Hello Reading and Writing friends,
Today is something different from the usual newsletter format! I’m excited to share an exclusive author interview with you. Rachel Neumeier opens up about her author journey, sharing experiences from both traditional and indie publishing, insights into her writing process, and much more. Explore her website, delve into her many books, and get to know her as a person. Please let me know in the comments or by reaching out if you enjoyed this, and if you’d like to hear from more authors.
Introducing the wonderful Rachel Neumeier.
Rachel is a fantasy author of more than 35 books that include YA fantasy, historical fantasy and scifi! She has been traditionally published and is now exploring the self-publishing sphere. I recently read her fantastic book, Tuyo, (and included it in my last newsletter) and absolutely loved it. Now, I can’t wait to read the rest of the series and look at the many other books she has. Below is a lovely author interview where she shares insights into her author journey, tips for aspiring and current authors, breeding King Charles Cavalier spaniels and how she came by her two kittens plus more. There is so much to learn here and I’m going to read it again.
Introduce yourself and share a bit about you:
I’m happy to be here, Emma! Thanks for inviting me.
I’m Rachel Neumeier. I began writing as a hobby while I was in graduate school, and I’ve been writing seriously for about fifteen years. My first ten books came out from Big Five publishers, but I moved seriously toward self-publishing in 2020 and have been very pleased at how well that has worked for me. I have about thirty-eight books out now, something close to that. I’d have to count them to see if I’ve gone over forty yet.
I have an excellent part-time job as the tutor coordinator for a student support services organization (and only occasionally get drafted to teach a biology class). Unless I’ve (reluctantly) agreed to teach a class, I have plenty of time to write, which is a huge asset. Though I like teaching, I very much do not like how much time handling a class takes away from my focus on writing.
I live in the exact middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods, across a gravel road from my elderly mother. I have a twin brother and a younger brother, and my twin in particular often helps me by letting me bounce ideas off him, but neither of my brothers lives in the same state. I am a natural hermit and live by myself except for five dogs and two kittens.
1. How long have you been writing/when did your writing journey begin? Was there a catalyst that got you going?
Like many writers, I basically threw a book across the room and said, “I could do this so much better!” I think a lot of novelists start that way. I also wanted to improve my typing speed. Less laudably, I also wanted to avoid doing the necessary statistical analyses for my master’s thesis. I did finish those analyses eventually, and I will say, I’m definitely a much faster typist now, so there’s that.
My first completed work was a massive fantasy trilogy that had good writing at the sentence and paragraph level and decent characterization, but terrible pacing. Writing that took years, but it did teach me how to write. A little while after finishing that (and also finishing my master’s thesis), I decided to aim at actual publication, re-read everything by Patricia McKillip, sat down, and wrote my actual debut novel, The City in the Lake. Two months later, an agent offered representation. Two months after that, I had an offer from Random House. The rest is history.
2. What made you choose the genre/s that you write in?
I think that for a lot of readers, your taste in novels is set when you’re about fourteen to sixteen years old. Somewhere around there. That’s when you decide what you kinds of books you love. At that time, I was reading Patricia McKillip, RA MacAvoy, Robin McKinley, Barbara Hambly, CJ Cherryh, Sharon Shinn, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steven Burst – a lot of the great fantasy authors. That’s undoubtedly why I chose fantasy myself.
3. Do you read in the same genre?
About half the fiction I read is fantasy. The rest is SF, historicals, mysteries, and romance. Plus nonfiction, mainly natural sciences and also psychology, sociology, and history. I read a lot less than I used to because I spend so much of my time writing, but my (massive) TBR pile still reflects those interests.
4. Hobbies/other interests?
Until recently, I would have said I breed and show Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Though I plan to attempt to breed one more litter, it’s so much work, so stressful, and so expensive to breed top quality dogs that one more is enough. My mother’s advancing age makes it impractical and it’s just hard in many ways. I still have five dogs, though. (Plus the kittens because someone dumped them in the woods near my house this past summer.)
I enjoy cooking and have about two hundred cookbooks. Many focus on specific geographic regions or historical periods because I especially love those. Now you know why details about cooking and food tend to appear in my books.
5. Can you tell us a bit about your latest book? What inspired you to write it?
My latest is an SF duology that was directly inspired by CJ Cherryh’s Cyteen. I love, love, love that book and have read it many times, but the society we’re looking at in that novel is basically founded on large-scale slavery of cloned people, azi, though no one exactly points out that the azi are slaves. It’s not that Cherryh doesn’t realize this or realize that this is highly problematic. I’m just saying, that is the most important worldbuilding element in this story.
