Turn the Page Podcast: Episode 4: Read With Pride & Vampire Urban Fantasy with Josie Jaffrey26/5/2024 
Join host Kay for episode four of Turn the Page: The Indie Book Podcast as she looks ahead to Pride Month, takes a bookshop crawl through Manchester, chats with indie author, Josie Jaffrey, about her paranormal vampire series, and spotlights a new indie book of the month.
If you love queer books and vampires, this is the episode for you! Hit play, turn the page, and find your next favourite indie read! Listen Here:
Show Notes:
Here are the links included in this episode.
About Josie:
Josie is a fantasy and historical fiction author who writes about lost worlds, dystopian societies and paranormal monsters (vampires are her favourite). She has published multiple novels and short stories. Most of those are set in the Silverse, an apocalyptic world filled with vampires and zombies.
She’s currently working on vampire murder mysteries (the Seekers series) and a YA series centred around Atlantis and the lost civilisations of the Mediterranean (the Deluge series). Researching the latter is the first time she’s used her Classics degree since university. Josie lives in Oxford with her husband and two cats (Sparky and Gussie), who graciously permit human cohabitation in return for regular feeding and cuddles. The resulting cat fluff makes it difficult for Josie to wear black, which is largely why she gave up being a goth. Although the cats are definitely worth it, she still misses her old wardrobe. Read the Transcript:
Kay M. Weston: Welcome to episode four of Turn the Page: The Indie Book Podcast. If you missed my interview with Kristina Carmela, founder of the Indieverse Book Awards last month, you're welcome to go and check that out. It's such a great, reader-driven award with 150 indie books for you to read.
Turn the Page is available wherever you listen to your podcasts and also YouTube. Just hit subscribe to never miss an episode. May here in the UK has flown by in a weird mix of about one lovely and sunny week, and then just about as much rain as you could possibly fit into a single month. So, in today's episode, I'm looking ahead to pride month, which starts this weekend. I read queer books by queer authors all year round, but pride month is just really fun and inclusive, and so I wanted to help you find some, hopefully new to you indie authors and books ready for next month's pride reading. I am doing another big bingo for pride also, like the one I did for #IndieApril. So, if you follow me on Instagram @myendlessshelf, do look out for that and feel free to join in. Coming up, I'll also be sharing some of the books I've been reading over the past month, sadly not as many as I'd hoped, sharing a new queer indie book podcast I'm loving listening to, and announcing this month's spotlighted indie book. I'll also be chatting with Josie Jaffrey, an indie author who writes books about vampires, zombies and lost civilizations. Stay tuned because Josie has a very special offer for Turn the Page listeners. Let's kick things off with the part of the show where I try to add more indie books to your towering TBR's by sharing what I've been reading since the last episode. I started this month with A Game of Hearts and Heists by Ruby Roe. This book was a lot of fun. It's advertised as a steamy lesbian romance, but I had no idea just how steamy this book is. If I could sum up this book really quickly, I'd say it's like Six of Crows, but everyone is a lesbian and they're all super horny all the time. The book begins with two sisters. One is an assassin, because what romantasy book would be complete without one? The other is a deal maker and can pretty much procure whatever someone needs. The eldest sister Scarlet, the assassin, is one of the two main characters in this story. The other is Quinn, Scarlet's nemesis, who everyone knows as, The Poisoner. Scarlet hates Quinn because she's stealing all of her work. She also fancies her quite a lot, which presents something of a problem when the queen tasks them with a joint mission. Together with her mortal enemy/lover and her sister, Scarlet must put together a team to pull off a dangerous heist and help restore their family name. This book was a lot of fun. It packed a lot of heat and spice with fun characters, a really tense plot and a really intriguing magic system. There are specifically engineer magicians, I think, who kind of create combustion engines and stuff. It's really cool. There are also rune mages and all sorts of weird, cool magic stuff. There are three books in this series, which each follow a different couple, I think. So, I'm looking forward to the next one, which centres on Scarlet's sister. Then the next book I picked up this month was really, really short. I can't remember if it was a novella or a short story, but it was, On Demon Wrangling and Interpersonal Relationships Between Weary Immortals by Rebecca Crunden. I honestly loved the title and really enjoyed what turned out to be a cozy and sweet f/f romance. Despite being so short, I really enjoyed the characters and the plot, which held just enough tension to keep me going, but wrapped up really well so that I didn't feel disappointed by the ending. Sadly, that was it though for me this month. I've been busy writing and working, so I didn't get around to reading much else, but do you let me know what indie books you've been reading lately by writing to me at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you. Aside from reading this month, I did take a really fun trip to Manchester with my partner a couple of weeks ago, and we did a bit of a bookshop crawl while we were there. I don't get to Manchester very often, but I'm always astounded by the sheer number of bookshops. Though I won't lie, Hay-on-Wye is on my bucket list for this year, because I keep seeing and hearing about it, and I just desperately want to visit. In Manchester though, we stopped first at Deansgate Waterstones, which is just massive. I think it claims to be the biggest bookshop in the north of England, which is pretty cool, if that's true. I then stumbled across a really tiny bookshop that I can't even remember the name of. I don't know where Manchester it was, we were pretty lost at that point. All I remember is being distracted by this giant door across the street, because I have a thing for weird, unusual doors, and then turning around and seeing a sign for a bookshop. So, naturally I followed. Like most book lovers, I'm easily lured by the promise of books. After that, we stopped at a little second-hand bookstore outside before