It’s Never Too Late to Fulfill Your Dreams

“And I can sense the joy that you’re having. The mistakes don’t matter. It’s the ideas and the concepts that you’re bringing into the book. Your flare. You know it’s got your uniqueness.” —Steve Vannoy

What happens when two guys who run a successful business helping nonfiction authors write their books decide to write fiction? This podcast is part two where Steve and I talk about our journey cowriting a fiction book. Smokey and his coming-of-age story in a red-light district town came to life for us last November 2021 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

If you haven’t already heard part one, of “Author’s Who Lead,” you should go back and listen to the start of our fiction journey. Steve interviewed me about what it was like to write this book when I was just 10 days into the process of the 30-day NaNoWriMo writing sprint. On today’s episode of “Author’s Who Lead,” we give the inside scoop on what it was like to finish that novel with a coauthor, lessons we’ve learned along the way, and what’s next.

The Handoff
We decided that to coauthor our novel meant that I would write the first dirty draft and then give it to Steve to do the initial round of edits. This utilizes our different creative gifts, as I’m the book whisperer and Steve’s genius lies in wordsmithing and really bringing out the personality and power of words.

At the time of this recording, Steve has only had the book for a few days. The handoff was a big deal for him because, unlike other projects we do together, this one we really didn’t talk about ahead of time, except in generalities how the book was going to go. So when I shared the manuscript with him as a Google document, he had a lot of anticipation and excitement to read it.

Click here to read/listen to the full podcast episode on the Authors Who Lead Podcast.

-Azul Terronez – Co-Author of the Adventure in Cinder Bottom Series