Not many authors are familiar with the concept of co-writing, and some may even be wary of it. USA Today Bestselling Author L.A. (Lainie) Boruff is here to soothe your thoughts. Lainie is the co-author of beloved paranormal women’s fiction series such as Witching After Forty and Magical Midlife In Mystic Hollow, among other works. In this episode, she sits down with host Ella Barnard to discuss the ins and outs of co-writing and what makes it work. Get an inside look at how she and her co-authors manage time and split the work and finances. Plus, learn more about Lainie’s author journey and how she found her love for paranormal women’s fiction. Stay tuned!
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Listen to the podcast here
L.A. Boruff On The Joys of Co-Writing And Finding Your Niche
We are here with the amazing L.A. Boruff. She is a USA Today best-selling author. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband, three children, and an ever-growing number of cats. She loves reading, watching TV and procrastinating by browsing Facebook. Her passions include vampires, food, and listening to heavy metal music. She once won a Harry Potter trivia contest based on the books and lost one based on the movies. She has two bands on her bucket list that she still has not seen AC/DC and Alice Cooper. Feel free to send tickets. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thanks for having me.
I am excited about this because, unbeknownst to you, I have been reading your books before. We have known each other a little bit. She did not know that I’m a reader too. I’m excited to ask her a little bit about herself and her author journey. If you could go ahead, tell us about that. We would love to read.
I have always been a voracious reader. We call them whale readers. That was me. In high school, I took a Creative Writing class. My Creative Writing teacher, Ms. Rhodes, bless her, told me that my writing was trite, and it was, I was sixteen years old. I wrote fan fiction for Angel and Buffy is the main thing that I wrote in that class. Of course, it was trite, but that discouraged me. I did not write again. I always assumed that I could not be a writer, but I was a reader and I was happy with that.
I started getting into particular series of books that had a lot of fan fiction. I joined a group on Facebook, a fan fiction group and they pushed everybody in that group to write the fan fiction, which I joined to read because I wanted more of this one particular series. I wrote one short fan fiction, and it was well-received. I said, “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to write all these stories that are floating around in my head. I’m not going to write somebody else’s story as much as I loved it.”
That was October of 2016 and NaNoWriMo started in November 2016. I wrote at that time what called it Supay, in a little bit in October, mostly in November of 2016. I published my first book was Literary Yours, a contemporary reverse harem that I wrote and put that reverse harem mythology they used to do it. I think they still do it. That is how I got started. The first book I wrote wasn’t the first one I published.
I quickly moved on to co-writing, which is my favorite thing. From there, I did a lot of reverse harems and moved into paranormal women’s fiction, which is my current passion. Heroines that are my age and my level of difficulty, I tend to write them on the younger end of the genre. That is what I’m into right now. I write a lot, write fast and write the way I read. That is why there are a million different series always going on at once because I have many different things that I have to get out and write. That is the journey.
How many books do you have?
I have written or co-written over 100 books. I also ghostwrite. It helped me quit my day job. I could take care of my mother before she died. I’m a huge fan of ghostwriting. It helps lots of people who need the jobs and helps with their writing and all of that. I still do ghostwrite a little bit, but I have mostly moved on to being able to support myself with my own writing, which is awesome.
That is the part, like, “I started here. I did there.” How long after you started publishing were you able to support yourself with your writing?
Not until A Ghoulish Midlife came out. That is where the bulk of my support is coming from right now. I’m not cutting my ties with my ghostwriting because, as an author, you know that the bottom can fall out. It stops selling, and the next series you work on does not get picked up, does not get as big, or does not take off. I still have the door open. I’m not completely self-sustaining in my writing.
I have a lot of questions, and I’m sure people reading are like, “I want to know more about that.” The first one I’m going to start with, I have a list, with the co-writing, I have a couple of questions. The one that a lot of people are, how did you find and meet your co-writers?
My very first co-writer was Lia Davis. She needed help because she was overwhelmed with projects. That is a problem that we all have. She needed to co-write to take a few things off of her plate. She already had the synopsis and everything laid out. I had already been ghostwriting for a while. I said, “I will treat it like a ghostwrite, where I do my part of it.” It is not my synopsis. I did not make it up. I won’t feel as in ownership of it or whatever. We ended up clicking.
How did you find you then?