finishing our day at Queer Lit, which is one of my absolute favourite bookshops. I visited a couple of times back when the shop was quite small and then a year or so ago, they moved to a huge premises and opened a cafe as well. It's taken me a while, but I was really excited to get back there, and the new shop is just amazing. The whole place just has a really great vibe, and everyone is so lovely and welcoming. The book selection too is huge. I think the website says it's the largest LGBTQ+ bookstore in Europe, which is pretty amazing. It really is jam packed with queer books and well-worth visit if you're looking for inclusive, diverse books that span every genre, including a really great selection of kids' books as well. My only gripe with all of the indie bookshops that I visit, actually, including the two that I'm lucky enough to have in my hometown, is that they don't stock many indie books, if any at all, and when you think about just how many amazing indie books there are, particularly in the LGBTQ sphere, it feels like a pretty big waste not to include them in the shops. So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, what I really want to do today is highlight some of mine, and your, favourite queer indie books. To help me do this, I put a post out on socials to ask for your favourite recommendations. I did get a few more responses than I expected, and they were all queer books, but sadly only one of them was indie, and that was books by Ruby Roe, who I already chatted about earlier. So, I'm kind of disappointed in that, but also more determined than ever to try to encourage you to read more queer indie books over the next month. So first up, I'm going to mention one of my favourite indie authors for slow burn romance. That's Anyta Sunday. Anyta writes really funny and sweet romance. In particular, if you're new to her work, I'd recommend you start with the Signs of Love series, which is a series of standalones, each focusing on a different couple with opposing star signs. So, it'll be like, I think the first one is Aries and Libra, and then there'll be Capricorn and Gemini, and things like that. The series does have cameos from some of the other couples too, which is always fun. Honestly, I've read a lot of Anyta's books, and have yet to find one I didn't enjoy. If you're an Austen fan, she also has a series of queer Austen retellings as well. If you've been listening to the past few episodes of this podcast, you'll have heard me mention some other queer indie books, that I'd highly recommend, like Kit & Basie by Tess Carletta and The Tenfold Tenants by E.V. Belknap. These were two of my favourite books last month, and you can go back and listen to episode three if you'd like to hear my full thoughts on those. If you love books with big laughs, Ghost of Lies and A Villain for Christmas by Alice Winters, are two m/m romcoms that I really enjoyed. I think I listened to the audiobooks of both and really liked the narrator, and I know that with A Villain for Christmas, specifically, I laughed so hard at the shenanigans and the inner monologue of the main character. It's really silly and a little OTT, but a lot of fun. Fantasy next, and this one feels like a bit of a cheat because the author now has many of their books being republished by a traditional publisher, but they did start out indie, and as far as I'm aware, the books that I want to talk about specifically are still indie. I am talking about TJ Klune here, probably most well-known now for The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door, though I first discovered him through the Tales of Verania series, which is a really outrageous, tongue-in-cheek, satirical take on the chosen one trope. The series stars a really bizarre, lovable range of characters from the ridiculously powerful, clueless and lovable hero, Sam, and his Knight in shining armour, Ryan, to Sam's best friends, Gary, the hornless unicorn and Tiggy, the adorable, broom-obsessed half giant. Throw in some truth corn, a not-so terrifying dragon and an endless number of fun and silly characters who, to Ryan's annoyance, all seem to fancy Sam, The Lightning Struck Heart, book one of the Tales of Verania series, is a laugh out loud introduction to a series that is packed with humour and a surprising amount of heart. It's a really great fantasy series. If you don't take things too seriously and just roll with it, it's a lot of fun. So, these are just a few of my top indie LGBTQ+ recommendations. I also want to recommend a really great new podcast that I've been listening to and enjoying. The Right Here, Write Queer podcast started in April, and they already have 10 episodes, so they are kicking my ass with their weekly releases compared to my monthly ones. It's a lot of fun. The podcast is basically co-hosted by a whole bunch of indie authors who write queer and cozy books, where they chat about books, writing and indie publishing. So far, I've really enjoyed the cozy, magical realism episode with Tess Carletta, the author of Kit & Basie. It was great to hear more about her creative process behind that book, and I'm currently listening to the historical fantasy episode with Sebastian Northwell. They've just also released a really interesting panel episode on, what is cozy fantasy, that I'm looking forward to. It's a really great podcast, and so I'd highly recommend that. I will link to it on Spotify this month under the "more like this section", so you can find it there and I'll add a link to the show notes. I'll also be reading or at least trying to read some more queer indie books throughout June. If you want to stay updated with what I'm reading and join me in a game of pride book bingo, you'll find all of that on Instagram @myendlessshelf. Then I'll be back here on June 27th with my pride month reading wrap-up. Do you also let me know your recommendations either via Instagram, or you can write to me at [email protected]. Next up, I'm chatting with Josie Jaffrey about her vampire detective series and asking her lots of questions, including how to write a great bisexual love triangle, why are chaotic mean characters the most relatable, and what's the best and worst thing about being an indie author. Josie is a fantasy and historical fiction author who writes about lost worlds, dystopian societies, and paranormal monsters, vampires are her favourite. She has published multiple novels and short stories. Most of these are sat in the Silverse, an apocalyptic world filled with vampires and zombies. So, hi, Josie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for coming to chat with us today. Could you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and the books that you write? Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, sure. So, I'm an indie author. I mostly write fantasy. I like stories about lost worlds and paranormal creatures, mostly vampires and zombies, but vampires are probably my favourite. I've got eleven novels out at the moment and a bunch of short stories, and I also am the co-editor of a quarterly indie fantasy magazine called Indie Bites where we try and publish and promote other indie authors. So, that's kind of who I am in a nutshell. Kay M. Weston: That's brilliant. I mean, I love vampires too. They're my favourites as well. Josie Jaffrey: I just like the dynamics. They're fun, aren't they? Kay M. Weston: Yeah, and you can kind of do anything with them and it's just so much fun. Which is great because today we're going to talk about your Seekers series, which is all about vampires, because it's May and the first book in the series is May Day, so that all fits really nicely. So, could you tell us a little bit about the Seekers series without giving away too many spoilers? What is it about and what happens? Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, so it's a sort of urban fantasy. It's set in Oxford, where I live, and the setup is that you've got vampires living amongst humans, and most humans don't know about them, and the chap who is the kingpin of the vampires is trying to keep everything hush hush so that humans don't find out about vampires. So, he has a collection of people who are kind of like a police force, but they're not quite as moral, which is saying something, whose job is to keep the other vampires in line and make sure that they don't do such terrible things that humans find out about them, because the idea is that that would make the vampire's lives a little bit harder because they wouldn't be able to get away with their clandestine activities anymore. It's all about morally grey characters and it gets a bit political. It's kind of about power and how people can use power to get what they want and then cover things up afterwards. Kay M Weston: That's amazing. May Day is one of my favourites, I mean when we did the first episode of the podcast it was my spotlighted book of the month, because it's so much fun. In particular I absolutely love your protagonist Jack Valentine who really made me fall in love with May Day. She's such a chaotic mess, and I just love her so much. What inspired you to create, first of all, obviously she's a vampire detective, as the protagonist, which is sort of unusual anyway, but also a character that isn't necessarily, I don't know, she doesn't fit into a box, does she? She's so unique. So, how did you come up with Jack's character and decide to put her at the centre of May Day? Josie Jaffrey: I would love to be able to tell you that there was some kind of involved process, but actually she just kind of popped into my head, almost fully formed. I think the reality is that she's kind of a collection of all of the worst voices in my head. She's very sarcastic. She can be very unpleasant. She's not very charitable to other people. She's very judgmental. She makes terrible, terrible choices because she's so proud that she won't ever admit any kind of vulnerability. I think that's why I like her so much, because she does all of these awful things and then ends up somehow being, for me at least, quite relatable. Probably because I think she is supposed to be the worst bits of all of us, and yet she's always coming from a good place. She's trying to do the right thing, but she lets her feelings get in the way of herself a lot of the time. She doesn't have much of a filter, I would say. Kay M. Weston: So, what was the most difficult part about Jack's character to write? I know you've already said she was so much fun, but was there anything that was particularly difficult? Maybe part of her character or something that happens to her or around her? Josie Jaffrey: Well, the easiest thing is her interactions with other people, so her dialogue is always very easy because it's very kind of snap back, very straightforward, sort of, lizard brain responses to everything. Which makes the parts of the story where I'm writing her in a voice and trying to rationalize what she does a little more complicated and difficult to deal with, because often it's not so much that she has a reason for doing things, it's that she's trying to rationalise the things that she does to herself, to make herself feel alright about them, which isn't to say that she's a monster, but I think she's one of those people who reacts without thinking, and then she has to spend a long time coming to conclusions that the rest of us would reach pretty instantly from an outside perspective. I think a lot of people are like that, actually. I'm like that a lot of the time. I can, you know, hair trigger reacts in a situation and it's only weeks later that you think firstly, oh wait, I behaved really badly there, I should have said that perfect thing in that situation. It's that sort of lack of insight, I think, and trying to get her to come to a place of having that insight, that's quite difficult in the internal monologue. Kay M Weston: Yeah, I'm one of those people who over analyses everything I say. So, she's a very refreshing character because she does just say exactly what's on her mind, so that's a lot of fun. So, in May Day then, what is the actual premise of that story, with it being the first book in the series? Josie Jaffrey: So, the idea is that Jack is one of this team of vampire detectives who's working in Oxford, and the thing that they spend most of their time doing is investigating murders that are committed against humans by vampires, because that's sort of the crunchy point where it is most likely that they'll come into conflict with the human authorities and that someone will work out that someone's going around biting people and killing them, and that perhaps there's something supernatural going on here. So, that's her job, and she works in a close-knit team who are lots of fun, and constantly rolling their eyes at her. And at the beginning of this book, there is one of these murders that's committed by, I don't call them vampires, I call them silver. They're called the silver in my world. A murder committed by silver that has a human victim and she then, along with her team, has to investigate what has happened and who has committed this murder so that they can be dealt with by the silver authorities. During the process ,she