Listen to my latest podcast episode, guesting at Apollo Papyrus Podcast.
Host Aaron Apollo Camp interviews authors, publishers, and other important people in the writing world, with guests coming from many different backgrounds.
Aaron and I discussed my transition from a career in investment finance to writing romance novels, the challenges of self-publishing, and my passion for creating empowering stories featuring mature female protagonists.
Here is a link to the episode:
And here is the transcript to some of the question and answers :
Aaron: What was the most difficult aspect of switching careers from the finance world to writing romance novels for you?
Mia: Okay, so first of all, great question. Second, I think Investment is a fulfilling profession in the sense that you can see pretty quickly the fruits of your work. Like, if you are right about the market going up or down, or this equity going up or down, etc, if your prediction is right, you usually proven right pretty fast. If you’re more wrong than right for more than one year, it usually means you're not very good at your job.
In investments, I was used to seeing results very, very fast.Â
I find that becoming an author is a marathon. In more ways than one. It takes a very long time to produce a book that I like and want to put out in the world. It takes a very long time for people to hear about you.
I think the most difficult aspect is that I was used to gratification much faster as an investment manager, than as an author.Â
Aaron: You write steamy romance novels in the women of Tel Aviv series, which has three novels currently published, Crunching Her Numbers, Pulling Her Resources and Analyzing Her Assets.
Without spoiling too much of your series: What is the series and each of the books within it about?
Mia: Okay, so I just want to say:
All of those books are based on real events that happened to me or to people I knew, and they all happen in Tel Aviv, which is where I live.
It's in Israel, and they all feature a financial scam of some sort. The first book I wrote about my experiences as a wealth manager, which is an investment manager for wealthy people.Â
The second book, Analyzing Her Assets is based on my experiences working in a very, very large company, managing lots of money. The third book is based on my experiences as a startup investor. I met a woman who lied to get money out of investors, and I based my book on that.
The books feature women that work in these worlds, in investments or in startups, and they are older women. My youngest heroine is 33 and my oldest is 45.Â
Many of the romances in the market are for 20 somethings, which makes sense, since we all fall in love and, you know, and do stuff between 20 to 30. But there is a very large chunk of womanhood that happens afterwards. I write for women that do not happen to find true love between the age of 20 to 30, and I speak about how it is to find love at a later age.
Aaron: How do you empower your characters?
Mia:
I'll talk about my second book, which is about a heroine who is very, very good at what she does, but has issues with the way she looks. And the reason she has issues is because people have been telling her she was overweight all her life, including her sister.
The book does not explore her professional development, because
she's really good at what she does, and that is where she gets her power from.
So she's really, really confident that she's smart, but she's very afraid of going into a relationship with the opposite sex.
The way I built it is that she doesn't go into a relationship, but into a bargain. Because, you know, she feels confident bargaining with her colleague, who is a man she's very attracted to. She learns to like herself through his eyes.
Aaron: Was it easier for you to write the first book in your series or the subsequent books in your series? And why?
Mia: Okay, another great question. Actually, the first book was the easiest, and I'll say why: it just came out in a very organic way.Â
I think all of us have one book in us. I took my time writing the first book, and it was fun, and I explored a lot.
The second and third books are already like part of a career, so I enjoyed writing them, but not as much as the first book. There wasn't so much exploration.
It was more like a dry approach, less romantic approach to the whole process.
And then they also took less time to write. I write pretty slowly, but the first book really took me forever. I really liked that the heroine of my third book was 45 years old. For me, that was a lot of fun to write, a heroine that is very close to my age.
Aaron: What is your best advice to authors out there who want to become a self published or independent author or Trad?
A: I think everyone should go to the self publishing route. Traditional publishing, I'm not sure, really gives you what you need, unless you are very, very well known. Also traditional publishers are actually taking successful indie publishers and give them contracts.Â
If you want to write the book, don't spend your time on querying traditional publishers, it is a waste of your resources.
I think everyone should Self Publish. And there are many free resources to learn about it on Facebook and on the internet. And once you start doing it, you learn. And you can learn by, you know, by trial and error, because it is your time and money, but at least you're doing something.
You're putting your book out there, you're not waiting for some agent or some Trad house to to fish you out of your slash pile, as they call the pile of manuscripts that they get. Â
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