We were both in a writer’s group. We had talked about co-writing on there, and we took a chance on each other. That is what happened with Laura Greenwood. I co-write with her a lot as well. We read each other’s books and figured out that we had a similar style of writing. We are not terribly descriptive writers. We tend to go for action and dialogue. We are lean on what does the surroundings look like? What do the people look like? We tend to be right in the movement and have action-heavy books. It flows well when you do that.
I have other co-authors. I’m co-writing something with Kerry Adrienne now that we are the opposite. She is a descriptive writer. I’m doing the first layer of the book. We call it a thin draft with the action, the dialogue and the punchy stuff. She is coming back over the top of me and putting in the five senses, emotions, the descriptions of the settings and all that thing. It is working well.
I want to clarify for people. You are hanging out in writer groups and being active is the way to meet people.
That is the best way I have found. I have met so many co-authors this way.
Also, being open to co-authoring. I also co-author and I love it.
I have some series that are out that are mine, solo, but I far prefer to co-write. It is so much more fun.
The next question I have is, do you co-write the same way with your co-writers? How does the process work?
No, it is different.
What is it look like?
Laura and I started out trading off every 2,000 words. It was great because a lot of authors will discover as time goes by, especially if you write steamy books that you get tired of writing sex all the time. It gets old and you are like, “I cannot write another sex scene.”
A short romance a week. It is so much steamy. It is like, “Does this sound exactly the same as the last one I did?” You are still yourself writing.
We would each try to prolong the foreplay and not get to the sex. We did it in novelas. They are short books. They are only 20,000 words long and have 10,000-word sex scenes. That is Valentine Pride. That is my dirtiest series ever. It is so bad and good. I was like, “I added 2,000 words, and I did not get to the sex.” She would be like, “Dang.” She did do the same thing back to me. That was fun doing it that way.
We soon discovered that we work a lot better if I do the thin draft and she flushes out over the top of me. That is how we have been doing it. That is how most of my co-writes have leaned toward. Lia and I trade-off, sometimes she does the thin draft and I flush it out. Sometimes I do the thin draft and she flushes it out. It depends on how busy in our lives we are at that moment and who has more deadlines when we need to start the thin draft? We are good about keeping things equal and flexible.
Are you guys chatting? How do you keep in touch?
You have to be able to trust your co-author.
Lia and I talk every day. Laura and I do not have an active series that we are working on now. We have one that we are coming too soon. Lacey and I have an active series. Lacey, Helen and I, Karma’s Spell. We have that outline done. We normally outline together. Lia and I will get on a video call, and our outlines tend to be detailed. We will build off of each other.
She says something funny, and I say something, “That would make it funnier.” Until we have this crazy hilarious book, and it has worked out well for us. They are my best friends at this point. I do not know people outside of my home anymore because I spend all my time talking to my co-authors, and that’s fine. I love them.
I’m like, “I think I’m going to move to North Carolina, which is where my co-author is. I’m going to move next door to her so that we can hang out.”
Lia is in Florida, and I’m in Tennessee. She likes to vacation here in Gatlinburg because I’m outside of Gatlinburg. In 2022, we went down to Florida and I told her, “In 2023, we are just trading houses. We both have four cats. You come here and take care of my cats. I will go there and take care of your cats. I will get to the beach, and you will get to the mountains.” That is our current plan.
I have another question. If you do not feel comfy answering, that is fine. How do you guys split it?
Financially?
You do not have to tell me the numbers, but how does it work?
This is with all of my co-authors. We try hard to keep the work equal and we keep the money equal. If I do more in this book, for whatever reason, I have more time and I do more in this book. In the next one, they will do more. Everything is always 50/50 or, in the case of three co-authors, 33/33/33. You have to be able to trust your co-author.
If you are the one that is handling the money, you have to be super transparent. Show screenshots. Constant updates on sales and stuff like that. Lia and Lacey do not even blink if I say, “Tell me again, what sales are going to be for this. I’m planning my budget because we get paid two months in advance.” We know what is coming and I will know if I need to pick up a ghostwrite because I’m not going to have as much money coming on a certain month. Patience and fairness go a long way with the cover.
The right person to bring with is key.
I did have a co-author once that it did not go that well, it was her story and she brought me in. This was early before I had tried co-authoring with anybody else. She did not do it on purpose. She was not being ugly or hateful in any way, but she did not like any of the suggested changes. She is not somebody that should be co-writing. She owns her story, it is precious to her and she did not want to make a lot of change. That is okay. A lot of people are like that.