In my duology, clone lines produced in much the same way rebelled and freed themselves several hundred years ago. That’s the most important worldbuilding element in my story.
6. How do you come up with the characters in your stories? Are they based on real people, entirely fictional, or a combination of both?
Almost none of my characters are based on real people in any way. One is deliberately modelled after a psychiatrist I’ve never met, but whose books I’ve read. That’s pretty much it for basing my characters on actual people. Most of my important characters are based on other authors’ characters, but generally strongly reinterpreted.
7. What's your writing process like? Do you have a specific routine or set of rituals that help you get into the writing groove?
I am the most extreme morning person in the world. It’s easiest for me to write early in the morning. When everyone else sets their clocks back in the fall in the US, I don’t change my schedule a bit; I just get up at four rather than five in the morning. The extra hour of writing time is great until I gradually adjust my schedule to match the rest of the world, usually in January.
When I’m working seriously, I aim for 2000 to 3000 words per day and keep casual track of progress because I find that motivating. Or I find that motivating until the book is obviously going way past the length I’d prefer. Then I may stop and do some cutting, though basically I’m fine if a book turns out long, particularly now that I’m self-publishing and don’t care about the limitations publishers may impose.
8. Do you have any writing companions/muses?
9. Some authors meticulously plan their plots, while others let the story evolve as they write. What's your approach to storytelling and plot development?
Plotters seem to me like alien life forms. I do not attempt to plot. I may or may not have a few pages of somewhat organized notes before starting to write a new book, but basically I just write it.
This sometimes means I paint myself into a tricky corner. The SF duology I just published? When I started writing that story, I knew every character had secret plans, but I had no idea what those plans actually involved. I got very, very stuck for years before my brother made a comment that shook the back half of the story loose.
More often, I begin with a detailed opening scene that is complete in my head, plus a scattering of other compelling scenes and sometimes the basic shape of the overall story. Then I just write it. If the story is simple, I may hold the whole thing in my head, though usually without knowing quite what I’m going to do at certain points until I get there. If the story is more complex, a lot of the details and events will probably surprise me, though I may know where I’m heading in broad terms.
10. Themes often play a significant role in fiction. Are there specific themes or messages you aim to convey through your writing?
I don’t exactly aim to convey anything, but themes about responsibility and trust come up over and over. I didn’t see that until my brother pointed it out, after which it was obvious.
11. Can you share any interesting or challenging experiences you've had while researching or writing a particular book? Either with the process or with unexpected/other life events.
I almost never do actual research. I have a lifetime of reading in my head, so I don’t usually have to pause to look anything up. However, when I wrote Suelen, one of the books in the Tuyo world, the protagonist is a surgeon—and more than that, a surgeon working with medical techniques that are not like modern medical techniques. For that one, I did a TON of research on early suture materials and antiseptics, herbal medicine, and anatomy. I think I still have all those diagrams of the knee tucked in a folder somewhere.
12. How do you handle writer's block or moments of self-doubt? Do you have any tips for overcoming creative obstacles?
Writer’s block means, for me, that I’m trying to take the plot in the wrong direction. Cutting the most recent chapters may help. Going for a long walk and thinking about where the plot might go instead may help. If the block is severe, I just work on something else. That’s what I did with the Invictus duology when I was stuck on that one.
This isn’t what other people mean by writer’s block, but it’s the only kind of writer’s block I experience myself.
With most books, I do fear that maybe readers won’t like the book. With some of the Tuyo-world books, that wasn’t a problem at all, but usually it is. There’s a lot of traveling; will that be okay with readers? This story is an almost pure character study with very little action; will that work for readers? This relationship is iffy in some ways; will readers be okay with this? This character arc is subtle; will readers like what I did with this character?
After publishing a lot of books, I find it easier to just set these doubts aside. Everything usually works for enough readers.
I do have two tips:
A) Do not worry about the draft until it is finished. You cannot do anything useful with a half-finished story. Finish it first. Fret later.
B) Once you begin publishing, for your own peace of mind, you have to sincerely give each and every one of your readers permission to dislike one of your books. I mean, in your head. It is highly unlikely that every single book you write will appeal to every single one of your core fans, even though they love everything else you have ever written. This will bother you a lot less if you believe in your heart that this is okay. It IS okay.
13. What are your go-to writer’s tools/platforms etc?
I know some people like Scrivener. I love Word. All the things people say is so great about Scrivener, such as moving chapters or sections around as units, Word can also do. It’s true you have to learn how to use those features, but by now, I know all the bells and whistles – or if not all of them, most of them. Word is a flexible, powerful program. People who think Google Docs is as good are simply mistaken. It has less than half the functionality, at best. LibreOffice is not as good either, though it’s closer.