picks up on lots of conspiracy theories that are going on in the background in the world of the silver, and uncovers lots of secrets that she shouldn't uncover, and irritates lots of people that she shouldn't be irritating, and importantly, best bit of the story, in my view, comes into conflict with her old nemesis, Killian Drake, who's the Baron of Oxford. He's in charge of all of the silver who live in Oxford, and he's in charge of the detective team that Jack is part of, which are called the Seekers, which is why it's called the Seekers series. In order to get information on this murder, she needs to get into a particular party, and she doesn't have access to it because she's just a grunt, and Killian Drake does because he's a very eligible bachelor and high up in the political hierarchy of the silver, so she has to do a little fake dating scenario with him in order to get access to the people she needs to talk to. He's on one side of the love triangle that happens in this book and the other is a very cheerful and lovely silver doctor who she comes into contact with because she's working with pathology on the postmortem for the human victim. So, that's tons of fun. Kay M. Weston: It's absolutely brilliant. I absolutely love every time they clash, every time Killian and Jack clash, their banter is just brilliant. I also love the love triangle as well. That's what made me read the book in the first place. I think I saw your Twitter post and it was like, bi love triangle with vampires. I was like, I'm reading that. Kay M. Weston: So, just jumping back to that opening scene you mentioned, I thought it was a great way to set up the book. Now, obviously the book itself is set in Oxford, but like a different universe kind of Oxford, and you mentioned earlier that you live in Oxford. So, does that provide a lot of inspiration for you then, obviously, with locations and maybe experiences in Oxford that have influenced your writing? Josie Jaffrey: I mean, it certainly makes all of the location stuff much easier. When I write, there's another series that's set in this world. There are three series actually so far in this world, and one of them is called the Sovereign Series, and that's set 500 years into the future, and it’s sort of Eastern Europe. That was a researching nightmare, and I spent an awful lot of time on Google Earth trying to work out what was going on, because these are all places that I'm trying to map across the continent, and I don't know where I am. But, obviously this series, much easier to write because I know every back street of Oxford. I've been living here for 20 years now, so everything's very, very familiar. The lovely thing about Oxford, one of the things I like most about living here is that it's such a melting pot, there's so much going on. It's the classic sort of town and gown thing because we've got two universities here, the one everyone's heard of, and one that used to be a polytechnic, so there is a huge student and academic population and it's all sort of, you know, dreaming spies, and then on the other side you've got the people who live here, whose families have been living here for centuries, who serve the university, who have nothing to do with the university, and we also have one of the most deprived estates in the country that's literally outside the ring road that goes around Oxford, and you know, we're full of all sorts of different cultures, different nationalities, different religions. There's such a huge amount going on in this city that it makes it a really fun place to set anything, really. I think in terms of May Day in particular, it was very much inspired by a student tradition that's very close to my heart, even though it's deeply stupid. That on May Day, 1st of May, the night before, the students in, usually Oxford University, but it's basically all the young people around Oxford. They stay up drinking all night on the 30th of April and all of the local pubs stay open overnight in order to keep going and keep fuelling them, and in particular, the college bars. Then at six o'clock in the morning, this is the actual tradition bit, six o'clock in the morning, the boys who go to Magdalen Boys School, they troop up Magdalen Tower, which is the tower of Magdalen College, and that's the picture on the front of the cover of the book, and the choir sings, they sing hymns in the morning, and it's a very ethereal experience, that early in the morning, the way that their song kind of spreads out across the city. Where I live, even though I'm a good mile away from the tower, if I open my window on May morning, I can hear the singing. It's mad. But then when the kids have done their singing, the students who at this point are drunk and just filling the roads because they close the roads, they're filling the road of Magdalen Bridge. Traditionally, they then jump off Magdalen Bridge into the river underneath, which at this time of year is only maybe a foot or two deep, and there are serious injuries. A lot of my mates did it when I was at university, back in 2005/ 2006. I used to work at a nightclub, a local nightclub, and a load of my mates who I worked with at the nightclub decided to jump off the bridge and one of them broke his leg, and the other one, it's ridiculous, the other one landed on top of him and broke his ribs. Since then, they've put hoardings up along the sides of the bridges to stop the kids from jumping off. They try. I think the police are pretty good at stopping them from doing it these days. But yeah, that was the inspiration for the opening scene of May Day and it's a proud tradition here in Oxford that you're not allowed to sleep on the 30th of April; you just have to drink. Kay M. Weston: Vampire's Night. The singing bit sounded lovely and then the jumping in the river bit was terrifying. Josie Jaffrey: You know what though, when we were students, it was the other way around. We thought the drinking and the jumping in the river bit was great and we didn't think much of the singing at all. Because that's how it is isn't it, you don't appreciate these things until you get a bit older? Kay M. Weston: Very true. So, you mentioned as well earlier that May Day has the bisexual love triangle, which is really well done. How did you approach that love triangle dynamic with the enemies to lover’s trope as well to keep it fresh and original? Because obviously, love triangles have been done a lot. Sometimes they aren't done very well. I mean, I thought May Day was brilliant. The love triangle in particular I thought was really good. So, how did you approach that to sort