Crafting Tales: Collaboration and Community in Short Stories

What if you could turn a monthly writing challenge into a successful book collaboration—all while recording the entire creative process as a podcast? What if hand-selling locally sells more books than online marketing? Clay Vermulm talks about his creative and business processes.

In the intro, Spotify’s new ‘Follow Along’ Feature for some audiobooks [Publishing Perspectives]; and thoughts on special edition vinyl or tapes for audio, like Harper Collins special edition example; AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars; Hindenburg Narrator for audiobook mastering; Canterbury Cathedral; CreativePennBooks.com new theme; The Buried and the Drowned.

This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Clay Vermulm is a horror novelist and short story author, co-author of Rain Shadows: Dark Tales from Washington State along with Tamara Kaye Sellman, and a podcaster at Fermented Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadow.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• How a chance meeting at a sci-fi critique group led to a successful horror writing collaboration
• The unique podcast-to-book model: using monthly prompts and live critiques to create Rain Shadows
• How they've sold more books by hand than online—plus specific tactics for face-to-face selling
• Essential tips for being a better critique partner without destroying someone's confidence
• The business side of co-authoring: 50/50 splits, paying contributors, and why royalty tracking is a nightmare

You can find Clay at RainShadowStories.com and on Substack.

Transcript of Interview with Clay Vermulm

Jo: Clay Vermulm is a horror novelist and short story author, co-author of Rain Shadows: Dark Tales from Washington State along with Tamara Kaye Sellman, and a podcaster at Fermented Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadow. So welcome to the show, Clay.

Clay: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be on here.

Jo: Lots for us to talk about. So first up—

Tll us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Clay: Like a lot of people, I've been writing since I was a little kid with crayons and everything like that, so I think a lot of writers out there can relate to that story. More specifically, I went to college for English and history.

Like a lot of people, I think I was told through a good portion of my life this sort of narrative—and I think it's ironic, right? We tell people, “Oh, follow your dreams.”

If people do something creative when they're a kid or when they're younger, we encourage that. We parade that, we champion that. Then as soon as you turn 18, we're like, “Okay, time to make money now. Do something that's a real job.”

I always resented that, and once I got to college, I had a really good English professor who taught a class on actual publishing. His whole class was about how to submit a short story and how to go out there and try to get your work published.

Your final for the class was just to actually show him that you had submitted a short story to a professional market and written one, because we wrote and critiqued them throughout class.

I grew up in rural Montana, so I hadn't had a lot of opportunities to do critique groups or writing groups or theater or any of that until I went to college. Once I did and saw some of the avenues you could take to really pursue a life in creativity, I was totally hooked. That's where it officially began for me.

Honestly, I owe it largely to theater. I got into theater and I went to college on a wrestling scholarship. I ended up dropping out of that and going into the community theater, doing some shows, learning to write stage plays and standup comedy and music.

I tried writing everything and eventually landed on books because, as you know Joanna, you can carve out your own path in indie publishing in books, and you don't have to rely on like a million other people like you do in a play or a film.

That's why I've focused on writing novels and short stories in recent years, just to get some of my stories finished and get them out there.

Jo: So did you ever get a “real job” as college people like to call it, or—

Have you managed a creative portfolio career, as we call it now?

Clay: I'm finally getting to where that is my full-time job. For about the last three years, I've been a full-time writer—freelance stuff, magazines, editing gigs, kind of patching all that together with what I publish and put out there and a bunch of other groups I work with.

So I'm there now, but it's only been about the last three years. Up until then I've worked lots of side jobs, kitchen jobs, a teaching job, and all kinds of stuff like that.

I freelanced in the film industry here in Seattle for a solid five, six years as well. When I was doing that, I was just taking whatever new job would come my way. So I did a lot of production assistant stuff and grip and electric stuff.

Jo: I think this is so important because I feel like a lot of people do think, “Oh well, it's just the one book.” Maybe they do a degree like yours in English and then they think, “Okay, I just need to write one book and that's it.”

