Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Chapel Bay Secrets  (Book)

Impermanent Joy (Substack)

Julie Snider’s website

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Julie Snider – 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. Today, I'm here with Julie Snider. Julie is a retired public school teacher living near Sacramento, and she writes fiction and nonfiction. Her heartwarming stories are centered on themes of social justice uh and help readers from diverse backgrounds find common ground.

She's on the board of the California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch, and her essays and flash fiction appear in various online publications. Her debut novel, Chapel Bay Secrets came out in January 2026 and her Substack, Impermanent Joy, I love that title, reaches hundreds of readers every week. You can find out more about Julie and her writing on her website at https://juliesniderauthor.com/. Welcome, Julie.

Julie:

Thank you. So nice to be here, Rhonda.

Rhonda:

So tell me a little bit about Chapel Bay Secrets and where the idea for that novel came from, because you were writing smaller pieces until then, right?

Julie:

I was and uh I had just retired from teaching. taught for 26 years and had done a lot of writing, but mostly structured lesson plans. And I really wanted to spread my wings and do something longer. So I thought, why not try a novel?

So I picked up a book called Write a Novel in 90 Days. And that turned out to the joke was on me. I mean, come on, really, but I did get a bunch of good ideas. And what first came to the forefront was that I wanted to write characters who were in some way isolated and yet needed to form community to solve their particular issues.

So that was the first thing that came to mind because as a teacher, I, you know, had a lot of experience with community and with working with kids who were isolated and then came together and so on. So that just sort of crossed my mind.

About 20 years ago, I was on a trip up through Northern California and my traveling companion and I came upon the site of what had once been the Tule Lake Internment Camp. Yeah, so for those that are familiar, Japanese American internment which occurred around 1942 and lasted a couple of years. I was shocked and horrified that this had not been part of my history lessons growing up. I thought, this is really terrible. Why was I not informed?

I grew up in the Midwest, um so nowhere near these particular camps, but still I was just amazed that I hadn't been aware of these camps and taking the tour of the site, we went through a couple of barracks and they were very dirty and cold. And you just got to chill seeing the conditions that these people had to endure for up to two years.

So that stuck in my mind. It was kind of like an arrow through my heart. And I thought, I need to know more about this. Time went by and I started to do some research, bought some books, did some reading, actually talked to a couple of women whose mothers had been in the camps um and just kind of really got a feel for what that might've been like.

Learned about intergenerational trauma that was then passed down to these friends of mine. So that was certainly something that came back to me when I sat down and wanted to write. I had the freedom of being retired and having that time.

So my protagonist um is a Japanese American woman whose mother was in the camps. And that was sort of a natural thing I wanted to write about.

There are several other main characters who struggle in their own ways, but the lead character is very closed off. Her heart is very closed. She's searching for a father she's never known. And her mother passed away, but without ever telling her who her dad was. So this is kind of front and center in her mind.

At the time that I was writing, which I believe was around 2022, book bans were a big deal. That was on my mind too as a former educator. I'm not a person that's easily drawn into anger, but that's something that just gets my blood boiling just in a quick second.

And so I turned my protagonist into a librarian who was uh faced with a book ban right off the bat. So I'm putting these, I sort of built a layer cake with characters and issues together.

Rhonda:

Wow, that's a lot though. Like it's a lot. And so talk to me a little bit about some of your research. You said you've got some books and you kind of went deep on the internment camps. Did you do any additional research on book bans or anything like that?

Julie:

I did. Yeah, I did do that. And I connected with people. I myself was not a librarian. I was a science teacher, but I connected with people who are librarians. And subsequently, ah once I started my Substack site, I'm connected with a woman who does extensive research on book bans.

And every week she puts out more information about what's happening. that really, that's been very helpful as well. Yeah, just for those of us that are in the United States and maybe you're in Canada, I believe.

Rhonda:

I'm in Canada. We have some book bans, but yeah.

Julie:

Are you familiar with the documentary called The Librarians? Because I just watched it last night.

Rhonda:

Yes, so good.

Julie:

Yeah, so that it's just interesting because I really thought that this would be a topic of the early 2020s and it wouldn't be something that would carry over and it's amazing to me that this is just such a continuum.

Rhonda:

Yeah, it just goes on and on. I mean, I think, you know, there are some positive things happening around books, um but the book bans just seem to continue and it's either, you know, yeah, it's, uh yeah, we have Alberta, that's our. It's our book ban territory, Alberta.

So your protagonist is Brenda Cato. She is a librarian, she's a lesbian, she's Japanese American. And it's the anniversary of her mother's death, right? Which kind of sharpens the need to find her father. So talk to me about, um how she gets involved with a group of Japanese uh Americans who were incarcerated.

Julie:

Well, she meets people one at a time. She goes to a conference, a librarians conference. uh called it, I decided this would be a clever topic. I called it Writing Wrongs. And uh at the conference, there's a woman who was in the camps who speaks. And so that's her first encounter with somebody that is perhaps like her mom and she interviews her and gets some facts and so forth.