of get it right, if that makes sense? Josie Jaffrey: I think I'm going to have to confess to having very little method. I'm not sure that it is fresh and original. I'm really aware of the legacy of all of the romance authors that I've read before, who's writing I love, and I love enemies to lovers. I love, love triangles. I love fake dating, they're my top three tropes, I think. So, I decided to shove them all in one book and write them the way that I wanted to have them. I think the thing that I like about the enemies to lover’s thing in this love triangle is how one sided it is. Because Jack's such a ridiculous, chaotic character, she has this vendetta, she's set against Killian Drake, she thinks he's the worst thing in the world, and, I mean, he's not great. He's not the most moral person in the world, but he doesn't hate her the way that she hates him, and I really enjoy that dynamic. I also wanted a bisexual love triangle because I think that representation is important for me personally, and for a lot of people who feel like maybe they're kind of token and exploited a little bit in terms of their sexuality for stories that have the titillation without having the relationships, and I'm very much into relationships and how things fit together. Kay M. Weston: I mean, that definitely came across. Like I said, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was brilliant. So, going back to the world that May Day is set in, the Silverse, you describe it as an apocalyptic world filled with vampires and zombies. So, can you tell us what your favourite aspect of world building is, and is there a particular detail within the Silverse that you're really proud of creating? Josie Jaffrey: I don't know. I think that the main thing in the world building for the Silverse is the power dynamics. That's the thing that has always presented a challenge and that's always been the main aspect, because I entered into the first book, which was A Bargain in Silver, with the idea of having vampires take over during a zombie apocalypse, because I thought the way that vampires are so very much overpowered in relationship to human beings, I thought there would be no other real option. I had read a lot of books where the vampires live in the shadows for a long time and that is indeed what happens in this world too, but I wanted to examine that moment where everything changes, and also get deep into the sort of origin stories of how they came to exist in the first place and how their magic systems work in terms of where they get their supernatural abilities and how that all fits in and folds into the power dynamics to make it really crunchy and unpleasant. Particularly, in the series that I have and there are a couple of the series, the Solis Invicti series and the Sovereign series, where the relationships are between silver and humans, and it gets a bit uncomfortable sometimes, and I like exploring that. It's not really so much about world building as it is about relationships. I think the world building, for me, sets up the relationship dynamics I want to explore, and it's not so much about exploring how things are built and how things look, and where everything is arranged, for me, as it is working out the hierarchy and how I can feed that into power dynamics that exist and make them very messy. Kay M. Weston: That's great. So, how many books are there in the Seekers series right now? Josie Jaffrey: So, the one that I'm writing at the moment is going to be book four, and I'm expecting there to be six in total. So, it's two arcs of three, so the first three books form one arc, and then the next three books are going to be another arc. Kay M. Weston: Do they all follow Jack, or do we switch? Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, yeah. They're all Jack. Kay M. Weston: As it is May, you have a special offer for our podcast listeners, don't you? Could you tell us a bit more, please? Josie Jaffrey: I do, yes. So, May Day is going to be free to download on Amazon from Monday, the 27th of May to Thursday, the 30th of May. So, you can grab a copy there for your Kindle, or whatever reader you read on for free for those four days. Kay M. Weston: That's so great, and thank you so much for doing that for us. That's absolutely brilliant. So yeah, if anybody hasn't read May Day yet, go and get it. It will be available for the next four days. So, just shifting tracks just for a moment, I had a good read of your bio and saw that you mentioned your cats Sparky and Gussie and that they play a big role in your life. Have they ever inspired any characters or scenes in your books? If not, do you think they could come along in future stories? Josie Jaffrey: I don't know. I think the relationship that you have with your cats is kind of like the relationship you have with your kids, isn't it? It's so personal. So, they haven't really made an appearance. The only cat I think I've got in any of my books is that there's a kitten in the Solis Invicti series. But I think they're kind of representative of my approach to people in general, you know, because I think of my cats as people. They have their distinct personalities. Sparky is a thug and goes around hitting stuff, and Gussie is completely neurotic and needs an awful lot of bolstering. So, you know, I think you end up with that relationship dynamic in quite a lot of places. You've, you've got the one who's rushing in and the one who's kind of holding back a little bit and going, oh, is it safe? I don't know. So yeah, I mean, I think it's always instructive to watch people together, even if they're feline people, and then feed that into stories. Kay M. Weston: I love that. I love that they may have subconsciously influenced the relationships in your stories. That's great. Another fun question. If you could invite any three of your characters to a dinner party, who would you choose and why, but also, what dish would you serve them? Josie Jaffrey: That's a really difficult question, because the problem is they're really tricky. Most of the characters in my books are kind of scary and fascinating from afar, but not people you'd really want to meet in person. I mean, I'd extend that to the love interests. I'd extend that to Jack Valentine. I mean, I would not want her in my house. She would make a mess. We would argue constantly. I would probably have to call the police. You think of the main characters, the chap who's involved, he's sort of the top hierarchical guy for the silver, who's called the Primus. He's kind of like a king/God/ruler. He's kind of terrifying and intimidating and someone