I have other author friends, who I’m friends with, I have suggested co-writing, and they are like, “No.” That is not how they roll and that is fine. You are going to have times that you get into it with somebody, and it did not work out as a co-author relationship. As long as nobody does anything dirty, let it go and move on.
I have more questions. You are going to go off the co-writing. Thank you so much for the specifics.
I love talking about it.
A lot of people get into self-publishing from fan fiction. How do you think the fan fiction reading, writing, whatever, impacted or influenced?
For me, it was huge. I did fan fiction when I was a teenager in my Creative Writing class and that was many years ago. If I had not gone into that fan fiction group, I never, ever in a million years would have taken a chance to try to write something myself. It would not have happened. Going into that group to read more fanfiction changed my life. The moderators of that group all know, I tell them all the time that I keep them updated on my progress.
I tell them that it is because of you guys pushing me to write. They keep harping on at people who are in the group, “Why don’t you try writing one?” Finally, I was like, “I will do it.” Fanfiction completely changed my life. I was working in retail management and if you have ever worked retail, you know how fun that was.
I have not. All of mine was admin assistant, which is also so fun. I wish I could go to all the fanfiction groups and writer groups and be like, “You can publish this and make it money. You can do it. People will read it and love it.”
Several of the girls that I was in that group with have gone to become authors, and some of them drastically changed their own fanfiction and published it. Was the Fifty Shades of Grey originally fanfiction?
I think it was.
I do not think any of them was that successful. I only ended up writing one, and it was very short. Once I knew I could do it, it was like, “Okay again.” That is how I do everything. I jump in with both feet on anything. That is how I am as a person.
We are going to change gears because I want to know about paranormal women’s fiction, which is how we met. Not everybody knows because it is still relatively new.
I have been published in since 2021.
Tell us about paranormal women’s fiction.
It is about a journey in a woman’s life where she finds herself, her life takes a new direction or there is a big change in the woman’s life. Paranormal woman’s fiction is no exception. There is always some big event that happens that sets her life on a new course, except in paranormal woman’s fiction, it is something paranormal. She finds out she is a witch, turns into a vampire or gets cursed. In one of my books, she gets turned into Karma incarnate. She is Karma.
It is showing that women of a certain age can still have full, rich lives and your life is not over because you get divorced, you lose your husband, you never have a husband or there is a whole another life out there for you even at 40 or older. It is empowering, and it goes right along with my author tagline, which is, “This princess saves herself.” It goes right along with that because especially my heroines found themselves and became self-sufficient. They do have romance, but it is not about romance. It is about their journey. Their journey is usually hilarious and has a little side romance on it. It might as well have that.
I like having romance in it. It is not after you turn 40, you are not a sexual creature anymore. It is not like all of a sudden, I’m like, “I do not like that anymore.”
It is like an urban fantasy that you would read of a heroine in her twenties that you know what they’re 45 and starting to go through pre-menopause. Their backs hurt and their knees went out about several years ago and they have to deal with that, all that entails.
It doesn’t matter how many words you’re writing. It matters that you’re writing every day.
I say, “It is an urban fantasy, except for the women are older and they are smarter.” The things that always have bothered me about urban fantasy, not all of them, but some of them, is when the main character is like, “I do not care if somebody is trying to kill me. I need to go to this club because I have been stuck in the house for a week.”
I’m like, “I’m going to go party.”
I’m like, “As a woman in my 40s, I do not feel it necessary to go out.” I like having other ways to move the plot forward. I was like, “We should find something off of like Pinterest and have that thing that solves the mystery.” It is like the women’s MacGyver. It is like, “What can you do with this pad?” You are saying that it is your series that has been doing best.
Witching After Forty is my best-selling series. It is the one I write with Lia Davis. I can tell I’m marked difference when I’m writing Ghoulish or when I’m writing any other book series. Not that I do not love my other book series. They are fun and funny, but something about being in that world is enjoyable. We built up this world that we both love to work in.
Every time we start a new project in this world, we are like, “I wish I could work on this world all the time. That is what I want to do is be in that world all the time.” You have other projects and other responsibilities that you have to do. That is why it is popular because the readers can tell the difference. I love all my other stories. I’m not going to write a story I do not love. That particular one is the favorite world I have ever written.
Can you tell us a little bit about that because one of the things that you mentioned is that you have a skill at world-building? Tell us a little bit about what is so fun and what you have done with that world.