But what you're talking about—this sort of patchwork of all these different creative things, plus bits and bobs of jobs—is really the reality, isn't it? I certainly don't know anyone who just writes one book and then that's it, they're done.

Clay: Yes, that is certainly an illusion, and a loosely held one at that. These days, I don't know anyone who's tried selling a book who still believes that.

Jo: But perhaps if you haven't yet finished that first book, you can still believe that. It's great that your professor encouraged you all to submit because I guess you also started getting rejections pretty early, right?

Are most of your works short stories?

Because I saw from your website you do a lot of short stories.

Clay: That's kind of become my favorite medium, my favorite form. I like editing too, because I really like to bring other artists, other authors together on projects. I love to showcase things that are really beautiful and strong works of fiction, especially in the short market, because there's just sort of a thing that happens with short stories.

I think that a lot of writers read short stories. They are harder to get out to your actual larger reader base. Luckily in horror, I think there's been quite a movement towards reading short fiction, but even still, people primarily like to read novels or longer work for the larger reader base, it seems.

I love taking every opportunity I can to collaborate with people and to bring awesome artists together on projects and to get these stories that—even if they've been printed somewhere else before—to get them back out there.

When I find them and I'm like, “This story's awesome,” I see if I can get a reprint and make an anthology with it, just doing those kinds of projects. It's always been really rewarding to me. I think I like writing short stories because it also allows me to explore that editing side of the work as well.

Jo: I like writing shorts as well (my new collection is The Buried and the Drowned.)

It's funny you said writers read short stories, and I was just trying to question that in my mind, like, is that true? I think you are definitely right because many of us want to write them so we read them.

I definitely remember reading the Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected back in the eighties, and those still shaped me. Then I was thinking about the ones that I buy now and they are pretty much all horror, which is really interesting that you said that. So people listening, definitely short stories.

Let's talk about one of your collaborations then. You have this unusual origin story for the new collection called Rain Shadows.

Talk about how Rain Shadows started, and the prompts, and the podcast, and why the hell you did it this way.

Clay: It all ties together nicely. This story came out of a critique group where I met Tamara for the first time. I found this critique group randomly on Meetup, and it's actually a fantasy sci-fi critique group.

It's still going in North Seattle right now. It's a great group of people. If you happen to be a writer of sci-fi and fantasy, they're on Meetup as North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers.

I met Tamara there and I was the only horror writer, which happens a lot in critique groups as well. You show up being the only horror writer is a common enough thing. Tamara came in with also some pretty dark stories that she was workshopping. It was like a bunch of dream sequences from her novel that she was working on.

As soon as I read her stuff, I was like, “This person is the person out of this group that I want to really work with. I hope she likes my stories because her writing's awesome.” We had a good chemistry.

We have a similar kind of style. I wouldn't say writing style, but we have a similar flavor of the kind of story we like to tell. We both liked the slow burn, the more psychological angle on horror, and it was just a good match.

From that moment on, I knew I wanted to work with Tamara at some time, in some way. I was thinking of the story I sort of told you earlier about how a lot of writers need that person. For a lot of people, that might be you, Joanna, in this podcast.

So that person to tell them that, “No, you can do this. There are avenues forward into the publishing industry for the everyday writer.” I wanted to show people that.

One of the biggest things you have to overcome is that first draft, right?

You have to overcome finishing it, and then showing it to some people, and getting some feedback and starting to polish that thing and edit that thing. You can't edit a blank page.

That's the twofold goal for this project: to both show people how to finish a project and how to kickstart that creativity, which is what we use the prompts for. Then also to show that early editing process and how far a story can come from a rough draft to a completed project.

I wanted to show how you just have to get into it, find somebody you can trust who can give you good feedback, and then work through it together.

Once you get that thing finished and you start editing it, you'll always be surprised how much of the story is in there on the first draft, how much you can bring out, and how much you can lift up and make it whatever you really want to make it.

