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Clovis (Fiction)

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The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Annie Dike – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm excited today to be talking with Annie Dike. Annie writes raw, relatable fiction based loosely on her life and adventures, and she's written numerous legal treatises as a lawyer. She's written multiple Amazon #1 best-selling sailing books and articles for SAIL Magazine. And she also has a travel blog, HaveWindWillTravel.com.

But Clovis is her debut literary fiction novel. So we're going to be talking a lot about that today. Annie grew up in Clovis, New Mexico. She is an attorney by profession. She works remotely and has spent the last decade cruising the East Coast of the United States and the Eastern Caribbean with her partner, Phillip, on their 46-foot sailboat, which sounds frankly amazing. Welcome, Annie. Great to have you.

Annie:

Thank you. It sounds a little more exotic than it really is, but I like it.

Rhonda:

It's probably a lot of work, I imagine. So um you have written quite a number of nonfiction books on sailing.

Annie:

Right.

Rhonda:

So when did you decide, oh, OK, I think I want to write a novel now.

Annie:

Yeah, to swap over to fiction. Yeah. So the sailing books really grew out of the blog, the Have Wind Will Travel blog. And they're just fun, more self-deprecating, kind of like think me out there not knowing what to do, which line to grab, what thing to do. And they're more fun. They're supposed to put you in the the scene of sailing.

Those did well. I enjoyed those and I promoted those at boat shows and things. And I have written some fiction in the past. I have a women's fiction. It's called A Civil Affair. You may see it like back in my old books. So I've dabbled in it before, but my writing started to improve. Yeah, I was writing more books and things. And I started to have a desire to write about my childhood, like the nostalgia, the feel, the ex—Clovis is a lot about my childhood. That's really the heart of the book.

And so that's where you know, it was funny because the boating, Rhonda, translates to my upbringing. It's kind of interesting, but I was a cowgirl and I grew up following my dad. I'm thinking that, right? know that sounds silly, right? We're waterlocks, right?

Um, but I'll tell you owning a boat and sailing a boat is a lot about maintenance. It's about pliers and screwdrivers and butyl and tape and bilge pumps and all that stuff. Made a lot of sense to me as a cowgirl.

So in my mind, a lot of what I remember from my childhood translates to sailing. It's a lot of fixing things. It's a lot of resourcefulness. It's a lot of grittiness, you know? And so those stories come to mind when I'm on the boat. And so I was very much inspired to gather my childhood up and share it with the world.

Rhonda:

And so um can I ask why you call it Clovis? I mean I know that’s where you grow up but you know, you could have called it anything.

Annie:

No, that's a great question. And I love, I wanted a unique name that wouldn't really, you know, register anything else like mouse or tiger, you know, just, was a unique name, had no meaning to other people primarily. And also for me, it's like a chapter of my life.

So let's say if you lived in London for a time or something and something happened to you there, when you're talking to people, you're gonna like, remember that was in London. And they're like, ooh, it's a chapter for me. It's very significant chapter of my life. So I liked that.

And I like that it's a location because what I've kind of built on, Rhonda, is I'm working on the sequels and their locations too. Like the sequel to Clovis is called Austin. And it's like another part of her life and another chapter. So that's the purpose of that.

Rhonda:

So is this autobiographical fiction? Like, are you really taking your life and then fictionalizing it?

Annie:

In Clovis, very much so. would say the whole beginning of the book until about college, kind of high school college, the main character's name is Callie, very not so disguised version of me, Annie. But for the most part, the beginning of the book, I don't call it a biography or a memoir because I didn't stick with nonfiction. It changes the middle of the book. But everything in the beginning is about, I would say, 92.5 % true. So all of that is real.

Rhonda:

It really drawing to what happen to your childhood.

Annie:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

Um where did you…

Annie:

A lot to pull from.

Rhonda:

Were you writing on the boat?

Annie:

Oh, yeah, very much so. Clovis was written entirely on the boat.

Rhonda:

So how do you do that?

Annie:

Yeah, on passage it's harder when the boat's moving. I have my laptop right here with me that goes everywhere. Um You know, you just find moments of time that you can isolate yourself and down below, I mean, the boat is a beautiful cabin. It's very secluded and we have AC and heat and things like this. So I'm not like, you know, bundled up like a homeless person, which I've done many times out in the winter in the cold.

The boat's very comfortable, but yeah, we travel a lot, you know, so we go port to port. And the cool part, Rhonda, is I'll find myself writing in coffee shops all over the United States. And that's a fantastic way to write a novel. It was written in many, many, many coffee shops too. I love that.

Rhonda:

And were you also working as a lawyer while you were finishing the book?

