Two Ends of the Pen: Interview with Olga Werby, TWIN TIME

Dear Deb and Dave!

Thank you very much for this opportunity to connect with your https://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/ readers. The book I’m promoting right now is “Twin Time”. You can point your readers to the first few chapters of that book here: https://interfaces.com/blog/twin-time

“Twin Time” is a story of identical twins, where one is autistic and the other’s not. It is also a time loop story. I wanted to explore the psychology and family dynamic of a family with a sick child. I wanted to give autism a voice. Like many of my books, “Twin Time” is fully illustrated. You can see some of the visual research that went into this story on a special Pinterest page set up for this book: https://www.pinterest.com/OlgaWerby/scifi-book-twin-time/

For this story, I’ve also created a book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHCxRU64hyU

“Twin Time” got an honorable mention in San Francisco Book Festival.

The book received a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite: https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/twin-time

If there is anything I can do to make this interview work better for you, please let me know. I can provide art, reviews, links…

All the best,

Olga

1. Can you give us a brief overview of your latest book? Is it part of a series?
“Twin Time” takes place in two locations and two time periods: modern day San Francisco Bay Area and rural Russia just around the 1917 revolution. It follows the lives of twin girls, one autistic and one not. The twist is that the autistic child regains abilities to communicate and use language while she time-travels 100 years back.

There are two major themes in the book. One explores what life was like in pre-revolutionary Russia and what incredible damage it did to families who survived it. Part of that story is based on my grandmother’s childhood, who was a survivor of that regime change. The other theme deals with what it means to be autistic. What does it feel like? Mostly, we have to guess because people who profoundly autistic are usually unable to communicate. There are also the pain and suffering that the whole family experiences while raising a child with severe autism. I write about how love can get twisted and people can end up damaging one another. And finally, I wanted a happy ending…sort of. I hope my readers get to find out what happens at the end.

2. What is your writing process? Do you listen to music or do you like silence?

Yes. Each of my books has a sound track. Once I get into the groove of the story, I know what music fits the narrative. So I put on my music list and it helps me get back into the mood of the story.

3. Do you outline your story or just go where your muse takes you?

I usually spend a few years doing research and making notes prior to starting a new story. But once I do, I don’t outline. My stories take me as much by surprise as they do my readers.

I don’t stop doing research, visual and factual, once I start writing. And the process of layering ideas one on top of another tends to yield unexpected (to me) results. Doing that means that I have a lot of cleaning up to do to make the story work in the end, but that’s okay. That’s just another opportunity to discover hidden gems that I can bring out and polish for my reader’s pleasure.

4. Did you hire an editor to review your manuscript before publishing?

When I finish my first draft, it is only the beginning of my editing journey. My story goes through several iterations of edits before going out to a professional editor. When my editor returns my story, it usually is many months later. By that time, I have had time to put some emotional distance between my story and myself. I don’t feel in love with my turn of phrase or some plot point that I thought was kind of nice. I can let go of it all. And I then reedit the work again. After that, it goes back to my editor to check that I didn’t accidently add new mistakes. When I get my final draft back, I reedit the whole one last time and it is ready for publication. So it takes at least a year to publish a book after I’ve put the first word on the first page of my story and it goes past my professional editor twice.

5. What have you’ve learned during your self-publishing journey?

Writing is easy; marketing is hard. I believe all authors feel this way. That’s because if you are a writer, you are probably not the most social human being or very good at self-promotion. Sure, some authors excel at both. But most, including myself, are lousy at marketing themselves. It makes life difficult. But in today’s publishing environment, there are no guarantees that a publisher will invest in your book. So even if an author goes the traditional route, there are expectations of working very hard to market one’s book. But if the book doesn’t sell, then the publisher pulls its investment and the author is stuck. They no longer have the rights to give their books away or run promotions, and the story might languish and die. I chose the indie way because I get to control what happens to my stories even if they are not as successful as they could have been if they were represented by a big publisher. Each writer has to find their own journey to success.

6. Besides Amazon, are there any other sites where your books are for sale?

Most of my books are available at standard bookshops. That said, there are limitations. Amazon makes it difficult to sell ebooks at other online shops by setting up barriers to entry for indie writers like myself. So I make choices. For the moment most of my ebooks are signed up with Amazon Prime program, which requires giving Amazon an exclusive. But Amazon has 90% of the ebook market, so what choice is there for an independent writer? I hope that by making my books available on Amazon, my readers will discover me and make easier for me to sell books elsewhere. So please review books! That’s the only way authors get to get ahead and gain a bit of independence from Amazon exclusive contracts.

7. What kinds of marketing [twitter, facebook, blog, forums] are you involved with for promoting your book(s)?
Here are a few of my sites:

Author’s Website: https://interfaces.com/blog/

Amazon: amazon.com/author/olgawerby

GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4056895.Olga_Werby

BookBob: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/olga-werby

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OlgaWerby/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OlgaWerby

Company/Publisher: https://Pipsqueak.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDE3BNceupMYgvoaoAps2mg

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olgawerby/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/OlgaWerby/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/olgawerby/

8. Do you find it difficult to juggle your time between marketing your current book and writing your next book?

Yes! If I’m on tour, even if it is virtual, I’m not using that time for writing. But that’s true of all authors. And the thing about writing is that is a very cognitively intensive activity. When you write, you hold all these ideas and threads of the story in your head. Put any one of them down and it takes a lot of time to pick it up again, to find a path forward through the narrative. But there is no other choice—writing is an act of communication. I am not writing a diary entry. I’m writing stories that are meant to be read. And so marketing is just part of the author’s job, whether they like it or not.