So that was the goal of Rain Shadows—to encourage finishing your stories and getting through that early editing process to start the journey towards the finished draft and finishing projects, because that really is the hardest thing for a lot of beginning writers, I think.

Jo: Okay, so you didn't really explain the podcast. Tell us—

How is it a podcast with this process?

Because I've co-written with other people and there was certainly no podcasting involved!

Clay: That's fair. The concept of the podcast—it's called Beneath the Rain Shadow—and it is a craft-centric podcast focused around writing and editing short stories into a collection. Then we have collected them into a book, which is called Rain Shadows.

Every episode we alternate. So I would come in with a prompt that I created. I would give it to Tamara. She would write a story in a month's time, and at the end of the month we would record an episode where we critique that rough draft live on the show.

Every prompt was threefold. So they all had a Pacific Northwest location—and if you're not from America, the Pacific Northwest is the northwest Pacific coast corner of the country, like Washington State, Oregon, and Montana, Idaho, those kinds of areas.

We had a Pacific Northwest location, a Pacific Northwest quirk—so something that's funny about the area we live in or eccentric, like beard grooming or driving a Subaru or something like that. Then we had a horror trope—so these are everything from “sex equals death” to slashers or zombies or whatever you want to do.

Those are largely just jumping off points for us. We had a rule to include every part of the prompt in some way, but it could be as small as a character just driving a Subaru or the story could be centered around a Subaru, but it didn't have to.

That's how the podcast worked. We would come with these fun prompts, we would use them to challenge each other. We would use them to mess with each other a little bit because we're good friends.

For example, I did not want to have to write a slasher story, so I gave that to Tamara. Then for revenge, she gave me a zombie story because she knows I hate zombies.

Jo: I mean, to be fair, I do like horror, but I'm not into slasher at all. I also read very few zombies. I read Jonathan Maberry's zombies, but that's about it. This is so interesting to me because, well, one, you mentioned this critique group, this meetup, and two, I think you are just very collaborative, clearly, as a person.

As I said, I have co-written, but I definitely struggle with it. Do you think that you have had to learn techniques of collaboration? Do you think it's part of your personality to be collaborative?

How can we be better collaborators if we feel like, “Oh my goodness, I am not sharing my writing with anyone”?

Clay: That's a great question. I definitely learned a lot. The nice thing about co-writing like a single narrative would be one thing, right? And this isn't necessarily that because we were alternating short stories.

So we definitely co-edited this collection, but we also had the benefit of co-writing individual stories. So we still had final say over our own creative narratives, which I think helped.

I think that kind of collaboration could be a good way to work into it if it's your first time.

You could try collaborating something where you're more co-editing than co-writing everything.

But regardless, I think the key to it is just you have to come into it with an open mind.

You have to come into it feeling ready and malleable, because as we all know, we have to kill our darlings in the writing game. That's just part of it. You're going to have passages of interior monologue or a beautiful conversation that you have to cut from the story because it just doesn't serve the larger goal.

You have to get to that stage of the editing process where you're able to take the feedback of your co-writer effectively and constructively and apply it to the work in a meaningful way.

I find that I always discover that makes the story better. It always does to get good feedback from an experienced collaborator who can bring an objective opinion to it and help you improve it from there. Then you have to make sure to hold onto the essence of the story.

I think the key to writing together is not to look at how they're going to change the story, but looking at it as what they're going to bring to the story.

What about their work or their style of writing or who they are as a person makes them someone you want to collaborate with? Remember that as you're working with them.

What are they bringing to the table that you couldn't?

Because everybody is better than you at something. That's what I love about collaborating the most, everybody can bring something wholly unique. Everybody can tell a story that I could never tell.

That's what makes writing beautiful, right? I want that involved in all of my work if I can. If somebody else can bring their perspective, their vision, their creative power and energy to something I'm working on, it's always going to make my stuff better.

Also, pick your collaborators wisely. Do your research, read their stuff, get to know them as a person before you jump on board. That's important too. I knew very well that I was going to get along with Tamara on multiple levels.

