Research Like An Academic, Write Like an Indie With Melissa Addey

Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration, and information on writing, craft, and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint, and lots more at the creativepen. com. And that's pen with a double n. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 848 of the podcast and it is Friday the 30th of January 2026 as I record this. In today's show I'm talking with Melissa Addi about what indie authors can learn from the rigor of academic research as well as the problems with academic publishing. And if you do any kind of research for your books, fiction or non-fiction, I hope you'll find this useful. So that's coming up in the interview section in writing and publishing. So in writing craft over on the Wish I'd Known Then podcast, Sarah Rosette talks to Jennifer Hilt about tropes specifically for mysteries and thrillers, but still useful for whatever genre you write. So in the podcast they say while authors often view tropes as plot devices, they suggest viewing tropes as relationships. Common tropes like enemies to lovers or rivals clearly define a dynamic. And even solo tropes like the orphan or amnesia are fundamentally about how a character relates or fails to relate to the people around them. And if you view tropes through this lens, this can help authors understand the emotional core of the story, going beyond just pure plot. They also identify shame as a powerful underlying element in mystery and thrillers, particularly around secrets and scars. And on a personal note, I always like thinking about what does my character have in terms of secrets. And scars, you know, their flaws and the things they're hiding and but yeah, secrets and scars are great. I hadn't really thought about it in terms of shame, but shame creates vulnerability in characters, as they say. Whether it's a small embarrassment or a dark secret like a murder, shame is considered one of the most difficult emotions for humans to overcome. So it can give you new angles to explore why characters hide things or feel powerless. So really good episode on the Wish I'd known then podcast and also Sarah and Jennifer have a new book out the mystery and thriller trope thesaurus. They also talk about co-writing in the discussion because they co-wrote this book, the mystery and thriller trope, thesaurus. They talked about trusting your partner will complete the work without micromanagement, which is so important. They also talk about using a contract and they used uh AI tool claude to modify a standard template for their own project and found that co-writing non-fiction allowed them to keep their distinct voices rather than blending them together into one. often required when co-writing fiction. Then in author business over on the productive indie fiction writer, Tracy Cooper Posey has a three-part article series examining the differences between traditional and indie in 2026, calling it the brutal unscentimental guide. So, expect some truth bombs from Tracy's decades of experience in both worlds as a romance writer. So, there's a lot in these articles. I highly recommend them. I've been reading them. She's sort of posted them over the last month or so. But the one I picked out to share with you cuz I want to encourage you to go read them all. But this is the legacy author problem. And Tracy says, "Authors coming out of long traditional careers often try to straddle. They want to keep one foot in trad while trying to build indie. This is usually a mistake. " And I think it can go the other way too. Like it's very hard to stra to straddle having a foot in both worlds. As Tracy said, you have to pick a major. And the healthiest mindset shift you can make is this. A traditional publisher is not your career. They are a vendor you occasionally hire. Once you think of them that way, the emotional roller coaster stops. And so does the heartbreak when they behave like a corporation. Yeah. And I really thought that was good because a lot of heartbreak in publishing comes from thinking that everything is personal and identifying yourself with your book and the way you get treated. And yet publishers are businesses. They make profits or at least that is the goal. So it's not personal, it is business. And the trad versus indie thing is basically if you're traditionally publishing, it is their business. You are working for them. As an indie author, it's your business. You are working for you. And so the very different mindsets you have to focus on one or the other. Now

of course you can do both but I think as Tracy said you have to pick a major. You have to say right I am primarily indie. It is my business and as part of my business I do license my work to traditional publishers sometimes or when it works. But the other way around is I am working for someone else's business and you get to decide what you want to do. But Tracy has some great questions to help authors decide where to focus their energy. Do you want control or validation? Do you want speed or permission? Do you want a business or an institution? Do you need someone to tell you what to do? That is such a big one as well. Such a big one. As an indie author, you have to drive what you do. No one's going to say this book has to be done by this date. No one's going to say this is what you need to do for marketing. You have to figure that out for yourself, which is something that most indie authors are quite happy with. Other questions, can you tolerate corporate indifference? Do you want income driven by your backlist or hope driven by launches? And are you willing to learn basic business literacy? I would go beyond that. I think you need the basic business literacy, but then you need to go a lot more into running your own successful author business if you want to do this long term. Tracy says, "In 2026, choosing between trad and indie isn't about legitimacy. It's about choosing which system you're willing to depend on. " And I think framing it in a sort of more positive way. It's about choosing which business you want to be part of, your own business or someone else's business. So that's productiveindiefictionwriter. com. And then staying on the business side on the sort of practical questions. I had a question this week in my Patreon and I do a monthly Q& A and an author said they'd been making six figures consistently for several years and felt they were stuck at a plateau. And then I also had another question about making money with book one as a new author. And both of these questions, I thought, are served by reminding you of Becca Sims five phases of an author business and how things are different at different stages of your career and also based on decisions you make about what you want for your life as well as your business. Becca has a great YouTube channel, Becca Sim on YouTube, link in the show notes. She also has the Quitcast audio podcast. So just to recap her five phases, phase