that you feel would pull the wings off of fly for fun. There's a lot of that, you know, because these are not humans, they're people who used to be humans, but some of them millennia ago, and have kind of become very inhuman, and I explore that a lot. I think the only person I probably want to come to a dinner party would be Cam, who's everyone's favourite cinnamon roll, who appears in all of my books in The Silverse, who's Jack's best friend, who ends up being Emi's best friend in the Solis Invicti series, and that follows through to The Sovereign series. He's just brilliant, he's so lovely, and I obviously have to make him my famous cinnamon rolls because he's a cinnamon roll. Kay M. Weston: I love that answer. So, going back to, you mentioned earlier, obviously you are an indie author, otherwise you wouldn't be here on our indie book podcast. So, can you tell us what do you find most challenging about being an indie author, but also what do you find most rewarding and/ or enjoyable? Josie Jaffrey: I think the hardest thing is definitely advertising. I hate advertising. It's very difficult to get any traction as an indie author if you don't do advertising. You know, the sort of Facebook ads, Amazon ads, all of that stuff. And you get out what you put in. So generally, unless you're lucky enough to hit a wave on social media somewhere, which is becoming increasingly hard to do, you basically don't make sales unless you pay for advertising, and work on making sure that you've got the right advertising happening. But because I don't like it, I don't do it, because that's my personality. I am obtuse in that way that Jack is. I know I would do better if I did more advertising, but I don't want to, so I'm not going to. Kay M. Weston: That's one of the beauties about being indie though, you don't have to. I find it so hard to talk about myself and the things that I create that I struggle with advertising as well. So, it's one of those things you just push out the way if you don't like it. Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, I mean, this is the thing, as you say, I get to do the things that I do like. I like marketing. I like doing things like commissioning character designs, and then getting them printed up into things. I like doing character quizzes. I like making swag and then sending it out in advanced review copy packs, and having my little team of reviewers who are amazing, and building that sort of community. I really enjoy that. And I love going to events. In person events are brilliant. I love doing panel speaking. I love having a stall. It fits into my sort of childish childhood shopkeeper fantasy, you know, I get to sit and talk to people about books and connect with other people who write and read, and those are the best bits. I like the community bits; I like chatting to people. Kay M. Weston: Yeah, that's really nice. You have an event coming up actually, don't you? Josie Jaffrey: I do, I've got two actually. So, I've got one in Oxford on the 6th of July at the Oxford Festival of the Arts, which is at Magdalen College School, which incidentally is right across from Magdalen College, which is the cover of May Day. So, the location can be better, and then I'm going to Bristol Con, Bristol's Fantasy Convention on the 26th and 27th of October, and I'll have my little stand at both of those. Kay M. Weston: That sounds really fun. I put a last-minute call out on Instagram for questions and Sophie got in touch and had a great one. She asked, what did you find most challenging about publishing your very first book and did that experience change the way that you write? Josie Jaffrey: I think I went into my first book the way that I think a lot of people do. I say my first book, it was about my fourth book, because I had started so many over the previous decade and I just never finished them. So, when I say my first book, I mean like the first book that I finished and published. I initially tried to find an agent for it. We're talking sort of 2014 here when self-publishing wasn't as sort of widely accepted a thing as it is now. But it was also, I think, easier to break out into self-publishing around that time and a little earlier. So, all of the agents were saying no one wanted vampires. Great, like the book, thanks, but vampires are over, vampires are dead, no one wants them. Kay M. Weston: How wrong were they! Josie Jaffrey: Well, exactly, vampires are always popular, certainly with me. So, honestly, I just sort of put it up. I was working full time back then, and I didn't expect to make any money from it. I mostly wrote it for my mates, a little close group of friends of mine, we all like paranormal romance. So, I thought I'd just write something for fun. So, I don't think I ever really intended to be an indie author at that stage, and then I carried on doing books when I was still working for that first series, the Solis Invicti series was all written while I was working full time and wasn't really taking it seriously. It wasn't until I wrote the Sovereign series, in sort of 2018, that I tried to go about it in a kind of systematic way and approach it in a business-like manner, which is when I discovered that I dislike advertising and then everything sort of, you know, becomes less appealing. So, I think, you know, the hardest thing is always the reality that you need to advertise, and the nice thing recently has been, as you say, coming to that realisation that I can do what I like, and it doesn't matter. You know, there are people out there who make pots and pots of money from publishing a book every month, every three months and doing all sorts of advertising strategies, but I don't have the money to throw around tons on advertising. I don't want to put my time in it, and I can just enjoy doing what I'm doing as a process and reaching a small number of readers who hopefully enjoy reading what I like writing. That's good enough. Kay M. Weston: Yep, well your reviews suggest that they do. So, can you recommend a couple of indie books that you've read and loved that you think our listeners might enjoy? Josie Jaffrey: I've been trying to read more and more indie recently and I keep being surprised, I don't know why, by the high quality that is coming from indie authors these days. A couple of my recent absolute favourite books have been indie books, and it's sometimes a little harder to find them but it's so worth the effort. Particular favourites recently, I read These Violent Nights by Rebecca Crunden, who's an Irish author, and it's a sort of fantasy, sci-fi, romance, but it's over 600 pages