And then later in the novel, she meets another woman who was in the camps because by the time we get to this point in the novel, Brenda's become active with a local group of Asian Americans and they're getting ready for the Day of Remembrance. So she's a speaker at this conference and then meets another woman who turns out did know her mother. So.

Rhonda:

And there's a bit of a romance.

Julie:

There is a romance. Yeah.

Rhonda:

She meets a woman, comes across a woman when she's running. So there's a romance there too, which is great.

So um the material's fairly heavy, right? Like the background and the material, basically the context for the whole novel is fairly heavy. Was that a challenge to you when writing it? Like, did you ever find yourself feeling, I don't know, feeling the heaviness of it?

Julie:

I did feel the heaviness, but I counterbalanced that with some of the quirkiness of characters in the book. I had a lot of fun with that. So Brenda's best friend is a gay guy in San Francisco and he's just got the funniest sense of humor. So he brings in that little spice.

One of the main characters is named Harriet and she's always in her own way. She's like a busy body. She's well intentioned, but she just socially doesn't get it. So she does a lot of funny things in the book that people will laugh at.

Her inspiration for her was one of my mother's aunts who was kind of like that. So there is humor and likeness and as you mentioned, romance in the book and a lot of just sort of everyday life that people can relate.

Rhonda:

It balances out the heaviness of the historical material.

Julie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rhonda:

And so this is intended as a one-off novel, is it? Are you planning another one in this world or not really?

Julie:

I've been working on another one in this world. It's not at all the same. It's in the same town with several of the same characters, but not sort of the same degree of moral issues. There is some of that. It's a little bit more of an actual mystery. And yeah, so I'm having fun with that.

Rhonda:

Right. So the secrets in this one have to do with the internment and also her finding her father, right?

Julie:

Those are a couple of the secrets. I'm not going to give them all away, but the character, the Harriet character, the one that gets in her own way. uh She's, she really wants to be accepted by the literary community in town.

So, you know, one of her secrets that she's kept from others is that she, feels like she's a great writer and no one's accepting her. uh And then there's a gentleman named Joe, who's a retired psychologist and he has a very guilty conscience over something he's done in the past. And so he's hoping nobody finds out about this, but you know.

Rhonda:

Okay, so there's a whole community with secrets.

Julie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Did you have trouble keeping any of that straight as you were writing? Like map them out and be like.

Julie:

I mapped out timelines and I color coded everything and all that sort of stuff. So yeah. And there were a lot of revisions. you know, I think.

Rhonda:

How long did it take you to to complete the book?

Julie:

Well, um about two and a half years from start to finish. And that was with help from developmental editor and so forth. Really get it going.

I mean, I had never written anything like this before and I had no idea if I'd known how difficult it would have been. I probably wouldn't have started it. But I just had so much fun with it. I just kept going

And the editor I hired and read it the first time and she said, I can't believe you made it to the end. You actually made it to the end. So we had a lot of ironing out to do.

Rhonda:

Right. Oh my God. Yeah. I can't believe you made it to the end. I think every writer everywhere feels that. I can't believe I made it to the end.

So what were the big challenges when it came time to, you said you worked with a developmental editor, but what were the things that had to be ironed out in revision?

Julie:

I had to do a lot of smoothing over between scenes to keep things going between scenes oh and to make sure that each scene had a particular point. There were great little things I wanted to put in, but you know, it wasn't adding that much to the story. It was just something fun that I wanted to write. So those things had to become their own separate little world.

When I first wrote the book, I thought I knew what the ending was and I was wrong. The characters weren't done talking to me. Yeah. So I had to keep. Yeah, and it was probably going to be too short anyway, the way I ended it. I had to come to a different resolution, kind of keep things going and keep the tension going.

Rhonda:

Okay. So um how would you categorize this book? Is it suspense, thriller, mystery, women's fiction, like where would you put it if you had to it on your shelf.

Julie:

It's really across genre. You're leading people to the right, to the right watering hole there. I believe, well, I kind of call it women's fiction, but it's not the typical romantic women's fiction, although there is romance in it.

It's also categorized under LGBTQ since Brenda's a lesbian and kind of small town mystery. So it's sort of a mashup of all that, all that stuff. Yeah.

Rhonda:

And um so the small town, Chapel Bay, that's where you're going to place the next one. Oh, I love that. I love a series that's in a small town. That's great. Yeah. So you decided to self-publish. Can I ask why you decided to self-publish?

Julie:

I did pitch it to agents for about a year and got some good requests from agents but when I evaluated the whole process, I felt like it was gonna take a really long time. And I wanna get on with things. uh I thought self-publishing was gonna be so difficult that I shouldn't even try it.

And I came to the conclusion that it's probably in some ways easier because I have more control over a lot of the things I got to my cover artists. I got to choose my editors. And I developed a whole community of friends that I probably wouldn't have uh done otherwise.

Rhonda:

So, um, talk to me about the book cover.

Julie:

Uh, the cut.

Rhonda:

Well, I mean, it's very, I think it's very, um, there it is. It kind of, it kind of, yeah, it kind of feels Nora Roberts to me. She has these, you know, she has these that are like, uh, I don't know, they're, they're, they have romance, but they also have intrigue and suspense and you know, yeah. Well, how did you get the cover right?