As you've said, this is a podcast too, right? So it's extra tricky. You can't just be a good writer for this project to work. You also have to be good on the podcast, which is an entirely different set of skills.

Jo: I'm still interested in this. So you met this critique group. I've never been in a writer's group. I'm like a super lone wolf kind of writer!

So you talk there about the feedback and the critique in the podcast, Beneath the Rain Shadow. If people listening want to be a better critique partner, so somebody who is able to work with someone in the way that you are, where they're respecting that person's voice, they're respecting what the author wants to do with the story…

So like both you and I don't like slasher stories, but if a friend said, “Okay, I need your feedback on this,” we can't just say, “I don't like that.” I'm really asking—

How do we take our personal preference away in order to be more positive in feedback, but still useful?

I feel like I get so many emails from people that say, “I went to this critique group and I got absolutely slated. I just got destroyed because people were so negative and horrible. They just don't like my stuff.” So how do we tell the difference and help be better critique partners?

Clay: That's a great question, and finding a critique group is difficult. So if you are one of those people out there that's looking for a good critique group and you've just run into a bunch of bad situations, know that that's part of the process. That is normal.

There are good groups out there, and when you find them, they really do help make your work better. I think the key to it, if you're going into it as a critique partner, go into it remembering who you are and why you brought your stuff to the critique group.

Go in remembering what you're looking for from a group, and remembering how hard it is to put a story together and to bring a final story to the page and then share it with the world and put it out there. It's a very vulnerable thing.

Writing is such a lonely game, and the critique group can be a beautiful place to not only share your story and your work, which we all end up sharing with the world eventually, but it's a place where you get to share the process too, and that's the part that's so lonely.

That's the part that the world doesn't know about, right? Unless they're listening to interviews like this and getting that behind the scenes. Your critique group is a chance to go in there and share that whole experience with people who truly understand it.

I think that's always good for people whenever you're working through something difficult like writing. It can be a very difficult game, right? So I would say start with that, and then there are some semantic tips and tricks too.

I try to read every story twice when I critique, if not three times, depending on how confusing the story is or whatever.

One technique I like to use, and Tamara will champion this technique as well: Take the story off your computer and put it on an e-reader or print it out or do something that makes it feel different than a Word document.

E-readers specifically are nice because they format it like a book, and I know it's kind of a dumb little thing, but it flicks a little switch in your brain and then you start reading it differently. You sort of have a different subconscious level of respect for it almost.

I don't know if you've experienced this at all, Joanna, but I find that's really useful for me to put it on a different device, take it off my computer and get the laptop out from in front of me. Then I feel like I'm editing or correcting a homework assignment.

Read it as a reader first and try to really capture the essence of the story.

Try to really look for what is the intentionality of the story, because every writer has that in every story. If you can find that, then the goal is just to help and try to aid in whatever way you can to bring that essence of the story to the surface and make the story more powerful.

You can only offer your subjective opinion, so be conscious of that, right? Everything you are offering is feedback or whatever. You never want to try to rewrite someone's story or tell them how to write.

You want to share your experience as a subjective reader, a consumer of the story itself, and then as a peer and as a writer. If you're going to give feedback, always offer something to go with it that helps bring the essence of the story to the surface.

I think if you could do those things, that's a good place to start on being a good critique partner. If you want to hear a really long rant about it, you can listen to episode one of Beneath the Rain Shadow.

Jo: I was going to say, I mean obviously you and Tamara do that on your show. But I also think those tips are pretty good for your own stories if you can get some distance from it.

Also, I think short stories are great for this kind of critiquing, aren't they? Because if people come with novels, I mean, you can't read a whole novel in that way, and if you get a chapter, then things don't make sense. There are open loops. You don't know all the things.

So short stories, again, you said writers read them because we write them. That's what they are. They're so perfect for this kind of critiquing and getting outside the genre you might usually work in.

Let's get into the business side. You and Tamara have started a new imprint for this and the other projects.