one is research and development, a testing phase where the primary goal is to determine if there is reader demand for your work. This is normal for the business to be negative or in the red. Since you are writing, you're learning about marketing, you have to be patient, resilient. This is the early stages of the author business. So as an author with one book, you're still in R& D and you could be there for quite a while. Then phase two, the initial growth. You graduate to this phase when you have found a demand pocket and your returns are consistently more than 100% over your expenses. And this is so important because I feel like many people expect to publish a first book and then initial growth just happens. But in reality, that tends to happen a bit later once you have, as Becca says, found demand for your work and often only happens after a few books, after you have built an email list, after you understand the basics of marketing at least. And you need to learn to focus on this and produce the writing that drives the business, but also focus on what actually does drive revenue. This is something I'm kind of hot on at the moment is a lot of what goes on in the so-called marketing space does not necessarily drive actual sales of actual books. So that's something to consider. Phase three, building infrastructure. In this phase, you invest in ongoing costs to sustain the business. That might be things like doing audio books, doing translations, doing licensing deals. And here is when you start paying for help and delegating and getting together your systems. And this is where Becca says your profit may decrease because you start paying out for things to help you with the load. You might also need a coach. You'll also be shifting in terms of the people you meet. So that infrastructure build definitely takes a period of time while you get everything sorted. — [snorts] — Then phase four growth of investment and this phase cycles backwards and forwards with phase three. So inf infrastructure stabilizes revenue grows prompting further investment. You go back you

build more infrastructure and of course that infrastructure doesn't have to be a physical warehouse like Sasha Black who was on the show before Christmas who writes as Ruby Row or Adam who was on recently those people who build physical infrastructure with warehousing. It can also be software. So for example, my financial system is zero XRO. You can be changing the way you do your marketing to automate that kind of thing. So the thinking about business infrastructure is just getting your systems sorted really in that phase four, the growth phase. This can be dangerous and Becca of course as a coach gets a lot of authors coming in around stress and burnout, family tensions. It can really change how you define yourself and your friendships, that kind of thing. And self-care is super important. And then phase five, the mature business. The defining characteristic is flatlining revenue. And I love this because while flatlining at a high level is technically a sign of a successful, mature business, many authors perceive it as failure or death. You have likely reached the cap of your subg genre or niche. And I'd also say you might have reached the cap of what you want to do. Now, there are two options here. One is downsize to reduce expenses and infrastructure, maintain profitability at the current flatline level. And the other option is reinvent. Start something entirely new. a new pen name, a new genre, a new angle, a new stream of income, that type of thing to trigger a new phase one and start all over again in the R& D phase. Now, I wanted to mention this because like the author who messaged me, I have made the same amount of money within a reasonable level for a decade now. So in 2016, I started making low multi6 figures as a business and have made almost the same amount every year since. And in terms of multiple streams of income, some years more money has come from book sales, some years less money more from courses or the podcast or whatever. And I've faced this question multiple times. Should I try? And I have several times thought, right, I want to push up. I want to make multi6 figures. seven figures. I know it's possible. I see people doing it. What should I do? And then the big question here is, what am I willing to do to reach that? And this is true even if you want to make $1,000 a month. $10,000 a month, what are you willing to do to reach that number? It is certainly possible, but the people who do that have to change their businesses. And the very first thing there is this R& D phase where you're finding people who actually want to pay for your work. And this is something we really have to choose as authors because many of us, myself including included specifically for fiction, write books we love without necessarily writing to market. Whereas what you will find is that authors making bank certainly in fiction are writing to market. They are finding niches of people who desperately want this type of book and then they are writing to reach those people. And so this is one of the things you have to decide like what am I willing to do in order to achieve what I want to achieve? And then the bigger question what why do I want to achieve that? So this is what I have thought about which is actually do you know what I'm really happy with what I write. I'm I love writing books. I love I don't want to write to market certainly with my fiction. I do this show for you. This is my creation to market. I guess this podcast is to market as such and it may it is a revenue stream. The Patreon I try and serve my audience but my fiction which does make money but not as much as a lot of fiction authors. I write the books I want to write and I am not going to change that in order to change my business and in fact every year I choose something else. It seems like this year I'm doing this masters in death, religion and culture and that is certainly not an attempt to ramp up more revenue. So you have to be happy with your life choices as well as your author business. So wherever you are in the phases of an author business and it's not about your age at all. It's about where you are as an author. So, be realistic about where you are and go check out Becca's YouTube video on the phases of an author business and her Quickcast podcast and also her quit books for authors. Becca