14. Do you have any marketing tips?
Ha ha ha! No! Kind of! Maybe!
After a couple years … I’m definitely still just a beginner.
Wait, I do have a tip! You do not have to figure everything out about marketing at once! You can take your time!
The easiest form of marketing AND one of the most cost-effective means of marketing is to pay promotion services. The one to start with is Written Word Media, hands down. Nothing else compares. There are a lot of legitimate promotion services that are worth trying. Fussy Librarian, eBook IQ, Robin Reads, Book Runes, Book Sends – people have lists. They are very much worth trying.
15. What advice would you give to aspiring fiction authors who are looking to embark on their own writing journeys?
Look, there are good reasons to consider traditional publication. There really are. Working with good editors taught me a lot. I built some of my readership via my traditionally published books and that was important. The advances were nice, too.
But the biggest reason for aiming at traditional publication is that you might as well. It’s free! Writing query letters is not exactly fun, but it’s not that hard! (Look at Query Shark for advice there.) You know what you can do while sending out query letters? You can write and polish two more books. Or five. However many you can comfortably handle in two or three years, however many years you want to spend in the query trenches.
The best that can happen is that you will have a good agent offer to represent you. This can take two months or three years (or never). If that happens, you can then decide to say yes or no. If you say yes, you will be waiting to see if a publisher makes you an offer. This can take two months or three years (or never). If it happens, you can decide whether to accept or decline. There is nothing about this situation that is bad. The decision is yours at that point.
If a traditional publisher makes you a crappy offer, you can walk away. My personal belief is that you should walk away if the advance is less than, say, $10,000. I hear average advances are way below that now. If the offer is for $3000, you don’t have to accept it! If you have three or five or more novels finished, polished, and pretty much ready to go, then you are in position to self-publish effectively. If you do opt for traditional publishing, consider the rights reversion clause very carefully. That is the most important clause in the contract.
16. Are there any mistakes you’ve made along the author journey?
Sob, yes. My first contracts were drawn up before ebooks became a real thing. I had no idea how bad the rights reversion clauses were. I may never be able to pry rights back for my earliest books. Although I will probably try in the not-too-distant future.
Also, it turns out there are practical reasons not to bring out a super long book, which I hadn’t realized. If I were doing it again, I would cut Tasmakat up into three normal-length books. It’s a minor regret, but that was a mistake.
17. Can you share any successes?
I’m cautiously pleased at how self-publishing is working for me. There’s a lot more to learn. But I do count self-publishing as a success right now, and I expect it will only improve as I learn more. I’m also cautiously pleased at the growing readership for my Tuyo series.
18. Can you tell us about your books? Do you have a favourite among them?
While I’m happy with how a lot of my books have turned out, the Tuyo series is by far my personal favorite. Everything in this world works for me, everything in this series is fast to write and compelling for me personally. I wrote all these books “in flow,” fast and easily. I mean, I wrote the complete draft of Tuyo in forty days—a record for me for a book of that length (the draft was 200,000 words; I always write long and then cut).
The main trilogy in this series is Tuyo-Tarashana-Tasmakat. This trilogy is one story, though the first and second books are each self-contained. I tackled a super ambitious plot arc here and I love how it came out. I have never been more confident about any book than I was about Tasmakat. I loved writing it and I love thinking about readers hitting certain scenes.
The Death’s Lady series wasn’t a bit like the Tuyo series. Everything in it was difficult and slow. I was using various difficult techniques. For example, I separated the role of the main character from the role of the protagonist. Plus, the first part is barely fantasy at all; the entire epic fantasy there happened in the backstory.
I look back on that series with some amazement that I finished the main story. It took forever. I referred to it as The Neverending Revision From Hell for more than a year. Maybe because of that, I really love it now. Luckily, the fourth book, a companion story, was much (much) easier.
Everything else of mine was in between in terms of difficulty. Of my earlier works, I may love my actual debut novel the best. I never again captured such a fairy tale feel for a story.
Thank you so much, Rachel! You have an impressive amount of books under your belt and it seems that the inspiration is going strong. I really enjoyed reading through your answers, there is a lot to digest and explore for both readers and writers. We wish you all the best in your writing!
You can find more information about Rachel and her books at her website -
https://www.rachelneumeier.com
I’ve put a link to her book, Tuyo, on the image above. Just click the image to go there.
I thoroughly enjoyed all of Rachel’s author information and the things that are special to her. Let me know what you thought.
See you next time!
Emma