Talk about this, and also the publishing and production process and the marketing, because being a co-producer—and whether you are describing yourselves as co-writers or co-editors—this is difficult.

It is difficult to do the business side just as much as the creative side.

Clay: I'm still figuring out the business side, to be completely honest, when it comes to having an imprint. That is a new experience for me.

I have worked for a couple small indie presses and helped out at a couple other magazines and things like that. I've indie published my own anthologies and my own work, but I've always just done it under my own name and not really worried about that as much.

So doing this joint business venture with Tamara is very interesting, and luckily she has like 40 years of experience in the publishing industry. So she's definitely got that skillset to put together the marketing playbook and put together the timeline and help us stay on track for everything.

My part of that has largely been finding the contacts and utilizing a lot of the tools that I used when I have indie published my own work. So I have a good contact with a guy who's really good at book formatting, copy editing, and proofreading. So I usually go to him for my final stage stuff.

That's JW Donnelly at Dark Forest Press. I definitely recommend him if you need those kinds of late stage publishing services or editing services. He's awesome. So I've had those contacts for a while, and I helped connect some of those dots.

In terms of organizing everything and getting it all laid out, Tamara was largely the instrument of success there. We're trying a lot of things.

You come from a podcast, and one of the reasons I got into podcasting in the first place was actually from—I know you know these guys—Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt's book Write. Publish. Repeat.

They talked about finding a way to create content that works for you and to be present in the writing community in a way that actually works for you instead of just social media lurking or half-heartedly doing something you're supposed to do.

Podcasting for me is my way of engaging with the writing community.

Beneath the Rain Shadow is a great way to do that, as well as create a book. Then part of our marketing plan was always to have the creation of the book connected with the book itself as a product and that going all the way back to the podcast.

So they're in this nice loop of if you're out selling your books on the street, which we do a lot of that.

A big part of where we sell is street fairs and markets and stuff, which is why we chose to do such a localized horror theme.

That's why we wanted it to be from Washington state and from where we both live, because people love that. When you're selling at these big events, conventions, and street fairs, and we do night markets and all kinds of things like that, this book is perfect for that because people love to read about where they're from.

They love to read that localized horror. So that's a really big part of our marketing plan as well, that boots on the ground selling mentality.

Then obviously we went wide too. We used Ingram Spark to distribute. If you're an indie publisher, you've got to learn about Ingram Spark.

If you want to get your book into libraries and you want to get your book into smaller bookstores and you're not going to go through a distribution network that's more established and do it yourself, Ingram Spark will be a required publishing asset for you in a lot of places. Especially for libraries and bookstores because they facilitate returns and stuff like that.

So that's something to know as well, but we just went wide on the internet and we are very focused on in-person sales with this book because it is so localized.

Jo: You knew you were going to do a book from the podcast—

Did you set up a pre-order from the beginning of the podcast?

Clay: We set up our pre-order about halfway through, I think. But as we were doing the podcast, we were still getting it all off the ground at the same time. Hopefully we'll be a little ahead of the curve on the next book, which is going to be very exciting as well, and the next season of the podcast.

Jo: I love the local idea again. You really baked some good marketing into the actual book itself, saying that people like to buy local stories. Of course, it doesn't have to be horror. People listening, if they write romance or whatever they write. Nonfiction as well.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre, who's been on the show, he's written sort of local various books about places. So I think this is really interesting.

Any tips for selling in person at fairs and things?

How has that gone? What about writers like me who are still worried about this?

Clay: Definitely could give you some tips. I do a lot of that. We haven't sold a ton of Rain Shadows online, but we have sold almost 200 copies by hand already.

It's a lot of fun because you get to engage directly with your readership, and I think that goes a long way towards word of mouth, especially in this day and age of oversaturation out there.

There's so many writers, there's so many stories, there's so many books, so many algorithms to compete with.

Word of mouth is still our most powerful ally as indie publishers. People going out there and reviewing our work and sharing it with their friends.