has also been on this show multiple times, so you can listen to us talk about these things by searching the backlist of the show. In personal news, Bones of the Deep, my next thriller, which is absolutely written because I'm fascinated by all these things, is with my editor, Kristen, and also two beta readers, one an oceanographer, one a sailor. So, that will be back in a few weeks, and then I'll get into the edits and the book design and the Kickstarter prep and all of that. So, you can check that out. jfpen. com/bones. But for now I'm back into my masters as I mentioned and I have three papers I'm doing at the moment. One's philosophy, one is theology and one is more sociology. And since this episode does discuss academic things, you might be interested in the essays I'm working on. And basically it is a taught masters. So we do lessons every week. There's lots of reading, lots of material to work through, videos to watch, discussions to be had. We have live sessions and then we have essays to work on. So one of my essays is on philosophy. Is death a good thing or should we all want to be immortal? My Christian theology essay will be on assisted dying something I am as a child-free person something I am very interested in. And my world religions essay will be on death within modern orthodox Judaism. So pretty hardcore term of work along with all the lessons each week. But I am loving it. It is stretching my brain for sure. Some days I have to go and lie in the dark because my head has exploded. But I'm really finding it fascinating. And if you didn't hear me talk about it before Christmas, but Bones of the Deep has partially been inspired by one of the topics I did last term, which was about human remains that were taken by explorers and then whether they should be given back to indigenous people. So, I've also been catching up on admin and working with Claude Co-work on Amazon ads. I am so thrilled with Claude Co-work doing my own Amazon ads with Claude. So basically Claude's doing it in the agent agentic kind of system and I just supervise it and watch it is so cool. There is a video tutorial in my Patreon if you want to see that demo. So thanks for all your emails and comments and photos this week on Adam's live selling episode. Julie Day on YouTube said, "This is inspiring. I'm going to try and do something similar with my books on Instagram. See what happens. " Excellent. And Peter left a comment on my Writing the Shadow episode and said, "Loved this. Thanks for sharing. It helped me reflect on my self-publishing path and affirmed I'm on the right track. " And thanks for pictures. Matt sent a awesome picture driving a forklift up in the Australian Center, keeping the wheels of commerce rolling. I just love the idea of Matt, you listening to me on a forklift in the middle of Australia. Oh, so I love that. Thank you for that. And an very different picture, sent a Dawn photo in W Kiki in Hawaii. Enjoying your interview with Adam as dawn breaks and I can hear the waves lapping on the shore. Thank you both of you. Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes at thecreativepen. com or on the YouTube channel. You can also email me joanna@thecreativepen. com. Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or death culture place or crypt or any comments about my degree and recommendations. People have been sending me recommendations of books and uh I do. It's great. I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, which I use to deliver my free ebooks as reader magnets and also to deliver ebooks and audio books when I sell direct through Shopify and Kickstarter. One of the fastest ways to find new readers is partnering with other authors in cross promotions and book swaps. The challenge, coordinating with multiple authors and delivering books to thousands of readers usually turns into a logistical nightmare. But Bookfunnel makes group promos simple. Upload once, deliver everywhere, and watch your list grow without broken links, frustrated readers, or late night tech support. Smart authors know collaboration beats competition. Bookfunnel makes sure your promotions actually work instead of falling apart at the delivery stage. Ready to grow your audience faster? Start at bookfunnel. com/thecreativepen. That's bookfunnel. com/thecreativepen. So, this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription, and editing. Oh, in fact, I was going to say, if you meet up with any of the people I talk about on this show, please

tell them that you heard about them on this show because it really helps me support the businesses that I love to use myself and also helps them keep sponsoring the podcast. So, yes, this corporate sponsorship does pay for the hosting, transcription, and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community at patreon. com/thecreativepen. Thanks to the 11 new patrons who've joined over the last week, and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering writing, craft, author, business, and AI. Last week I shared the monthly audio Q& A which is about an hour of me answering questions around all kinds of things. And when as this goes out we've also just had live office hours on Sunday morning UK time. So people in Australia and New Zealand could join in. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So, if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon. com p a t r e o n. com/thecreative pen. Right, let's get into the interview. Melissa Addi is an award-winning historical fiction author with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Surrey. She was the Lever Hume Trust Writer in Residence at the British Library and now works as campaigns lead for the Alliance of Independent Authors. So, welcome back to the show, Melissa. — Hello. Thank you for having me. — Oh, no. It's great to have you back. And you were on almost a decade ago in December. — I know. — It's kind of crazy in December 2016 talking about merchandising for authors, but that is really a long time ago. So, just start by Yeah, I know. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing. — Oh, okay. I had a regular job in business and I was kind of writing on the side. I did a couple of writing courses and then I started trying to get published and that took seven years of jumping through hoops and nothing much didn't seem to be much progress. And at some point I very nearly had a small publisher who we then clashed over the cover because there was a really quite hideous suggestion that was not going to work. And I just I think by that point I was really tired of jumping through hoops really trying to play the game traditional publishing wise and I just went you know what I've had enough now. I've done everything that was asked of me and it's still not working and I'll just go my own way. And I think at the time so that would have been 2015ish or coming up to 2015 suddenly I think self-publishing was sort of you could hear about it more. It was around more. I could see people and hear people about it and I thought, "Okay, let's read everything there is to know about this. " And I had a little baby at the time and I would literally print off stuff during the day to read, probably loads of your stuff and read it at 2:00 in the morning whilst breastfeeding babies and then go, "Okay, I think I understand that bit now. I'll understand the next bit and so on. " And so I got into self-publishing and I really enjoyed it and I have been doing it ever since and I'm now up to 20 books in the last whatever it is 10 11 years and as