long. It is this massive, epic work that kind of has two main relationships that it follows through it, but it sort of crosses worlds and time. It's just really incredible, it completely blew my mind. So, that one for sure. Kay M. Weston: Yeah, I love her. I read a shorter one that she did. I've forgotten what it's called now. Like interpersonal relationships between demons and something. I can't remember, but it's really, really good, but that was a shorter one. Josie Jaffrey: I love her writing. She's written a couple of shorts for Indie Bites, the magazine I edit, and I just love her writing. She writes relationships so well. She manages really to get to the heart of how people interact with each other in a way that feels so natural. I love her dialogue. It's just brill. Love her. The other one I read recently that I really enjoyed was Arrival Most Vile by R. K. Ashwick. Have you read that one? Kay M. Weston: No, I've not heard of that one. Josie Jaffrey: Oh, it's great. It's a guy who runs a potion shop. A rival potion shop person comes and tries to set up in what he considers his town. It's a MM romance and it's quite cozy and again, really nicely observed relationships and, and wonderful. The other person I recommend is A. D. Hart, who's my co-editor at Indie Bites, and I love everything she writes. She writes fluffy fairy tale romances. I think almost all are published in Indie Bites and also in some anthologies from McFarlane Lantern. She hasn't got any novels out yet, but I am promised that there are some coming soon, and I love her stuff. I mean, it's funny how much nice, fluffy romance I like to read because the stuff that I write is not fluffy. Romantic, maybe, but not fluffy. I guess it's escapist. I don't know. Kay M. Weston: I do exactly the same. I read so much cozy fantasy, but when I write, it's always paranormal. I'm definitely going to look those up. They all sound great, especially the potion shop, that's going on my list. Josie Jaffrey: It's amazing, you'll love it. It's so good. I think they've got others as well, but that's the only one I've read so far. Kay M. Weston: So, you've mentioned Indie Bites a few times now, but we haven't really covered it. So, can you tell us a little bit more about what Indie Bites is and what you do to support and promote your fellow indie authors through that? Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, sure. So, Indie Bites is a quarterly fantasy magazine that is published online and available to read for free online. It's free to everyone, and then you can get print copies at cost from Amazon. So, we don't make any money from publishing it. I publish it through the, the sort of publishing house that I set up to publish my books, which is called Silver Sun Books. It was a pandemic project, really. I was writing short stories that didn't have a home to go to other than, you know, me self-publishing them, and I thought that we might be able to tap into the principles of indie collaborative marketing, you know, like people do newsletter swaps and stuff. I thought that if we did a publication where we all banded together and promoted it out to our individual audiences, then we might be able to find readers amongst our colleagues, readers that enjoyed the same stuff that we were writing and thereby sort of grow a community, increase people's readership. I thought that would just be, you know, kind of a nice communal thing to do in the pandemic and it sort of spun out from there, really. It's sort of changed a bit now because, although we conceived of it originally as being more of a collaborative thing, the submissions that we get, I think they come quite widely now, we get worldwide submissions, and we just end up picking the ones that we like, which sometimes is quite a lot. We have an issue coming out, I think it'll probably be out by the time this podcast comes out. It's out next Friday. When's this podcast out? Kay M. Weston: 27th of May. So, this podcast will be out the Monday after. Josie Jaffrey: Right, yes, okay. So, it is out now, the latest issue, in which we have 11 stories, which is the biggest issue we've had. It's basically the size of the novel. We have an incredible number of amazing stories this time around. We had so many submissions that we couldn't really pick. Generally, we try to keep it down to about six or seven stories. We just got so many amazing things that we couldn't pick between them. So, they're all fantasy and we pick a couple of themes each quarter and then we use those as prompts that authors can go off and write stories that fit or, you know, if they've got something already kicking about, they can submit that. It doesn't matter if it's previously published, as long as it's not published at the time that we publish it. So, this time around, it's Wishes and Wizards. So, that's our latest issue coming up. We have submissions open at the moment for Forests and Familiars, and Spirits and Spellcasters, which will be our next two issues along. I think the thing that people like about writing for us is not only the prompts, which I think people find, you know, authors like a little nudge. Kay M. Weston: Yeah, I love a good prompt. Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, but also, we have a very short exclusivity period, so we only ask for three months. Most publications ask for a year, but we just ask for three months. We do, only because we don't really have any income as a publication, so we only pay an honorarium of £5 for each piece, but we also have a Ko-Fi account, and we take donations and split them amongst the authors who contribute to the issue. So, if you want to support our authors, then you can do that there, and if you want to read the issues, which are all available for free, and there are 14 of them now. So, that's, I don't know, maybe about 140 stories, at least 100 stories. They're great. You can go to the website at www. silversunbooks.com and all of them are there available to download. Kay M. Weston: Is the link to the Ko-Fi on there as well to support? Josie Jaffrey: It is, yeah. Kay M. Weston: Brilliant, okay. That's amazing. I mean, that's such a great thing that it started off obviously as a pandemic project and now it's grown into this really big thing with tons of stories in. I'm going to catch up on all of those because truthfully, until I went onto your bio, I'd heard of Indie Bites in passing, but hadn't actually looked at it myself. So now I'm going to go and have a look and read as much as I can. Josie Jaffrey: I hope you enjoy it. It's tons of fun. I have a story, I think, in