If they meet you in person, I think they're more likely to do all of those things as well as to read the actual book. I think a lot of people are trophy collectors too, right? Just a good looking book for the shelf and you never read it. We all have giant TBR piles.

So that face-to-face interaction I think in this day and age is exceptionally powerful and important for indie authors. So that's a good reason to do it all by itself.

And for tips and tricks, you have to learn the energy of selling books in person is definitely different than doing it online or through social media.

Doing a podcast is helpful for that, learning how to talk and raise your energy level, an appropriate on-air personality. You do have to adjust all that, right?

We're always putting on a little bit of a performance even when we're just having a chat essentially. So engaging with your audience, being genuinely interested in people, and letting them engage with the work. Then there's a few tricks we have in this collection specifically.

So something that's nice about it is at the start of every story, you get to see the prompt that created the story originally. So the Northwest location, the quirk, and the horror trope are there. Then we also have a map of Washington with a little star on it so you can point right to where every story happens.

This is nice for a couple of salesy reasons. It is a good way to get the book in people's hands, which is a classic sales trick, right? If you're selling at a street fair, you can get people holding the book. They're a lot more likely to buy the book.

Jo: Nice tip. So as in—

You are opening it and showing them the map, and then they're holding it.

Clay: Mm-hmm. It goes a long way. People already have it in their hand, they're already thinking about it. Then you open it and you're like, “Oh, where are you from?” And they go, “Oh, I'm from Granite Falls.” And you're, “Oh, okay, well we have a story that takes place, boom, right here, right where you live.”

Then the other thing we have is a bookmark that lists all the horror tropes we did. So I will also be telling them about the one story with the one map picture that I'm showing them, and then I'll hand them the bookmark and be like, “And if you like any of these other horror tropes, we also did these 12 tropes, so you might be into this book for all these reasons.”

Then they're holding two things. So those are some of the simple tips and tricks. I would say just have a good energy, engage with people, be interested in them, ask them a question or two, and find out what they like to read.

Then in the case of this book, we went wide on topics. We went wide all over the horror genre. So we wrote stories from aliens to zombies to technology, creepy technology, all kinds of things. Mushrooms. So there's a wide swath of horror stuff that we included in this collection.

We did that knowing that we want to capture as big of a horror audience as we can, because there's a lot of people that are into a certain sub-genre, but then there's other aspects of horror they don't like, and largely those are based on misconceptions in a lot of cases anyway.

So hopefully this collection that's dedicated almost wholly to subverting tropes and taking unique approaches at old tired ideas can help with that and get some people reading horror.

Jo: I think that's really cool. I actually haven't really talked about this on the show, but I do have an idea for a book set in my county of Somerset here in the southwest of England.

As you're talking about this and the map and all of that, I'm thinking, yes, I mean, I can see how baking in that marketing early on is just such a good idea that I think that will help a lot of people listening actually. Let's just come back to some of the other considerations around podcasting.

So when you set up the podcast with Tamara, is this a business thing?

Are you paying for hosting? Are you driving traffic to an email list, your Patreon? Is that under your new imprint? Is everything co-owned now around this idea?

Clay: When it comes to this project, Tamara and I just split everything 50/50. We pay for a few hosting things and your standard things you have to have, like we have a domain name and we have a pretty basic website.

We have Patreon that we're still building out and we paid for all the publishing costs 50/50. We split royalties 50/50. So it's just all right down the middle for us.

Now for the next season, we're bringing on two more authors. So for that we have a different strategy that we've talked through and thought about quite a bit. We've decided we're going to pay them a good rate for short stories rather than do a royalty split.

Trying to split it… because I don't know if you've ever had to track someone down—it's a nightmare. It's the worst.

So that's another part of the strategy too that you might be interested in. When we do in-person sales, Tamara and I, so we split royalties just 50/50, but then when we order author copies to sell in person, we also just split the cost of that down the middle.

Then we split the books down the middle and then when we go out and sell in person, we don't really worry about royalties. If you sold the book, you keep the money for that book, unless we're both at the event. So we're collaborating on it on a lot of levels.