Ava Harper, her husband, dies, and then several years later, her Aunt Winnie dies. She left her house back in her hometown, which a lot of paranormal women’s fiction started off that way. They moved back home. I do not know why that is a trope that people seemed to like, but it fit what we wanted to do. Ava and her dad were necromancers and her mom was an earth witch. Her mom died when she was 10 or 11. She tried to bring her my on back to life because she was young and scared. It did not go well, and it scarred her. She pushed away from her necromancer powers and never used them again.
Here she is in her 40s. She got a son in college. She is going back to sell the house. She is going to go back to her home in Philadelphia and live her life. She is ready to put all this behind her and the house does not want to be sold. He has a personality of his own. He won’t let the repairman come in and do any repairs. He will not have it.
While she is in town, there is a murder that only a necromancer could have done. She has to help solve it because she is the only necromancer around that could help solve this murder. In the process, she unlocks her necromancer powers. Doing that brings in a whole mess of things. She has a ghoul that is now tied to her. His name is Alfred. He likes to clean and cook.
There is a lot of secrets tied to Alfred. One of which we are going to be revealing in our next book A Grave Midlife, a big secret coming about Alfred. There has already been a big secret about Alfred revealed for those who have read the books. She meets a local sheriff named Drew, and he is hottie mc-hot stuff. He is a retired hunter. He helps keep the hunters away from her town when all these supernatural things keep happening to her because unlocking her power sets off a chain of events.
Part of the fun for me in these stories, you can add whatever you want.
We have the craziest things happen. I was driving home one day, and I was talking to my kids in out a ferret. I got a message sent to her voice message. I said, “We need to have a scene where Ava and Drew were driving home and a ferret runs across the road in front of him. It stops when it gets across the road. It turns around, flips them off and keeps going.” That led us into a whole shifter angle of the books. That one thought that I had about a ferret flipping them off.
We added a whole shifter layer to the second book about local shifters and some things that happen with them. There is a shifter fighting ring that they deal with and stuff like that. All of that came off of me talking to my kids about ferrets and thinking, “That would be funny.” You can go in any direction, and it is so fun.
You have the same name. You did not go, “I’m writing under L.A. Boruff and now I’m writing PWF under yeah. L.A. Boruff.” You kept the same. I’m curious because most people try to have separate pen names.
I have been given the advice that I should split them up. The problem is when I first started writing and it was so steamy, I was like, “I want to do at least somewhat of a pen name because my name is Lainie, and I write under L.A., my last name is Boruff.” I want somewhat of a pen name because it is steamy that I do not want people I know in real life to pick it up or what will. I have gotten to where I do not care. I tell them, “Do not read that unless you want to read about me writing about sex.” I told my grandmother, “Do not read it.”
I did the same thing. I was like, “I do not want everybody to know.”
I thought about switching my paranormal women’s fiction to Lainie Boruff, and I would like to do that, but L.A. is listed on USA Today. If I do that, I have to re-list with Lainie to be able to use that title. I like using that title. It is cool. I did it with a co-write, which was cool.
All the challenges of successful authorship, “What am I going to do?”
I want to able that problem keep that title, but you can’t slap it onto your other name. You would have to list with Lainie. I’m considering moving. It is doable. You can switch it over, especially because they are similar, L.A. and Lainie. People will know it is me. I’m pretty sure but I’m going to have to talk to a couple of my co-authors about trying to do another list trend, so I can do it under Lainie and have that. Maybe we could do a paranormal women’s fiction list run.
That would be awesome. I think that is a thing that needs to happen. It messes with the algorithm somewhat, and your alsobots get confused because paranormal women’s fiction readership has some overlap, but it is not as great.
It is bigger than people think it is.
I think so too, but I also think PWF overlaps a lot with cozy mysteries. Cozy does not always overlap with a reverse harem.
I do have one PWF reverse harem.
How did I not know this? That is two of my favorite things in one.
The first book I wrote, Supay, is an urban fantasy. It qualifies as a PWF the heroine is older. It is a reverse harem. It has got a little bit of sci-fi in it. I did not write to market at all, but it is the first book I ever wrote, and I pants it. I have rebranded it several times, trying to find a home for it because it is a great story. I love the story, and it is a strong book, but it is not genre-specific. I remarketed it. I made it a little bit less steamy. I dialed it back a little bit on the steam because it was pretty steamy. I dialed it back a little bit on some cussing and stuff like that. I’m marketing it with a new cover, and it is a PWF RH.