Annie:

Yes, I work as a lawyer currently. so mostly what I do with my law degree, it's a little bit different because I work remotely. I do a lot of marketing for other law firms. So I can do their marketing well because I am a lawyer. I know the lawyer speak, I know the law. So I know the things to promise and not promise. So it helps to have the law degree to do the marketing.

But the legal work I do for other lawyers, like other lawyers will tap me to write a brief or write a motion. So I'm not really working with the client directly, which is nice for me. It takes me away from the action. So I'm more of an independent contractor doing support on the back end. And I like that. I prefer that.

Rhonda:

So are you working full time when you're trying to write a novel or?

Annie:

Yeah. I say full time. My marketing stuff is it's very much freelance and remote, but it's probably you know, it takes 20-ish hours a week. It's not anything to sneeze at. And the rest of the time I spend writing or I do my blog and all the other things and marketing my book is my main career. I would just fix all the—

Rhonda:

Fixing the bilge pump or whatever.

Annie:

Exactly. In between all that, right? I got like a screwdriver in my teeth and I'm typing, you know?

Rhonda:

Totally.

Annie:

Give me that wrench. I got this.

Rhonda:

What was the biggest challenge of taking a true to life story of your childhood and turning it into a fiction.

Annie:

For me, um the childhood stories, the hardest part was I was going to expose other family members to the truth of what had happened and what was out there. And um I was very worried about my dad at first, because it's an honest portrayal. And my dad will be the first to tell you he's done things in his life he's not super proud of. But my dad and I have a wonderful relationship. He's a main character in the book. He teaches Callie so many lessons about joy and pain and loss and time.

And I talked to my dad, you and I told him, was like, hey, this is in here. And what he told me was if I wrote truthfully, if it was honest, then he didn't worry about it all.

Rhonda:

Really?

Annie:

He's like, it is what it is. And I was very proud and amazed. And he's a lot of the things he's done that he's not proud of. He's reformed and gone to church and he witnesses to people. And so it's actually a part of his story. It's an important part of his story. And I gain a lot of perspective from him. So that was hard exposing people, I will say.

For me telling the truth, wasn't hard because it helps me to get vulnerable and share that. I find people that have gone through it and I connect and it just makes it easier and better. So it wasn't hard for me, but I was worried about the people I was going to reveal and what they'd done.

Rhonda:

Was there anyone other than your father you were concerned about? Did you talk to anyone else?

Annie:

My brother. He's a huge character in the book and I don't want to reveal something because a big arc of the book is part of his story and it's kind of a big reveal. And I was concerned about how I portrayed him initially, and some of the stories and whether that would hit home for him and resonate.

And honestly, the book is so dense for him, Rhonda, that my brother's still reading it. It takes him back to Clovis. Like I said, Clovis is such a word for us, that he has to read it really slow, because he dreams it at night when he reads my book. He goes to Clovis in his dreams. So he's taken his time with it. It's a little tougher for my brother. It's very close to home. It is home.

Rhonda:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's the big challenge of autobiographical fiction, isn't it? It's like you're you are fictionalizing things. Yes. But it but you're also telling the truth about some of the things that have happened. So, it's it's it can be challenging. um Did you experience anything, you know, going from nonfiction to fiction? Did you have any challenges making that leap?

Annie:

Actually, I think that it's so much more fun to me, Rhonda. I love that I have a rich history to pull from. I'm really glad that I have so many stories. I think many of my books will contain several of my childhood stories just because they're so important to me and rich. So I'm lucky I have all that.

But what's wonderful in fiction is you just branch out, Rhonda. You create characters with backstories and occupations. And I find myself researching such cool things. Like every time I invent a new character, well... What occupation do they have? Where did they go to school? What kind of clothes do they wear? What bands are they into? And that is so much fun.

I love the fiction writing more. I love to expand and reach out. But it's funny that everything you write is based in truth. know, Rhonda, all my characters have, you know, elements of people I know or the places. And so nothing's really original, but it's taking all these parts and mashing them back together a different way. And that's really fun for me.

Rhonda:

Right. OK. And I mean, I feel like authors do that all the or something in a coffee shop, or we have an aunt and a little bit of the aunt ends up in our character, you know, that kind of thing. So.

Annie:

It's funny. You don't know you're doing it sometimes, Rhonda. have family members, they'll be like, did you base this character on such and such? And I'll be like, I didn't know I did. I'm like, I did. Like, right when they say it, I'm like, oh my gosh. I had no clue, but I often don't know what I'm doing.

Rhonda:

Wow. All right. And so tell me a little bit about your publishing journey, right? So you finished the book. What was your decision around publishing and why did you make that decision?