you say did the creative writing PhD along the way and working with Ally and doing workshops for authors and mix and matching lots of different things but I really enjoy it. — So you mentioned you had a job before in business. Yes. Um, so are you full-time in all these roles that you're doing now or do you still have that job? — Oh, no. I'm full-time now. I'm I only do writing related things. Left that in 2015. So, I kind of took a jump. I was on maternity leave and I started applying for jobs to go back to and I suddenly felt like, oh, I really I don't want to I want to do the writing. And I sort of thought I've got like one year's worth of savings. I could try. I could try and do the jump. And I remember saying to my husband, do you think it would be possible if I tried to do the jump? Would that be and the sort of very long pause while he thought about it? And but the longer the pause went on, the more I was thinking, oo, he didn't go, no, that is out of the question financially. We can't do that. And I thought, oo, oh, it's going to work. And yeah, I did the jump. — Yeah. Well, that's great. I mean, you know, I did something similar and took a massive pay cut and downsized and everything. Yeah. back in the day and having a supportive partner is so important. But the other thing I did and I wonder if you did I said to Jonathan my husband if within a year this is not going I think I she said 6 months if this is not going in a positive direction then I'll get another job. Like how long did you think you would leave it before you just gave up and I guess how did that go because that beginning is so difficult especially with a new baby like what were you doing? — I know. Um, well, I kind of thought

well, I'm at home anyway, so I do have more time than if I was in a full-time job, as in the baby sleeps sometimes, sometimes if you're lucky. There are little gaps where you could really get into it. And I had a year of savings/maternity pay going on. So, I thought, I've got a year. And the funny thing that happened was within a few months, I went back to my husband. I was like, I don't understand. I said, all these doors are opening. like they weren't massive but they were doors opening. I said but I've wanted to be a writer for a long time and none of these doors have opened. And he said well it's because you really committed is because you jumped and when you jump sometimes you know the universe is on board and goes yeah all right then and open some doors for you. And it really felt like that. even things, you know, dyslexia writing magazine gave me a little slot in to do a kind of they did a sort of online writer in residence thing. just sort of little doors open that felt like you were getting a nod like yeah come on then try and so that was great and then the actually the PhD was part of that was that I applied to do that and it came with a studentship — which meant I had three years of funding coming in and that was one of the biggest creative gifts that's ever been given to me is three years of knowing you got enough money coming in that you can just try and make it work and by the time that finished the royalties had taken over from the student and that was such a gift. It was just such a gift. — Okay. Well, a couple of things there. Um, one I got to ask about that funding because you're saying it was a gift, but that money didn't just like, "Hey, Melissa, thank you for the money. " You worked really hard to get that funding, I presume. Like you did the work. — I did. You do have to do the work for it. Yeah, I know. My sister had done a PhD in entirely different subject and she said, "You should do a PhD in creative writing. " And I said, "It'd be ridiculous. Nobody is going to fund that. Who's going to fund that? And she said, "Oh, they might try. " And I was like, "Okay. " And I tried and like the deadline was something stupid like two weeks away. And I tried and I got shortlisted, but I didn't get it. And I thought, "Ah, but I got shortlisted with only two weeks to try. " And I thought, "Okay, I'll try again next year then. " So then I tried again the next year and that's when I got it. So it does take work. You have to put in quite a lot of effort to make your case. But it's a very it's a very joyful thing if you get one. — Yeah, for sure. Okay. So then let's just go to the bigger question of why do a PhD in creative writing because I mean let's just be clear to everyone. You don't need even a bachelor's degree to be a successful author. There's plenty of authors. Stephen King is a great example of someone who is not particularly educated in terms of degrees. He talks about writing his first book while working at a laundry. you could you can be very successful with no education in brackets. So why did you want to do a PhD? What was it that drew you to this academic research? — Yeah, absolutely. And I would just briefly say I often meet people who feel they must do a qualification before they're allowed to write and I kind of go I mean do it if you'd like to but you don't have to. You could just practice the writing. So I fully agree with that. Well, it was a combination of things. I do actually like studying. I do actually enjoy the research. That's why I do historical research. I do actually like that kind of work. So that's one element. One element was uh the funding. I thought if I get that funding, I've got three years to build up a back catalog of books to build up the writing and all of that. I will give me more time. So it was a very practical financial issue. Also children, I mean my children were very little. I had a three-year-old and a baby and everybody went are you insane doing a PhD with a three-year-old and a baby. But the thing about three-year-olds and babies is they're quite intellectually boring. I mean, emotionally, very, very engaging emotionally on a number of levels, good, bad, whatever, but they're not very intellectually stimulating. I mean, if you're at home all day with two small children who think that, you know, hideandsek is the highlight of intellectual difficulty because they've hidden behind the curtains and they're shuffling and giggling. And I felt I need something else. I need something for me that will be interesting and whatever. So part of that was that element as well. And I kind of thought I enjoy I've always enjoyed passing on knowledge. I've always enjoyed teaching people workshops whatever in whatever field I was in. And I thought if I want to do that for writing at any point, it will sound more important if I've done a PhD. No, that you need to have that to explain how to do writing to someone if you do a lot of writing. But there was all these different elements that came together really. — So we'll say you enjoy the research. It's an intellectual challenge. You got the funding and also there is something around authority. — Yeah. — In terms of a PhD, a masters as you know and just for listeners I'm doing a mast's at the moment in death.