9. What advice would you give a new author just entering into the self-publishing arena?

Write. Write more. Like anything else, you get better by doing. Your first book won’t be as good as your second simply because you learn so much in the process of giving your story life. So the only way forward is to write.

10. What’s next for you?

Surprisingly, I find myself in the middle of three projects. This is completely outside of my normal working pattern, but given the times we are living through, I’m giving myself a break about that. So here are the three projects:

“Mirror Shards” —this is just a working titled, but it will do for now. This is the most complete project. It went through numerous edits and his been returned from my editor with additional comments. I haven’t looked at those for over 5 months! I got the comments back just around the time of COVID lockdown and just couldn’t take up the story. But here’s a quick summary: a boy is born with a deformity that rubs him of ability to walk or play or live his life like any other healthy kid. One day, he and his parents and uncle go to fair and visit a strange fortuneteller. They go in, including an infant sister, and each gets some personal and secret advice or a prophecy. Soon after, the boy is cured while his mom dies. And from that moment on, the boy believes that his miraculous cure was “bought” with his mom’s life. This belief tears him apart and he seeks to find the fortuneteller and make amends. But the world is not one timeline; each decision once made bifurcates the lifelines of the individuals who make those decisions. The boy is plunged into the universe of millions of possible lives, looking for the one where his family is all alive and happy and together. It is never what he thinks it is. I hope to release this book by the end of this year.

“Lunatic”—we’ve all heard about the stories when a man becomes a wolf. But what if instead, a man becomes a woman? A werewoman? Every so often, he turns into a woman for a few days or longer and his life spirals out of control. This story is about 25% complete.

“Lord Night”—this is my first middle grade fiction novel. In this world, all orphans are assigned a demon godparent. Lord Night is mighty demon, but one night he accidently stumbles on a car accident where only an infant girl survives. By the laws of magic, he now has to take on the responsibility for this child. So this is the story of Lady Gray, Lord Night’s ward, and how she helped other orphan children get their demons. You can listen to the first chapter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fsxh7OR2Qo

So these are the projects in my pipeline. If you sign up for my newsletter, you will get regular updates on my progress. Just visit my blog: https://interfaces.com/blog/

BLURB:

Alex and Sasha are twin sisters, physically identical down to their freckles. But the resemblance is only skin deep—Sasha is profoundly autistic, while Alex is not. Sasha can’t communicate and acts bizarrely, and the family revolves around her and her intense needs. Yet the aged, wealthy, and mysterious Aunt Nana seems to have a particular interest in both girls. Offering a helping hand, she encourages the family to move to San Francisco to be near her. And when the young twins discover a tunnel in Nana’s tool shed, it leads them on a journey across the world and back 100 years in time. The tunnel is a pathway to the Firebird Estate, the home of their ancestors, located in rural Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Even more remarkable, through the effect that twisting time has on cognition, Sasha is not autistic when she’s at the Firebird Estate. Now, growing up in two strikingly different times and places, the twins must face their separate destinies among the ravages of the incipient Russian Revolution. Can they save their families on both sides of the tunnel? Can they simultaneously stay true to their own hearts, to each other, and to the people they left behind? Each sister must face her own personal challenge—but only together can they discover their own future within their family’s past.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Olga Werby, Ed.D., has a Doctorate from U.C. Berkeley with a focus on designing online learning experiences. She has a Master's degree from U.C. Berkeley in Education of Math, Science, and Technology. She has been creating computer-based projects since 1981 with organizations such as NASA (where she worked on the Pioneer Venus project), Addison-Wesley, and the Princeton Review. Olga has a B.A. degree in Mathematics and Astrophysics from Columbia University.

She became an accidental science fiction indie writer about a decade ago, with her first book, "Suddenly Paris," which was based on then fairly novel idea of virtual universes. Her next story, "The FATOFF Conspiracy," was a horror story about fat, government bureaucracy, and body image. She writes about characters that rarely get represented in science fiction stories -- homeless kids, refugees, handicapped, autistic individuals -- the social underdogs of our world. Her stories are based in real science, which is admittedly stretched to the very limit of possible.

She has published almost a dozen fiction books to date and has won many awards for her writings. Her short fiction has been featured in several issues of "Alien Dimensions Magazine," "600 second saga," "Graveyard Girls," "Kyanite Press' Fables and Fairy Tales," "The Carmen Online Theater Group's Chronicles of Terror," with many more stories freely available on her blog, Interfaces.com.

Links:

http://www.interfaces.com/blog/

amazon.com/author/olgawerby

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4056895.Olga_Werby

https://www.facebook.com/OlgaWerby/

https://twitter.com/OlgaWerby

http://Pipsqueak.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDE3BNceupMYgvoaoAps2mg

https://www.linkedin.com/in/olgawerby/

Selected Book Links on Amazon:

“Harvest”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R8HGKWN/

“Becoming Animals”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078P6BB6K/