I think that will find a home.
It is doing better than it was.
There are quite a few reverse harem readers who are older and would not mind. I know Auryn Hadley had one about wolf-shifters with the mom. She is older. There is an audience there.
If this is something you want to do, make time and do it.
It is doing better than it was before.
I’m going to check it out.
It is still not selling like Gangbusters. It is called Bloom in Blood now. It has been renamed. It was originally Supay, and it was War of Fangs. I have been trying to find that for a little series a home.
I’m bringing up a whole other thing of questions, and I still have not gotten to all the original questions. I want to ask a little bit before I move on about ghostwriting. I have talked to some other authors. That is how they got started. Where did you find your ghostwriting jobs?
My very first one didn’t go that well. I was in a writer’s group. I posted and said, “I need to make extra money. I write fast. Do you want to pay me to ghostwrite?” I started off at $0.03 a word and the author had never used a ghostwriter before, but she was in the process of moving. She had a lot of stuff going on in her personal life. She already had an outline and wanted me to turn the outline into a thin draft. We did not use that terminology back then. That was not a thing on my radar.
I wrote it like I would normally write it. I’m not good at matching voice. I’m still not good at matching voice. If I was good at matching voice, I would charge $0.15. I did a perfectly acceptable job all at the writing, but she is the writer who changes every word. I have had another one since then, who has become a good friend. They are not meant to use ghostwriters.
The second one that I worked with had 3 or 4 that she has tried. She ends up changing too much. It has to be her words and that is perfectly okay. A lot of writers are like that. A lot of writers could not use a ghostwriter, but in my experience with the first one, I almost got a little discouraged. A friend of mine who outlines told me about a ghostwriting company that she works for. I got in with them and I still work for them. I pick up clients on the side when I need a little supplement. I do one book a month for them to this day. I make a lot more money now.
Are you going to share the ghostwriting company?
I can’t share that. I can if anybody wanted to contact me, I could see if he was looking for people, the guy that owns it. It is a private company. They disclosed all of their author pen names that it is a team of writers writing. It is not like they are trying to be deceitful or anything, but it is not my place to share that.
I would not ask you that ever.
If anybody is interested, you are more than welcome to contact me and I can find out if he is looking because he is all the time taking on new people. People get into it, they find out they do not like it, and they leave, or they get into it and stay forever like me.
I have hired ghostwriters. I’m going to be perfectly honest because 2021 was rough. I have hired ghostwriters before and a few times, I was like, “I’m going to rewrite this entire thing.” It was not the right fit. Upwork is for people who may be interested in ghostwriting is not an awful place to go look for ghostwriting jobs.
It is an awful place to be a ghostwriter. I do not know if I’m allowed to say anything bad about them. People on there write for so cheap. I got on there and I posted my rates. I did not get a single blip. They all mine come from word of mouth, people who know me, my writing level, my abilities and all that stuff. If you are hiring a ghostwriter and you are willing to work with ghostwriters that are not necessarily on the highest levels, too, you are going to have to fix their grammar and change stuff, but it is cheap and it will give you a thin draft, a basis to start with.
I’m a slow writer. It takes me a long time to write. Having a draft even that I fix saves me half the time.
Is it not a bad way?
It is not a bad way to find a ghostwriter. There are some people on there that super talented.
I found one, who now we are good friends. She is busy. She is good. I have been like, “You need to write your own books.” She was like, “I’m back.” She is not there yet. I’m like, “You should be writing your own.” She was like, “I’m not quite there yet.” I’m like, “You are good.” What I did was I moved from ghostwriting to co-writing because it got the same benefit. It is more about you. I have a few other questions. You said you pants Bloom in Blood or Supay. Now I’m presuming since you pants that and you are not pantsing anymore.
When I started ghostwriting, I got outlines and I started writing to an outline. Now I can’t pants. I have to have an outline.
When you try to it, is it down to pants?
I stare at the computer. I have not even tried since several years. I do not do it at all. I hardly ever go off outline. I might come up with an idea or a new scene and I will add it to the outline, but I hardly ever write off of the outline off trail. I stick to my outlines.
Did you get an outline thing? Did you read outline books or did you start doing outlines?