Annie:

Sure. So Clovis em I'll tell you that the publishing journey because writers are very interested in this when I first wrote it um And I'm a pretty prolific writer and that I write a lot. I don't mean I write well I just it pours out of me That's maybe not a good thing because it's a big pile of stuff that I have to deal with Clovis was about three times her size when I first. So those familiar with writing, she was 255,000 words.

Rhonda:

Oh my Lord. So how did you make the decisions to cut that down to, you know, the size of a debut novel? Yeah. So I brought an editor in, I brought an editing team in and I was very much bumbling around on my own. I'll tell you, if any authors out there, you're starting, you're just going to search the internet for professionals to help you. And sometimes it's very hard who to trust, who to...

You know, lean on these are very hard things and you're going to make mistakes. It's okay. You're going to hire people that let you down. It's okay. Just get out there and try. I found some editors that I really did like in New York and it was pricey. I'm not going to say anything cheap. I mean, this is just the reality of it.

But they took me on which was nice because it was a big project and what he did, Rhonda, it was really cool in that I explained it this way to people. If you were to take my novel and just like exploded on the wall, all the pages black and white, I can't see what needs to be cut.

It all looks relevant to me on the author, right? And I'm not a huge like, oh, no, don't take that out. I'm like, just tell me what to cut. I don't understand what to cut to keep the story good. I'm very much make it good.

But what he did, it was almost like he painted it. Like he was like, this is inner dialogue that's going nowhere. This is a repeat of story you've already told somewhere else. This is, I'm trying to think of dialogue with no conflict. They're just talking and there's no conflict.

He gave me these like indicators. All of a sudden I could look at my novel and see purple and yellow and green. And it got really easy. I'll just say that the cutting got easy. I understood what to cut. And he helped me very much with that.

Rhonda:

You enjoyed it.

Annie:

And I enjoyed it. And the book got so much better. There was so much just me babbling on at home. I enjoyed it. I loved it. It was great.

Rhonda:

Cause not everybody does. Some people find that process painful.

Annie:

I can see that. there were moments that are hard. I'm staring at a paragraph, and it's just me. I'm like, oh, I'm in my own head. But I did it. And what I'll tell you is, taught me to do, Rhonda, is just write books better. Like I've already written the sequel to Clovis and the writing of that was so organized and flowed nicely. And I just had a path and a mission and he's taught me how to write books better.

So it was worth the cost. Even though you had asked about the journey, I tried to get published traditionally after I finished that big editing. And my hope was with that editing group behind me, would work. Didn't work. That's okay. I pitched to literary agents for about two months or so.

Maybe should have gone longer, harder, you never know, but nobody was grabbing it and I was really excited about her and I thought, you know what? Here we go, I'm gonna try. I've done it before. I had done it with the sailing books that you've seen. This time it's been harder. I will tell you that it's a bigger world out there and more people have self-published. Because when I did it the first time, this was like 12-ish years ago, it was brand new.

You were kind of like a cowboy out there, like woo. That's not the case anymore, which is great. I'm so glad people were able to put their books out there, but it's been, it's been difficult to get above the noise and I'm working on that now, but, um, but I love it. I'm passionate about it. So I self-published Clovis in September of last year.

Rhonda:

Okay. That's great. Um, I mean, I think, you know, the world has changed so much and there's so much opportunity. The agent game really is a numbers game. Like I think if you're going to do it, you need to be prepared to get out 200 packages, be rejected 199 times.

Annie:

I am so glad you're saying that. Right now, my guy, I have a guy who's helping me do that. He sent 87, eight seven. And so far, we've had one wants to read it. I mean, it's a numbers game. It's totally a numbers game. And I try not to get dejected. I want to tell your authors…

Rhonda:

Don't take rejection personally, like it's not a comment on you. They might have just sold something kind of similar. Like it's just, it's so.

Annie:

You never know. You never know, but I will tell authors out there, trust me. I wake up many, many days. have sold no books. My followers haven't changed at all. There's no email from an agent and I've just got to say, you know what? I'm just going to keep writing today. I love doing this.

Rhonda:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Annie:

You wake up and get your ass kicked in some days. Trust me.

Rhonda:

I just think that's, that's how we do it. We publish the book and then we start writing the next one. Yeah.

Annie:

The marketing is something we have to focus on, unfortunately. I don't love it, you know, but I love the story. So I tell myself I'm doing it for the book and that actually makes it feel a lot better for me. I see you're catching your breath, which is fine. I think that's easier.