Luckily we have a lot of trust for each other, which is requisite for this, clearly, but it works for us. It wouldn't work in a lot of other situations.

So for the next one, that's why we're keeping it that we're going to pay both of you a good writing rate and then we are going to keep all the royalties because we don't want to have to chase our tails on that for the rest of eternity.

Jo: I think that's a really good idea, especially for short stories. I mean, having co-written with people for a decade now, some of those books, the monthly royalty is negligible. Even if you do it once every six months, it's like, oh my goodness, the time I have to spend doing reporting.

Although, to be fair, this is one place AI has just really started helping me because when you are wide, you get so many different reports from so many different vendors. I used to have to open everyone and go through and find the stuff, and now I just upload them all to ChatGPT Agent, and it does it for me. So this is a good part of AI for business admin.

But I think you are right there. I guess with your contracts with those people, there are also rights reversion within a certain amount of time because—

Short story contracts often have faster rights reversion than longer works.

Clay: Yes, and we're just basing that on a cents per word situation.

We're trying to pay as high as we can, as close to the pro rates as we can. We'll probably end up averaging out that cents per word rate that everybody's happy with and then paying it as a flat rate.

Because it's all prompt based, right? And it's all writing in a month's time. There's all these other variables that someone might want to write longer or shorter. So we want them to have the flexibility to do that, but without breaking our banks.

So we're probably going to agree on a contract that's like we're going to pay 5 cents a word, which is considered a pro rate, right? Or I think it's 8 cents a word now, but 5 cents a word is a decent enough payment for an editor to pay you if you're a writer.

We'll probably agree to that with a set word count for each story, and then just pay a flat rate for all four stories since we rotate. Every writer will have to write three stories for the next book.

Jo: I think it's all good to think about though, if people get enthusiastic about doing short story anthologies. As you say, if you have 15 stories and 15 different writers, I mean, these kinds of payments are an absolute nightmare. I think you're doing the right thing there.

So let's talk a little bit more about podcasting because you also have your own podcast, Fermented Fiction, which I went over to have a little listen to before we started talking, and I was like, “Oh my goodness. This is a really long show.”

There's multiple hosts and you talk about lots of pop culture stuff, books and movies and stuff like that. I'm very interested in this. How does podcasting help you on the fiction side? Because I can see that it's part of your business and everything like that, but in your fiction side—

Talk about Fermented Fiction and how you think it builds your author brand.

Clay: How much time do you got, Joanna?!

Jo: Well, you've got about five minutes left!

Clay: I love Fermented Fiction for so many reasons. It's become one of my favorite things I do.

As I said earlier, Johnny and Sean and David are huge inspirations to the beginning of my indie career and still huge inspirations to this day. They're also just such lovely people. They came on the show season one when we had like three listeners, because they're just willing to do that for people. So shout out to them, by the way.

So initially that was the goal, right? Was just to create an engine for engagement with the author community that felt meaningful and that felt productive instead of social media. Then it became something much more.

You're asking specifically about how it affects my fiction and how it helps with my writing, and Fermented Fiction has been fantastic for that because it helps me analyze fiction through a new lens, through a critical lens.

For those of you who don't know, the premise of Fermented Fiction is we invite on guests from the creative industries. So we will bring on filmmakers or writers or whoever else we can get.

We mostly bring on writers just because that's where we have connections, but we are open to bringing any creative people on. We've brought on some podcasters as well.

We choose a movie, book, or show and then we roll 2D20. So if you roll high, you have to defend the movie, book, or show. If you roll low, you have to attack it no matter what you actually think.

Then we do a 10 minute debate, and after the debate we do an hour, hour and a half long panel on the chosen movie, book or show and everything else that comes up along the way.

So this has been a fantastic exercise, Joanna, for analyzing work I love and work I don't love from a totally different lens because if you're watching or reading for Fermented Fiction, you have to be prepared to debate it either way.

So it's a good way to learn how to look for things you love in maybe movies that you didn't used to appreciate or that you didn't like on first watch or books. The same thing, right?