I ghost outlined, but I hate doing it. I charge eight gazillion dollars for it and I do not get many clients. I get a few who want my voice and they want my outline. I do not like doing it because I sit there and it takes me days. It has to be detailed, it has to flow right, and you have to get all the beats in the right places like my outlines have to be, even if I’m writing it for someone else. If you ever ask me about my outlining, that is why it is so expensive. It is a pain.
Lia and I do our own. Lacey is particularly good at outlining. She will often do a thin outline, and then Helen or I will go in or Lia and I will go in because we are doing a project we are working on. We will go in and flush out the outline and then we will start writing. Laura is also particularly good at outlining. She will sometimes take that on. When I do the thin draft, I will do it a little thicker, where she won’t add quite as many words, but she did the outline. That is how we try to keep it.
I write the outline because she does not like outlining. I do a detailed outline. My first is a light outline. We both look at it, and then I’m like, “Get feedback.” I go back, and I make it pretty detailed. She does that first thin draft. I’m like, “This is new. I like that terminology.”
That is what we call it. We made up that term. I do not know if that is an official word.
I go through afterward and go clean it out. That’s our 50/50. Do you use like save the cat? You have the beats, but what beats are you calling?
I like the beat sheet. It flows best with how my mind works. I often find myself hitting the beats without having to look and say, “What beat am I supposed to be on?” I tend to like the beat sheet. The save the cat, I looked at that one once. It is like this massive spreadsheet, and I could not get into it. They are so detailed. It is probably a good thing, but it was too much. I felt like it was going to stifle creativity, which I know a lot of people get stifled when they try to outline. If they do not dance, they do not feel as creative. I feel very creative when I outline but that was too much. I feel like I’m doing a Math problem.
Not everybody can, but anybody could.
Have you found your creativity? Does it affect going from pants to plotting?
I feel like moving to paranormal women’s fiction and that cozy funny has opened up my activity again. I felt like I might have been starting to get burned out. Not that I do not love reverse harem or a good paranormal romance. I have been in pretty paranormal romance since way before I was old enough. Let’s be real. I’m sneaking into my mom’s room and getting books off the shelf.
There is something about this genre that clicked with me. Even if the paranormal woman’s fiction craze dies off, I will stick with the paranormal cozy and stay in that world. Not that I won’t write other stuff too. I feel like everything exploded when I went into that genre and I started having all these ideas. That is why I now have five series that are paranormal women’s fiction going because it clicked.
That is good for people to hear because I know a lot of people worry about their creativity not maintaining its same juiciness if you start plotting. It is still fun if you befriend the right genre.
We all want to make money and the goal is always to make money while doing something we love. That is always the goal. People sometimes jump from genre to genre, to whatever is hot and that can start feeling more like work for people who are trying to make money that way. There is nothing wrong with doing that. Try to make your money and go for it.
I jumped into this initially when we first started planning Ghoulish. It was the first one we did. It was like, “This is a hot new genre.” “It sounds like fun. Let’s see if we can make some money in the genre.” Almost from the moment we started planning it, it became more than that. If you do genre hop, looking for your home, keep trying, you will find it.
You never know when you are going to say, “It turns out I love writing alien sex. That is going to be my genre. I’m writing all about alien love.” You never know. Monsters are up and coming. I like writing a Lucifer. I have 4 or 5 different books that have Lucifer in them. I try to jump on that Lucifer trend. In my series, it has Lucifer that isn’t that doing good, but it is good series. You should all go read it.
I’m sure it is. That is one of the things I want to ask you because you were rebranding the Supay a few times. Do you do that with other series?
I have done that with one other series. When I say rebranding, I do not mean getting new covers. Everybody gets new covers. They start to look stale, trends change, and you get a new cover. That is fine. Taking a book and taking it into a different genre is something I have done with one other series. It was a series that I co-wrote with another author. The first book of that series was the last book my mom ever read of mine before she died. When the book came out, I went to that author, and I said, “I want that book.” By rights, it was hers. It was in her KDP, and it is her book. I said, “I want the book back. I want to buy it from you.”
She was incredibly gracious. She worked with me because of how close that book was to my heart, but I did not have the money. Lacey came in with me. She went in and co-author with me. That is our Immortal Midlife series. We ended up revamping it, flushing it out, taking it from a reverse harem to a male/female, and turning it into a paranormal women’s fiction because it already hit every single PWF button except it was a reverse harem. That was before I tried my reverse harem PWF. We even bought Covers By Christian.