— Your sounds fascinating. — Yeah. It's in death religion and culture. Brilliant. — It is interesting because also the same as you I enjoy I love research. Both of us love research as part of our fiction process and our non-fiction. I also am enjoying the intellectual challenge and I have also considered this idea of authority in an age of AI when it is increasingly easy to generate — a books let's just say it it's easy to generate books. So I was like well how do I look at this in a more authoritative way and I wanted to talk to you because even just a few months back into it and I haven't done an academic qualification for like two decades so this I was back into it and it struck me that the academic rigor is so different and so let's get into that. What lessons can indie authors learn from this kind of academic rigor? I guess what is it? What do you think of in terms of the rigor and what can we learn about that? — I think there's a number of things. I think first of all really making sure that you're going to the quality sources for things, the original sources, the highquality versions of things, not kind of secondhand. Going back to those primary sources, not somebody said that somebody something. Yeah. Well, let's go back to the original and have a look at that because you get a lot from that. And I think you immerse yourself more deeply. So, you know, someone can tell you this is how they spoke in the 1800s. If you go and read something that was written in the 1800s, you get a better sense of that than just reading a dictionary of slang that's being collated for you by somebody else. So, I think that immerses you more deeply. I think um also really sticking with that till you've found interesting things for you that spark creativity in you. So I've seen people say I used to do all the historical research nowadays I just fact check. So I write what I want to write and I fact check. And I think well that's okay but you will not find then the weird little things. I tend to call it the footnotes of history. you won't find the weird little things that really make something come alive, that really make a time and a place come alive, I think. So, you know, I've got a scene in one of my Regency romances, which actually I think are less full of historical emphasis than some of my other work. But the guy gives this woman a gift and it's supposed to be a romantic gift and maybe slightly sensual. And I could he could have given her a fan and I could have fact checked and gone, "Are there fans? " Yes, there are fans. Have they got pretty romantic poems on? Yes, they have. Okay, that'll do. Actually, if you go around and do more research than that, you discover they had things like ribbons that held up your stockings on which they wrote quite smutty things in embroidery. And that's a much more sexy and interesting gift to give in that scene. But you don't find that unless you go doing a bit of research. If I fact check, I'm not going to find that because it would never have occurred to me to fact check it in the first place. — Yeah. I mean, I do think I agree with you totally. And one of the wonderful things about research and I also like going to places um because you might be somewhere and you see something that gives you an idea that you never ever would have found in a book or any other way other than that. And so I used to call it the serendipity of the stacks, you know, in the physical library is you go looking for this particular book and then you're in that part of the shelf and then you find like several other books that you never would have looked for. And so I think it's encouraging people as you're saying, but I also think you have to love it, right? Clearly we do. — Yes. Yeah. I think some people find it a bit of a grind or they're frightened by it and they think, "Have I done enough? " And I get asked that a lot when I talk about writing historical fiction. People go, "But when do I stop? How do I know it's enough? there wasn't another book that would have been the book? " And everyone will go, "How did you not read blah, you know? " And again, I think that I always say there's two ways of finding out when you can stop. One is when you get to the bibliographies, you look through and you go, "Yeah, read that, read that. Nah, I know that one's not really what I wanted. " D. and you are familiar in a way with those bibliographies in a way that at the beginning you're not at the beginning every single bibliography you haven't read any of it so that's quite a good way of knowing when to stop and the other way is can you write ordinary everyday life so I don't start writing a book till I can write everyday life in that historical era without notes I will obviously have notes if I'm doing a wedding or a funeral or a really specific battle or something, but everyday life, I need to be able to just write that out of my own

head. So, you need to be confident enough to do that, I think. — So, then I guess one of the other problems I've heard from academics, like people who've really come out of academia and want to write something more pop, even if it's a pop non-fiction or fiction, they are also really struggling because — it is a different game, isn't it? So for people who might be immersed in academia, how can they release themselves into doing something like self-publishing? Because it's really — Oh, yeah. — It's there is still a lot of stigma within academics circle. So how do you deal with that? What do you say? — You're going to get me on the academic publishing rant now. I think academic publishing is horrendous. I think they are No, I really they are very badly treated. I know quite a lot of academics and they are very badly treated in terms of they have to do all the work. Nobody's helping them with indexing or anything like that. The publisher will say things to them like well could you just cut 10,000 words out of that because just sizewise and you're like what out of somebody's argument that they're making over a whole you know just no consideration for that. The royalties are basically zilch. And I've seen people's royalty statements come in and the way they price the books are insane. So they will price a book at £70. And you think, okay, I actually want that book for my research. And I'm hesitating because I can't be buying all of them at that price. That's ridiculous. And I've got people who will bring out a book who are friends or family and I'm like, "Well, I would gladly buy your book and read it. " But it's priced crazy. It's priced only for institutions. — And I think actually if academia was written, it doesn't have to be slumbing it. It'll be just written a little more clearly and open to the lay person, which if you're good at your work, you should be able to do that. and priced a bit more in line with other books. I think that would maybe open up people to reading more academia and you wouldn't have to make it pop as you say. I quite like pop non-fiction in you know — but I don't think you'd have to there wouldn't be such a gulf between those two. I think you could make it more readable generally. I read someone's thesis recently and they'd made a point at the beginning of saying I shall be using and I cannot remember who it was now so and so academics point of view that it should be readable and I should be writing accordingly and I thought wow I really admired her for doing that and I thought next time I'm doing a thing like that I should be putting that at the front as well but the fact that she had to explain that at the beginning and it wasn't — so funny — I know and it wasn't like words of one syllable throughout the whole thing I thought it was a very quality piece of writing but it was perfectly readable to someone who didn't know about the topic. — I might have to get that a name from you because I've got an essay. — I'll dig it out for