your Creative Voyage with Ricardo Fayet
Episode 019 - Judging a Book by Its Cover with Jane Gorman
From the interview:
Episode 007 - Faster Fiction with Alexandra Amor
https://www.facebook.com/alexandraamorauthor
https://twitter.com/artconnectsus
https://www.instagram.com/alexandraamorauthor/
Episode 069 - Writing Memoir with Beth Kephart
Episode 095 - Finding and Being a Ghostwriter with Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer
Episode 102 - The Second Process of Publishing: Design with Orna Ross
Episode 097 - Taking the Long View for Publishing Success with JK Ellem
Episode 092 - Finding a Crew for Your Creative Voyage with Ricardo Fayet
Episode 019 - Judging a Book by Its Cover with Jane Gorman
From the interview:
Episode 007 - Faster Fiction with Alexandra Amor
https://www.facebook.com/alexandraamorauthor
https://twitter.com/artconnectsus
https://www.instagram.com/alexandraamorauthor/
Episode 069 - Writing Memoir with Beth Kephart
Episode 095 - Finding and Being a Ghostwriter with Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer
For links to Matty's upcoming and recent events, click here.
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