Maybe you read it and it wasn't your cup of tea, but if you're going in for the show, you've got to reread it and you've got to find something to love about it. Then same thing with things you love.

I had to debate against Pan's Labyrinth recently. Oh, it was so hard. It was so hard, Joanna. I had to watch that movie like three times in a row to be like, “How is this not a perfect movie?” And my conclusion was, it is. It is a perfect movie, but you can still find little things to nitpick. It's a fun exercise.

Almost more so with the things you love, right? Because then you can humanize those creators too by like, “Oh, this is still writing. It's still a story. It's still following a lot of the same rules I have to follow.”

That's a good way to look at the stories you love. It's not nitpicking for the sake of finding something that doesn't work. It's just nitpicking for finding the nuts and bolts that hold all stories together. They're in all the stories. Even the best ones. The best ones are just better at hiding it.

Jo: For sure. Any thoughts for fiction authors or anyone listening who thinks, “Oh, well, I kind of want to do a podcast because that would be awesome,” but it feels like it's oversubscribed now. Like we said with books, there's a lot of books. I mean, there's a lot of podcasts out there, right? It is hard to find an audience.

What are your thoughts on people who are new to podcasting, who might want to start a podcast?

Clay: I will just give the answer I've heard from a lot of people, but I would say do it. You know, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt to do it.

There's a low bar for entry when it comes to commitment in terms of money and stuff. These days you can get a pretty good mic for affordable costs. You can get a good webcam and that's all you need. Then you can get started.

I would say just think of why you want to do a podcast. What about it excites you? Because it's a lot of work and you're not going to make money on it, not for a very long time anyway.

You might eventually, but if that's your ticket to making money and then that's going to fund your writing career, neither of those is a great way to make money in the short and quick.

Jo: For sure.

Clay: So you're going to have to work really hard to pull off either of those career choices.

However, I do think podcasting is really good at fueling a creative career. It's really good at helping you promote yourself. It's a great way to put out good content out there without making your writing—if you don't want your writing to be the content that you feel you have lots of deadlines around or lots of obligations.

For example, I don't want to write a short story every month necessarily forever, right? I like doing it for Rain Shadows, but that's a self-contained project that has an end date. I don't feel like I have this looming obligation to my readership for all time to produce a story a week or something.

I would rather be able to take my time with my writing and release the stories I want to tell when they have become the stories I want to tell and not before. I like to have more control over that.

So for me, having a podcast is a great way for me to release something every single week that is directly connected to the work that is connected to the craft that is connected to the community in some way. That keeps you out there. It keeps your voice active, it keeps you thinking, it keeps you creative.

So I think podcasts can be great fuel for that. They can help you prop up your writing and vice versa. And they can be a great way to engage with the community in a meaningful way.

You will be shocked who will say yes if you ask them to come on a podcast. It's awesome. I mean, writers are very generous people a lot of the time. Most of the time. We've had all kinds of awesome guests on the show, and you can just ask. The worst thing people can say is no, and it's a great way to engage with the community.

Jo: Brilliant.

Where can people find you and your books and your podcasts online?

Clay: You can find everything about Rain Shadows at RainShadowStories.com. That is RainShadowStories.com. That will have the Beneath the Rain Shadow podcast and it will have all the info on that book.

I have a Substack: Clay Vermulm Fiction Horror. There you can join my newsletter and that will also get Fermented Fiction delivered right to your inbox, as well as a monthly letter from me with all the writing updates from Clay Vermulm Fiction and Beneath the Rain Shadows books.

Fermented Fiction is a weekly show, so we go live usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays on YouTube, and we're just Fermented Fiction on there. We're easy to find.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Clay. That was great.

Clay: Thank you. It was a true joy to be on this show. I've been listening a long time and thank you so much for taking a punt on me here.

The post Writing Short Stories, Publishing Collaboration, And Podcasting, With Clay Vermulm first appeared on The Creative Penn.