you. — Yeah, that would be good. I've got an essay on the philosophy of death and as you can imagine there's a heck of a lot of big words. — I know. And I I've done a PhD, but I still used to tense up a little bit thinking they're gonna pounce on me. They're going to say that I didn't talk academic and I didn't sound fancy enough. It's like that's not what it should be about really. — Um, and in a way you're locking people out of knowledge. And given that most academics are paid for by public funds, that knowledge really ought to be a little more publicly accessible. — Yeah, I must say I agree on the book price. I mean, I'm also buying books for my course that are not in the library, you know, as available. — And you're right, like some of them might be like 70 pound for the ebook. — Yes. — Let alone the print book. And what that means is that I end up looking for secondhand books when of course the money doesn't go to the author or the publisher. And the other thing that happens is it encourages piracy. So there are — absolutely — people openly talk about using pirate sites for academic works because it's just too expensive. You know, if I'm buying like 20 books for my home library, I can't be — spending that pricing. So I agree with you. I mean why is it so bad? Why is it not being reinvented especially in these as we have done with indie authors for the wider genres I guess what has this at all moved into academia? I think within academia there's a fear because within academia there's kind of the peer reviewed and it must be proven to be absolutely correct and agreed upon by everybody and duh and I you know I get that I get you don't want some complete rando writing something and claiming that's the truth when clearly it's got some you know negotiable points in there or things you might want to go hang on that's not actually right but I do think there's base there to come up with a different system where

you could say, well, so and so is professor of whatever at such and such a university. I imagine what they have to say might be interesting and well researched. You could have some sort of kite mark. You could have something that then allows for self-publishing to take over a bit. I feel I do just think their system is really poor and they get really reigned in on what they're allowed to write about. So Allison Babastock, who is a professor now at Kingston University and does stuff about publishing and masters and all the rest of it, she started writing about self-publishing because she thought it was really interesting. And this is way back. — Yeah. I remember I did one of her surveys. — Yeah. And she got told in no uncertain terms, "Do not write about this. You will ruin your career. " And she stuck with it. She was right to stick with it. But she was told by senior academics, "Do not write about self-publishing. You're just embarrassing yourself. It's just vanity press and it's just this and it's just that. " So they're not even being allowed to write about really quite interesting phenomena that are happening that just from a historical point of view, that was a really interesting rise suddenly of self-publishing and they she was being told not to write about it. Yeah, it's funny that delay as well because I'm looking to maybe do my thesis on how AI is impacting death and the death industry and yet it's such a fastm moving thing and sometimes it can take what a year, two years or more to get a paper through the process. — Oh yes. — So I'm wondering if I need to do something else. — I know it moves really fast. Yeah. Like you say by the time it comes out people are going, "Huh, that was that's really old. — you'll be going no it's two years literally like you say very very slow — okay so let's come back on how we can help other people who might not want to be doing academic level stuff but one of the things that I found is organizing notes sources references so how do you manage that and any tips for people and they might not need to do footnotes for their historical novel but they might also want to organize their research. So what are your thoughts there? — So I used to do great big enormous box files and print off vast quantities of stuff and each box file would be labeled according to servant life or food or seasons or whatever it was. I've tried various different things. I'm moving more and more now towards a combination of books on the shelf which I do like and papers and other materials that are stored on my computer and they will be classified according to those different parts of daily life essentially because when you write historical you have to basically build the whole world again you for that era you have to have everything that happens in daily life everything that happens on special events all of those things. So, I will have it by those sorts of topics. I will read it and go through it until, like I say, I'm comfortable with daily life. And then special things I will have special notes on that can talk me through how you run a funeral or a wedding or whatever cuz that's quite complicated to just remember in your head. I always do historical notes at the end. They really matter to me. And when I read historical fiction, I really like to read that from the author where I will say, "Right, these things are true. " Especially things that I think people go, "She made that up. That is not true. " I'll go, "No, no, these are true. These other things I have fudged a little or I have moved the timeline a bit to make the story work better. " So, I try to be fairly clear in what I did to make that into a story, but also what is accurate because I want people to get excited about that timeline. And occasionally if there's been a book that really was important, I will mention it in there because I don't want to have a proper bibliography, but I do want to highlight certain books that I think if you got excited by this novel, you could go off and read that book and it would take you into the non-fiction side of it. — I'm similar with my author's note. I always put stuff like I've just done the author's note for Bones of the Deep which is about uh well has some mer folk in it and I've got a book called Myrr people and it's awesome. It's just a brilliant book. I'll have to find the author but yes my people and I'm like this has to go in. I mean this it really does. You could question whether that is really non-fiction something else but yeah I think that's really important but just to be more practical when you're actually writing. So, I use Scrivener and I keep all my research there and I'm using EndNote for academic stuff. What tools do you use? — I've always just stuck to Word. I did get Scriven and play with it for a while, but I kind of felt like I've already got a way of doing it, so I'll just carry on with that. So, I mostly just do Word. I have a lot of notes. So