The covers were gorgeous. They were him doing his thing because he is wonderful. It still did not want to sell. We finally figured out it was because the harem was established at the beginning of the story. Those do not sell as well. We ended up moving it over to paranormal women’s fiction and changing the covers around. We had to give up our Covers by Christian, which makes me sad. They are terrible, but it is doing better in paranormal women’s fiction. It is a good story about Lucifer. I keep trying to write about Lucifer because I have fun with it. That was another rebrand that we did. That is the only two that I have ever done that.
I want to ask a little bit about you always want the Lucifer. Have you found sometimes that the books that are not your favorites do on occasion well? I have had some that I’m like, “This is not going to be as good.” They love it and I’m like, “Okay.”
I had always done well. I was a middle-of-the-road author, not a biggie, but I also had gotten above being a newbie. When we started writing Paranormal women’s fiction is when I started making some real sales. I never exploded in the reverse harem the way some of the other RH authors did.
Some people come in one book. I do love Katie May. I have not talked to her, but believe me, I will be. I will be reaching out.
You should. She is the best.
She is one of my automatic reads. What do you do for your marketing besides writing to market? We have talked about that a little bit in the plotting, which is, plot it to market. Besides those things, what are you doing to market your books?
I do Facebook and I do AMS. I have gotten a couple of BookBub, which are not as awesome as they would have been if I had been wide. I’m slowly moving everything wide. They were still great. I love BookBub. I love that team over there. They are so helpful but mostly Facebook ads and I dabble AMS a little. I’m not as good at it. I did some training with Melissa Storm. Elizabeth Briggs has given me some good advice about Facebook because she is a friend and she is awesome. I have not done any actual courses. It was all trial and error, but I finally got the hang of it. They did this update, so I do not know anything.
I’m glad that I’m starting. I need to figure it out again.
They will do one update, and it is like, I’m in a whole new life, completely in the dark, do not know what I’m doing.
That is where you would with your marketing. Good for you with the Facebook ads. I have been like, “Oh.”
I’m working on TikTok. I’m not doing that much steamy right now. My Lucifer series is steamy, and it is ongoing, but most everything I’m doing right now is paranormal women’s fiction, and there is not a big following over there for it, but I’m trying anyway because it is fun. I’m having a lot of fun with it.
I started, and then I was like, “I do not have enough time for this.”
It is time-consuming. It takes so long to make a video.
I see people who are a little bit younger than me, and they are like, “It is easy.” I’m like, “No.” I went to Ram. Afterward I was like, “I got to do TikTok.” I looked at my house, and I was like, “Where am I going to the TikTok?” I’m like, “I’m not doing TikTok. I had to clean my house before I could do a TikTok.” That is not going to happen. I’m going to do something else. My PWF TikTok videos are like, “Is it hard to get a lot of followers because I got a lot of followers pretty quickly from those videos?” I have not done that many because then I got overwhelmed. I was like, “I have to write. I can’t just do TikTok.” Probably in 2023, I will be like, “TikTok, I’m here.” It is a big thing.
It is huge. I like browsing it.
I spend a good amount of time. Make sure because if we become friends, I will be like, “Did you see this cute cat that is fat, that when the dog comes and plays with it?” It is like, “Get away from me, dog.” It is on its back like a turtle. I would be curious to see how that TikTok with PWF.
I started a video and tagged a whole bunch of PWF authors to try to create a chain of stitches and see how it goes.
What advice would you give to other authors? You sound like you went pretty smoothly, which I think is lovely. What advice like, “I did some fanfiction and made a book.”
You never know the impact you’re going to have.
It sounds easy, but a lot of butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard. You have to write the word. I used to share my writing goals and how many words I write and stuff, but this is my full-time job. This is what I do 40 to 50 hours a week. I write hundreds of thousands of words a month. If someone writes tens of thousands, and they feel bad. I try not to share that anymore.
The whole point is that it does not matter how many words you are writing. It matters that you are writing every day. You have to get the words out, or you are not going to do anything. Once you get words out, you start looking at the other stuff, figuring out marketing, book covers, editing, and all that. Some of the bigger advice would be you do not feel like you are going to have to spend a ton of money to get a book out.