So for authors out there, tell yourself you're doing it for your story. You're not doing it for you personally. And I always feel better about it that way. But it's hard. It's a tough world out there.

Rhonda:

There's a lot of marketing background. So talk to me about the kinds of things. I mean, obviously you're doing podcasts. What other things are you doing in order to promote Clovis?

Annie:

I just started, so I'm very excited to share this, with the Method Agency. If anyone wants to Google that, look at that. A wonderfully brilliant marketing team. You're going to find everybody that offers services costs money. It's just part of it. They're doing work for you.

But I found them to be savvy and creative and on the cutting edge of stuff. And they're really helping me put out the kind of content that you see that goes viral is the best way I can put it. I have never been a viral content creator.

I've just been, I just create stuff I like, but they're teaching me how to create stuff that will actually get traction in the digital world. And that's new for me. I'm not used to that. So I'm kind of pushing myself out of my comfort zone doing these videos, you know, but. Hey, we're all trying.

Rhonda:

Were you on social media and doing social before that?

Annie:

I was. It just wasn't very successful because I'm learning now. I wasn't saying the right things, wasn't flipping the right switches. You know, it's all learned skills and we all can learn them as much as we hate them. But yeah, I'm working on that really hard.

And I don't do as much in-person stuff. Me personally, em I could. I could run around and do book clubs and book signings. Because I travel a ton. Like we travel so much that I want my platform to be mostly digital. That's my preference. So I can do it anywhere and so that's kind of what I'm doing. I'm really trying to get the digital side going.

Rhonda:

Okay. And so you finished Clovis and then you started the next book. Tell me a little bit about the next book. Is it Austin?

Annie:

It is Austin. I love Austin. have you read Clovis?

Rhonda:

I'd love to go.

Annie:

Okay. Yeah, haven't, I'll say Austin is my big time fiction fiction book because I really haven't been to Austin either. When I sat in Clovis about college age, I switched out to fiction. I stayed on fiction. So Austin is entirely fiction, which is cool. But it picks up right where Clovis left off.

So if you know Clovis without revealing anything at the end, the main character is about to head out west to try to find a family member. And so you're gonna go out West, you're gonna find the family member, you're gonna be introduced to her, and that whole novel carries on.

And what I love about Austin is I like to play around with narration, Rhonda, different ways to tell the story. And uh in Clovis, it was all first person with my main character, Callie, but different voices, I call them voices, you hear from other people in the book, like they'll get a chapter and get to tell you their perspective, which I think is massively important to storytelling. So that was a big deal for me.

In Austin, what I tried was double, dual first person. So there's one female and then another female and one female and another female. And then I have some like mystery journal kind of things and a surprise narrator at the end, but that stuff is so fun to play with. And I'm really excited about that.

And Austin is, I'm learning Clovis is very literary fiction that it's very um deep and intense writing and emotional. And Austin is more upmarket. It's a little more kind of slicker, sexier, easier read. Okay.

Rhonda:

So more commercial.

Annie:

I think, I'm learning. That's what I'm learning is literary commercial market's supposed to be right in between. It's kind what they're telling me. So that's where Austin's falling.

Rhonda:

And why did you decide to, cause you're writing a sequel, right?

Annie:

Yep. Yeah. I'm actually writing a trilogy.

Rhonda:

You're writing a trilogy. Okay. How did you decide that this was a trilogy?

Annie:

Well, I first wrote Clovis, funny, when Clovis, when I finished it, Rhonda, and it was like the 255,000 words, I was like, well, heck yeah, I just wrote a trilogy right there. That's three books long. Like, come on.

Rhonda:

Three books and one.

Annie:

And I told the whole agent team, I was like, break it up, make it three books. I'm so tired. But uh it wasn't, they were right. It was not good enough on its own. So Clovis, um when I finished it up and tied it in a bow, I knew I was going to do a sequel. And during the sequel is when I decided on the trilogy part.

So to explain it, it's pretty cool. Clovis, I would say the trilogy, you know, one, two, three, it goes like two, three, one. So Clovis is probably number two. And then you go forward in time with Austin, which is number three, and you go forward in time.

And then Roswell, like I said, another location, that's going to be the third I'm thinking of. You go back in time to like the mother of Callie and it's her whole story in like the 1960s. So we're going back in time. It kind of reminded me of, I think Jeannette Walls did one like about her grandmother called Half Broke Horses. It's kind of like that.

And I didn't know that until I started writing it. And then I saw that she'd done something like that, but that's what's happening. And I'm loving it, Rhonda. I'm having so, I wish I could write the whole time and not market it, but that's okay. It's wonderful. It's a great story.