I'll have notepads that have got my notes on specific things, and they'll have page numbers that go back to specific books in case I need to go and double check that again. So I'll have those sorts of things. I think you mentioned citations at one point and that's fascinating to me because I don't know do you know the story about angle of repose — by Wallace Stegner. So it will one the Pulitzer it's a novel but he used 10% of that novel and it's a fairly slim novel 10% of it is actually letters written by somebody else written by a woman before his time and he includes those and works with them in the story and he mentioned her very briefly so kind of oh and thanks to the relatives of Jay kind of thing you know really useful kind of stuff very brief and got accused of plagiarism for using that much of it by another part of her family who hadn't agreed to it. And I've always thought it it's because he didn't give enough credence to her. He didn't give her enough importance. If he'd said, "This was the woman who wrote this stuff. It's fascinating. I loved it. I wanted to creatively respond and engaged with it. " I think if that wouldn't have happened at all. And that's why I think it's quite important when there are really big important elements that you're using to acknowledge those. — Yeah, I think that as you say that's part of the academic rigor too is that you can barely have a few of your own thoughts without referring to somebody else's work and crediting them. And what's so interesting to me in the research process is like, okay, I think this, but in order to say it, I'm gonna have to go find someone else who thought this first and wrote a paper on it. — Yes. You know what? I think you would love a PhD. When you've done a masters, go and do a PhD as well because because it was the first time in academia that I genuinely felt I was allowed my own thoughts and to invent stuff of my own and to go, I know, I've invented this theory and it's this. And you didn't have to constantly go as somebody else said, as somebody else said. I was like, "No, no, this is me. I said this thing. " And I wasn't allowed to in my masters. And I found it annoying. I remember thinking, but I'm trying to have original thoughts here. I'm trying to bring something new to it. And in a PhD, you are allowed to do that because you're supposed to be contributing to knowledge. bringing a new thing into the world. And that was a glorious thing to finally be allowed to do. have to say. — I must say I couldn't help myself with that. I've definitely put my own opinion with it. But I think a part of why I mention it is again the academic rigor. It's actually quite good practice to see who else has had these thoughts before. And I feel like speed is one of the biggest issues in the indie author community in that some of the stuff you were talking about like finding original sources, going to primary sources and the top quality stuff, all of that and finding the weird little things and all that all takes more time — than for example just I don't know running a deep research report on Gemini or Claude or Chatt — and you can do both. You can use that as a starting point which I definitely am and then but then the point is to then go back and read the original stuff and stuff like that. So on this time frame I mean why do you think it's worth doing like that it's important for academic reasons but personal growth I guess as well. — Yes I think there's a joy to be had just in the research. So I was saying to someone when I go and stand in a location by that point I'm not measuring things and taking photos. I've done all of that online. I am literally standing there feeling what it is to be there. What does it smell like and what does it feel like and does it feel very enclosed or very open and is it a peaceful place or a horrible place or whatever. And that sensory research I think becomes very important. And I think all of the book research before that lead should then lead you on into the sensory research which is then also a joy to do and I think there's then a great pleasure in it as you say it slows things down. What I tend to then say to people if they want to speed things up again is write in a series because once you've done all of that research — and you just write one book and then walk away, that's a lot. That really slows you down. If you then go, "Oh, okay. Well, now I'm going to write four books, five books, six books, whatever it is, still [clears throat] in that place and time. It obviously each book will need a little more research, but it won't need that level of starting from scratch research. And so that can help in terms of speeding it back up again. So recently I wrote some Regency romances to see what that was like. So I'd done all my basic research and then I thought right now I want to write a historical novel which could have been

Victorian or it could have been Regency. it really it had an openness to it and I thought well I've just done all the research for Regency so I will stick with the that era why go and do a whole piece when I've only written three books in it so far I'll just take that era and work with that so there are places to make up the time again a bit but I do think there's a joy in it as well — yeah absolutely so I want to just come back on the plagiarism thing because again I discovered that you can plagiarize yourself — in academia which is quite interesting So, for example, my books, How to Write a Novel and How to Write Non-fiction. — They are aimed at different audiences. They have lots of chapters that are different, but there's a chapter on dictation. And I'm like, I'm not going to Why do I need to write the same chapter again? I'm just going to put the same chapter in. It's the same process. So, and then I've only recently learned that you can plagiarize yourself. I did not credit myself for that original chapter. — How dare you? How dare you not credit yourself? But can you talk a bit about I mean you mentioned a bit about that person who potentially got caught there but again that wasn't awful. I mean what are the lines here? I mean I am never going to credit myself to be fair. I'm never going to like say I'm plagiarizing myself or crediting myself. I just think that's frankly ridiculous. — No that's silly. I mean no I mean well it depends what you're doing doesn't it? I mean in your case that completely makes sense. It would be really peculiar of you to sit down and write a whole new chapter desperately trying not to — copy what you'd said in a chapter about exactly the same topic. I mean that doesn't make any sense. — Well, I guess more on the wider sense. So earlier you mentioned you keep notes and you put page numbers by them. And I think the point is with research a lot of people worry about accidental plagiarism where you wrote a load of notes on a book and then some it just goes into your brain and perhaps you didn't quote people properly. I think it's definitely more of an issue in non-fiction to be honest. You know, you have to keep really careful notes. I mean, even sometimes I'm copying out a quote or something and I will just naturally maybe rewrite that quote — because the way they've put it didn't make sense or I use a contraction or something like that and it's just the care in note takingaking and then citing people I think. — Yeah. And when I talk to people about non-fiction, which is, you know, I've done a little bit of non-fiction, not a lot, but I always say to them, you are basically joining a conversation. I mean, you are in fiction as well, but not as obviously. And I say, well, why don't you read the conversation first? Find out who what the conversation is in your area at the moment, and then what is it that you're bringing that's different? Because the most likely reason for you to end up writing something similar to someone else is that you haven't understood what the conversation was and you need to be bringing your own thing to it. So then even if you're talking about the same topic, you might talk about it in a different way and that takes you away from plagiarism because you're bringing your own view to it and your own direction to it. I think — yeah, it's an interesting one. I think just it's just the care. Taking more care is what I would like people to do. I think so. Let's just talk about AI because AI tools can be incredible. Like I said, with deep research, I do deep research reports with Gemini and Claude and Chat DBT as a sort of give me an overview and tell me like where's some good places to start. And the university I'm with has a very hard line which is it can be used as part of a research process but not for writing. So what are your thoughts on the AI usage and tools and how can people balance that? — Well, I'm very newbie compared to you. I follow you. The only person that describes how to use it