There are reasonably priced editors out there if you need an editor. Most people need an editor. There are reasonably priced covers out there. Once you have an edited book with a cover, you can publish it. You can format it yourself. You can do all these things yourself. You can do a lot of self-editing too. Get your butt in the seat, get the words out and do not feel like it is something that you can’t do because of finances or knowledge. You can do it. Anybody can if you can sit down and get the words out.
I like how matter of fact you are about it. You are like, “You can do it.”
It is how you have done it too because you are like, “If this is something you want to do, you make time and you do it.” My husband and I have this running joke. Every time I meet and new, and I tell them, I do not often say any more than I’m an author. I will say I’m in publishing or something like that. As soon as I tell somebody I have written a book, they say, “I have this idea for a book in my head. I have always wanted to write a book, I have half a book written at home and I have never finished it.” Everybody always is going to write a book, has been going to write a book, wrote a book, but won’t let anybody see it and everybody thinks, “I could be an author.” when it comes down to it, sit down, put your fingers on the keyboard and write the book. Not everybody can do that, but anybody could.
That is the quote for the show. I’m going to add it because it keeps coming up in my head. One of my favorite indie authors who I can reread her stuff all the time is CM Owens’ Kristy Cunning as the reverse harem. She passed away this summer of 2021. it makes me cry every time because she is one of the reasons I restarted the show. She is one of the people I would have wanted to interview because her plots are complex. She saved me. 2021 was rough for me. Her book is being able to reread them and be interested every time. She was one of the authors that saved me.
Imagine what an impact she would not have been on the world.
I think about that all the time because it has been a rough year. I’m like, “I can’t believe she was ill.” I’m like, “Thank God.” I went, and I bought all of her books, but most of them were expensive. I got them all paperback. I was like, “I need to have these. I do now know when they might take them down.” I do encourage everybody to do it.
You never know the impact you are going to have.
On yourself too. Your whole life can transform.
My whole life has completely changed since 2016.
Instead of doing retail, you are at home.
It is not always easy.
It is easier if you have good friends, where you are like, “Hey.” They are also another butt in a chair.
With our hair up in messy buns and we do not even care anymore.
What are you talking about, messy buns? You guys can’t see, but I am the definition of a messy bun. Thank you for sharing that. Which book would you like to share? Tell us about the book that you want people to go check out and where is the easiest place to find you?
Everything is on Amazon. My paranormal romance, the ones that I co-write with Laura and Lia are all wide. You can get them from any retailer. If you want to try my paranormal women’s fiction, I have Witching After 40, Karma’s Spell, which is Magical Midlife in Mystic Hollow. My solo series is a lot of fun. It is about a time-traveling witch assassin named Rowena. If anybody does read that, I modeled her after the Rowena on Supernatural, Crowley’s mom. I love her. That is what she looks like in my mind. That is my brain.
She has 100 titles. Go to Amazon and browse. I write the shorts. I have a lot of books out. It was like, “What was the name of that?” I do not know the name of all, even all my characters.
I bought a baby book to keep track of all the names. I have to go back and look up all the names I have used. I had reused names a couple of times accidentally. I do not want to try that again.
I try only to reuse names because I have two pen names now. I get to reuse all those with my favorite names in the other pen names. I’m going to go check out Bloom in Blood because that sounds interesting to me. Amazon is the best place. Do you have a website?
Does that link to all of your social media?
Yes. I’m all over the place. My screen name everywhere is L.A. Boruff. I’m easy to find.
Thank you so very much for sharing all of your expertise, your story, and telling us about all your stuff. I was glad to have you here.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody, for reading.
Important Links:
- L.A. Boruff
- NaNoWriMo
- Supay
- Literary Yours
- A Ghoulish Midlife
- Valentine Pride
- Karma’s Spell
- Fifty Shades of Grey
- Witching After Forty
- A Grave Midlife
- Gangbusters
- Bloom in Blood
- War of Fangs
- Immortal Midlife
- Covers By Christian
- Facebook – L.A Boruff
- BookBub
- Lucifer
- Witching After 40
About L.A. Boruff
L.A. (Lainie) Boruff, USA Today Bestselling Author, lives in East Tennessee with her husband, three children, and an ever growing number of cats. She loves reading, watching TV, and procrastinating by browsing Facebook. L.A.’s passions include vampires, food, and listening to heavy metal music. She once won a Harry Potter trivia contest based on the books and lost one based on the movies. She has two bands on her bucket list that she still hasn’t seen: AC/DC and Alice Cooper. Feel free to send tickets.