every issue. We don't get paid though. The editors don't get the honorarium. We don't get the donations. So, we try and keep it nice and fair. We don't want to have any kind of implication that there's any kind of bias going on. We're chucking our stories in. We only do it for free, really. Adie Hart, my co-editor, her stories are in there, they're so good, but there are also some really incredible indie writers that you'll never have heard of. A lot of them haven't even got books out yet, so this is their first sort of, as they're in the process of getting their first books out, they're publishing short stories through us. The level of talent is incredible. But there'll be people that you will have heard of as well, people like Deanne Bryn, Arden Powell, all sorts from all around the world. it's a great fun thing to do. I think that the thing is that most people when they see these magazines come up on various social media things they assume they'll have to pay for them, but you don't, it's free. Just download and read. Kay M. Weston: That's great. I mean it sounds like a really amazing pool of just indie talent. So, yeah, that sounds really awesome. Josie Jaffrey: And you know, you learn who's out there, who's writing what. You read a short story and maybe you think, yeah, this person's writing the kind of stuff I like and then you can go and check out the rest of the stuff that they've already published, and that's the idea. It's an easy way to have little bite sized bits of lots of indie authors work before you commit to a whole novel, which is where the name comes from, of course, Indie Bites. Kay M. Weston: That's great. I love the name. So, could you tell us where listeners can find out more about you and your books as well? Josie Jaffrey: So, the best place probably is my website. I've got all sorts up there. I've got a little character quiz. I've got all the information about my books. I've got a full reading order, if you're someone who likes to read chronologically. So, that's www.josiejaffrey.com. There's also a free story that you can download from the website if you join the Josie Jaffrey Readers Club, which is basically my mailing list. I don't bother people too often. It's usually only about once every three months, and usually sort of free short stories, all of that stuff. So, if you want to be the first to hear when my new stuff is out, when I've got new novels out, which is happening with increasing frequency at the moment, then you can sign up for my list on my website. Kay M. Weston: That's brilliant. I mean, thank you so much, Josie. I will have every link that we've talked about, to Indie Bites to Josie's website. Everything will be included in the show notes. But thank you so much for coming and talking to me. It's been absolutely amazing and really interesting to find out all about your writing process and your books and everything that you've got going on. Josie Jaffrey: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's weird. It's been a funny kind of time because I've been coming out of having my first child, and I didn't do a great deal while I was pregnant, and I didn't do a great deal in the first year of his life, but suddenly, I don't know, everything's going. But it's been great, thank you so much for having me, it's been lovely to chat. Kay M. Weston: Yes, so yeah, enjoy the rest of your weekend, whatever you're up to. Hopefully the sun will continue shining. Josie Jaffrey: Super, lovely, thank you so much, enjoy the rest of your weekend. Kay M. Weston: And you, I'll speak to you soon, bye. Since chatting with Josie, I have checked out Indie Bites, and I'm loving how many amazing things our indie author guests are doing to help their fellow authors. It really is clear to me that the indie author community is generally so supportive and friendly. But anyway, back to Indie Bites, the latest issue just dropped a couple of days ago, and if you enjoy bite-sized fantasy fiction, this issue is all about wishes and wizards. So, I really encourage you to go and check that out. As Josie said, it's all completely free to read, but do feel free to donate if you can. It's definitely worth it. And now drum roll, please. It's time for my indie book pick of the month. This is where I feature a fantastic indie book that I have read and loved, and I believe it deserves a place on your TBR. This week I'm talking about Don't Wake the Dead by C.C. Wood. It's a paranormal cozy mystery, and the first book in The Wraith Files series. If you enjoyed shows like Ghost Whisperer, you'll probably enjoy this book about a woman who can see and communicate with ghosts. Zoe, the MC of this book, can also raise the dead, which is a pretty fun spin, and when combined with her ghost best friend and being roped into a job on a paranormal web show, there are lots of shenanigans to be had. Things then take a turn for the mysterious when Zoe stumbles across a spirit who seems convinced that someone murdered him. Together with new friends, Zoe begins to investigate the incident, but soon finds herself in danger as the killer desperately tries to keep their secrets buried. I won't read the whole blurb as it's a bit lengthy, but I do love the last line, which reads, 'sometimes it's best not to wake the dead, unless you plan to join them'. Overall, this was a really well-written, enjoyable, cozy mystery that really allows the reader to get to know the characters and have fun along the way. If you're a fan of paranormal mysteries with a smidge of clean romance, do you check this one out. And that's it for this month's episode of Turn the Page: The Indie Book Podcast. A huge thank you again to Josie for coming along to chat. The link to Josie's special offer, Indie Bites, and any other links I've mentioned in today's episode will be included in the show notes. If you're on Spotify, I've linked to the Indie Bites podcast and the Right Here, Write Queer podcast, so do feel free to check those out. I'll be back next month with another special guest and will be chatting about indie fantasy books. I will also have an update for you on my fantasy short story collection, which now has a release date. I'm equal parts excited and terrified for that. So, stay tuned and hit subscribe to never miss an episode. If you have any thoughts on the podcast, or you want to shout out an indie book or author that you love, you can reach me on Instagram @myendlessshelf, or write to me at [email protected]. Until then, happy reading and have a wonderful pride month. Keep turning the page.
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