And it's all centered on my mom. I'll tell you Rhonda, I can tell these books are, I focus on mother daughter relationships. It fascinate me. All three of these books focus on my mom. Okay.

Rhonda:

And are you drawing from like in Austin and the, you know, book, the final book of the trilogy? are you still drawing from your own life or not so much?

Annie:

Um, Austin, no, because it's all fiction, which is cool. That would just be the things I would want to happen to those characters. Next Roswell. Um, I would say yes. And that it's my, my mother's life. So it will be my mother's childhood. So very not my life, but true to her tale or true with some fiction.

You know, I'm still deciding and kind of working on that, but inspired very much so by my mother's story, which why it's important is that Clovis Callie is so informed by her mom's choices and actions and conduct that I think many readers would be very intrigued to go back to see what Callie's mom's upbringing was like. Why did she come out the way she was, you know?

Rhonda:

As we all are as daughters, right? Right. We're so guided by the relationship with our mothers.

Annie:

It is. It's a fascinating one.

Rhonda:

You're not traveling now. You're at home.

Annie:

Well, we're doing we call this our international travel chapter. So we've got um the boat is parked currently and actually we're selling the sailboat because we're to buy a power boat in the next few years. But for this chapter right now, we wanted to go. We're going to Africa, which is really cool. We've never been.

Rhonda:

Where you going?

Annie:

We're going to South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Rhonda:

Lovely. Amazing.

Annie:

Oh, thank you. I know. I'm so excited. But on the boat, it's very hard to plan big trips like that because you've got to park the boat somewhere and all this stuff. So we've never been we've always wanted to do like Croatia and you know, all these things go to Montreal for like a month.

And so all this stuff now we're planning, which is really cool. We had a trip to Dubai, but it got canceled. That's OK. But this is our international travel chapter. It's kind of what we're talking about since we are putting the boat aside for a second. So it's fun. We've got Africa on the books.

Rhonda:

So what's your what's your plan for fitting in? don't know about you, but I always find it a little hard to a little hard to write when I'm traveling because, know, you're traveling. So you want to be you're in Africa. You're going to be probably going on safari, you know, doing things during the day, exploring, trying to how are you going to fit in the writing?

Annie:

I love great question. My problem is I love to write so much. I want to actually have to find the time to pack myself away. But the good news is and we like this my partner Phillip he works too. And so there you know what I mean? It just it fits because he'll have to take a call or do a Zoom thing or you know get like I've got to refuse stuff this morning.

Yeah, right. And so I would love to go out and just walk and see and do but if he's working too, I would love to write in this setting. It's very new to me and exciting and inspiring. So for me, I'm lucky and then that just works well. If I had a partner that never worked, I would struggle because I would want to write and he and I would probably fight a little bit. So I'm lucky in that Phillip works too. So I squeeze it in then.

But I look forward to writing during my travels just as much because I get inspired by the people I see.

Rhonda:

Are you someone who can write on an airplane? I don't know why, but I never can. I tell myself well and then I don't. you write on an airplane?

Annie:

I can write anywhere. It's terrible. Yeah, I could do it anywhere. The coffee shops are my favorite. I love to be able to see people. But yeah, I've written on planes many times and Phillip will put on a movie and try to get me to watch the movie. And I'm like, I'm writing and he's so sick of hearing that. But yeah, he's with a writer. That's his fault.

Rhonda:

So when, when did you become a writer in your life? Like, were you always a writer or was there a moment where you were like, you know, think I'm going to take my life on this sailboat and, you know, put it down on paper.

Annie:

I love it. I'm going to say yes, because I get asked this a lot. And em I've had a couple of podcasters ask me about when I started writing and things. So I went back to my scrapbooks and I found like I used to do these little Sweet Valley High newsletters that I would write just myself. Like, oh, the high school secrets and who's crushing on who? And I found them. I'm going to post them on my socials because this was like fifth grade. I was doing that. And then um

I actually wrote, this is silly, but a book. My aunt found this like send your story in and they put it in a book kind of thing. And I was like 10 years old and I wrote a little storybook then. So I've been writing forever. think it's just words have been ingrained in me from the beginning. Clovis is very true to my brother and I knew education was the key. Like we knew that was gonna get us up and out and successful.

And so reading and words were important from day one. So I would say forever, because I've been writing those little stories since I was a kid.

Rhonda:

Oh, I love that. That's so great. All right. Well, the book is called Clovis. I will put a link in the show notes so you can find it there. Thanks so much for talking to me today, Annie. It was really delightful chatting with you.

Annie:

This was my pleasure. Thank you, Rhonda, and good luck. All those authors out there, keep at it.

Outro:

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