like with any sense at all like step by step. I'm very newbie to it. I mean I'm going to go back to the olden days. Sometimes I say to people when I'm talking about how I do historical research. I start with Wikipedia and they look horrified and I'm like no that's where you have to get the overview from. I want an overview of how you dress in ancient Rome. I need a quick snapshot of that. Then I can go off and figure out the details of that more accurately and with more detail that I need. And I think AI is probably extremely good for that is getting the big picture of something and going, okay, this is what the field's looking like at the moment. These are the areas I'm going to need to borrow down into. It's doing that work for you quickly so that you are then in a position to pick up from that point and it gets you off to a quicker start and perhaps points you in the direction of the right people to start with because it is very I mean I'm trying to write a PhD proposal at the moment because I'm an idiot and want to do a second one but with that I really did think actually I mean I just think hey I should write this because the original concept is mine. I know nothing about it. Why would I know anything about it? I haven't started researching it. — This is where AI should go. Well, in

this field there are these people. They've done these things. Then you could quickly check in like that nobody's covered your thing. It would actually speed up all of that bit which I think would be perfectly reasonable because you don't know anything about it. You're not an expert. You have the original idea and then after that then you should go off and do your own research and the in-depth quality of it. Yeah, — I think that for a lot of things with authors that wastes authors time like if you're applying for a grant or a writer in residence or things like that. It's a lot of time wasting filling in long boring forms with you know could you make an artist statement and a something and a blah and you're like yes yes I could spend all day at my desk doing that for getting this thing you know there is a moment where you start thinking could you not just allow the AI to do this or much form — yeah or at least well in that case I would say one of the very useful things is doing the deep searches you know for example as you were mentioning earlier about getting the funding thing. If I was to consider a PhD, which you know the thought has crossed my mind, I would use AI tools to go do searches for me in terms of finding s potential sources of funding and doing that kind of research. In fact, I found this course at Winchester because I asked chat GPT what you know cuz it knows a lot about me and I chat with it all the time and I was talking about hitting 50 and these are the things I'm really interested in and what courses might interest me and it found it for me. So that was which was quite amazing in itself. So I would encourage people to consider using it for part of the research process but then all the papers it sites or whatever then you have to go download those go read them you know go do that work yourself. — Yes. And because that's when you bring your viewpoint to something because you and I we could read the exact same paper — and choose very different parts of it to write about and think about and whatever because we're coming at it from different points of view and different journeys that we're trying to explore. So that's where you need the individual to come in. And it wouldn't be good enough to just have a generic overview from AI that we both try and slot into our work because we would want something different from it. — Yeah. And in fact, I kind of laugh when people, you know, this sort of, oh, I can tell when it's AI. I'm like, you might be able to tell when it's AI writing if nobody has taken that personal spin, but that's not the way that we use it. Like if you're using it that way, that's not how those of us who are sort of I know independent thinkers, that's not how we're using it. We're strong enough in our thoughts that we're using it as a tool. And I think you are a confident person. You're intellectually and creatively confident. But I feel like that's what some people feel that maybe they don't have. maybe they're not strong enough to resist what an AI might suggest. Any thoughts on that? — Yeah, I think that when I first tried using AI with very little guidance from anyone, it just felt it's easy, but it felt very wooden and not very related to me. And then I've done webinars with you and that was really useful to watch somebody actually live doing sort of batting things back and forwards and that became a lot more interesting because I really like bouncing ideas and messing around with things and kind of brainstorming essentially but with somebody else involved that's batting stuff back to you to see well what does that look like? No, I didn't mean that at all. How about what does this look like? Oh no, not like that. Oh yes, a bit like that but a bit more like whatever. And I remember doing that and talking to someone about it going, "That's really quite an interesting use of it. " And they said, "Why don't you use a person? " And I said, "Well, because who am I going to call at 8:30 in the morning on a Thursday and go, look, I want to spend two hours batting back and forth ideas, but I don't want you to talk about your stuff at all, just my stuff. And you have to only think about my stuff for two hours. And you have to be very wellversed in my stuff as well. So, could you just do that? Who's going to do that for you? " You know, — I totally agree with you. I and I was before Christmas, I was doing a paper. It was like a kind of art history you we had to pick a piece of art or writing and then talk about Christian ideas of hell and how it emerged. And I was writing this essay and I was going back and forth with Claude at the time and my husband came in and saw the fresco I was writing about and he's like, "Yeah, no one's going to talk to you about this. — Nobody cares. " — Yeah. Well, exactly. Nobody cares as much as you. and is not prepared to do that 8:30 on a Thursday morning, you know, they got other stuff to do and Yeah. — No, it's good. Well, it's great to hear because I feel like we are now at the point where these tools are genuinely super useful for independent work and so I hope that more

people might try that. Okay, so we're almost out of time. So, where can people find you and your books online? And I guess tell us a bit about the types of books you have. Yeah. So, I mostly write historical fiction. Like I say, I've wandered my way through history. I'm a traveling minstrel. I've turned ancient Rome, medieval Morocco, 18th century China, and now I'm into Regency England. So, that's a bit closer to home for once. And I'm on Melissa. com and you can go and have a bit of a browse and download a free novela if you want and try me out. Yeah. — Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Melissa. That was Thank you. It was fun. So, I hope you found the interview with Melissa interesting, and I'd love to know what you think about deepening your research process with more academic rigor, as well as the pros and cons of academic publishing. Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes at the creativepen. com or on the YouTube channel or email me joanna@thecreativepen. com. Also, please send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday, I'm talking to Kevin J. Anderson about managing multiple creative projects and the art of the long-term career. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show notes at the creativepen. com/mpodcast. And you can get your free author blueprint atthecreativepen. com/bloopprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook @JF Penauor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.