Julie:

Well, my cover art, my cover designers submitted a bunch of things to me. And I liked this particular one because it showed the Bay, the chapel baking on the water shows the water shows the sun setting.

And to me, does introduce an element of intrigue, but I didn't want any faces on the cover. I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want people to think, oh, that's how so-and-so is supposed to look. I think it's more powerful when people get to use their imaginations for the characters.

Rhonda:

I agree. Yeah, I totally agree. It's a nice cover. It looks good. So now that you've self-published, kind of, you know, you're your own publishing house. So you're also the marketing department. How are you finding being the marketing department for your own novel?

Julie:

I'm learning what I want to do and what I don't want to do with marketing. And it's educational. I'm not that person that's on social media every single day. So that's not going to work for me.

I'm trying to go for more organic marketing. I have a couple of authors that kindly gave me blurbs and they're helping me get the word out through their networks.

Yeah, I'm meeting with, uh with small groups. I'm thinking this is a great book club fiction piece. And so I'm hoping to attract some of the some of the groups that way.

Rhonda:

Okay, this is great. So you and I met at the Women in Publishing Summit networking event. Have you been connecting with like different writers groups, workshops, networking events like that?

Julie:

Yes, I have. Women in Publishing is actually such a powerful group.

Rhonda:

They’re amazing. I just love Alexa and everything she does. Yeah.

Julie:

Oh my gosh. So I took the six month marketing course that she offers.

Rhonda:

Oh, wow.

Julie:
Self-publish. uh It's called Book Launch…and BLAB is the acronym. I can't remember what it's called.

Rhonda:

Book Launch in a Box.

Julie:

There it is, Book Launch in a Box. Really helpful. uh So yes, and then my local organization, as you mentioned in the introduction, I'm on the board of the California Writers Club Sacramento Branch. I get to hear all sorts of great things about craft, the craft of writing and we support one another that way. I think community is absolutely essential. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Yeah. Yes. I agree. I don't, I think books are written in community. I don't know how you would do it otherwise because it's so easy to give up because, know, not exactly the easiest thing anyone's ever done, this writing a book.

Julie:

Not. isn't it, there's a statistic that aren't there five books published every minute or something? It's a crazy number.

Rhonda:

So yeah, that's true.

Julie:

You can just drown in the sea there. And I'm also a member of Women's Fiction Writers Association. I have a good friend that's really helped me and mentored me through that. Wonderful.

Rhonda:

So is it fair to say that community and collaboration is kind of is really your approach to marketing.

Julie:

It absolutely is. Absolutely is. Yeah. And in this age of...

Rhonda:

And I think it is so much easier to do it that way.

Julie:

Well, it's more satisfying when you actually can come face to face with people or at least have a good interaction online. I met one of my Substack folks in person for the first time at my book launch.

Rhonda:

Oh my gosh.

Julie:

Yeah, she drove because I live in Northern California and she's in San Francisco. She made the drive with her husband a couple of times to come up to my book launch and it was so wonderful to finally meet face to face. Yeah.

Rhonda:

When it comes to Chapel Bay Secrets and getting it out into the world to reach the reader that it's perfect for, have you done much thinking about like who your ideal reader is?

Julie:

I've some thinking about that. I would say the ideal reader is a woman in age 45 to 70, perhaps member of a book club, probably leans a little bit left politically because of the interest of the issues that I've brought into the book.

Rhonda:

The issues and queer protagonist and yeah.

Julie:

So that's kind of that's right in the center of my Venn diagram of who I'm working for. But it certainly isn't exclusive.

Rhonda:

And you're willing to go out to book clubs. Like if people are doing a book club, you're willing to like zoom in or whatever. Oh, I love that.

Julie:

I'm absolutely willing to do that. Yeah, I'd love and I have on my website, there's a series of book club questions so that people can kind of guide their colleagues that way.

Rhonda:

Okay. Oh, I love that. So I was in a book club and we had a couple of times we had the author come in and I always made me nervous because I was always afraid somebody was going to say that they didn't like the book. And that would have horrified me, you know, but um you know, not every book is for every person, but still, yeah, you're not nervous about that at all. You're fine.

Julie:

Well, I mean, considering how edgy some of my issues are, I've been asked whether I feel like I've gone too far with things and I don't think so. I look at the times that we're living in. I think I have to write from my truth and from my heart and keep my intentions close by.

So yeah, it's my way of being true to myself and also trying to build that community with people.

Rhonda:

Yeah. And there's no point in trying to build community if you can't be authentic. You know, you can't build community if you're not authentic. yeah. That's it.

Rhonda:

Wow. Well, this is great. Thanks so much for talking to me about this, Julie. So I'm wishing you all the best with the book. It's just like it's fresh. This book, it came out in January, right? So it's off the presses. We'll link it up in the show notes so people know where to find it. And I'm wishing you all the best with the new manuscript. Good luck with that.

Julie:

Terrific Rhonda, thank you and I hope to see you in some of the Women in Publishing forums.

Rhonda:

I'll definitely be there. Take care.

Julie:

Take care, bye bye.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.