In this episode we’re talking with special guest Clay Staffordāthe founder of Killer Nashville conference and magazine that deals with all things Thriller, Mystery and Suspense. In this interview Clay talks about the importance of adding mystery and suspense elements to any story to turn it into an engaging novel readers won’t be able to put down. He also discusses the number one difficulty writers face and how the Killer Nashville conference has helped some attendees establish a long-lasting author career.
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Resources we mentioned in this episode
- The Creative Academy for Writers
- MurderCon 2021
- Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith
- Play by Christopher Vaughan and Stuart Brown
- Her Dark Lies by J.T. Ellison
- Killer Nashville Conference
- Killer Nashville Magazine (free)
- Clay Staffordās website
- Clay Stafford’s “The Balanced Writer” Newsletter
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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 060: Clay Stafford on Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 58 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.
Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.
If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.
Crystal Hunt: Today’s topic is part of our series of craft discussions and we’ll be talking with special guest Clay Stafford, who is the founder of the Killer Nashville conference and the magazine of the same name, and deals with all things, thriller, mystery and suspense. But first, a quick glance at what’s new since our last episode. Michele how are things in Italy?
What has happened since the last episode?
Michele Amitrani: Everything is great, temperature is dropping. Weāre loving it. On the writerly side my editor sent me back the mythological permafree all edited. I got some great feedback from her. I’m looking forward to see how this permafree things will play out and itās going to be a first time for me. I already mentioned this. I will be attempting to getting a lot of eyeballs on this free product for traffic purposes.
There are challenges we know some, some weāll never know, and they will hit me hard than I will never see them, but we’re not thinking about that. We’re just thinking of the challenges and rewards. And as always, I will keep you posted on how it goes. And the permafree, just for you to know, is scheduled to be released wide on October, 2021. On the Italian side the Omnilogos story that, again I’ve mentioned in the past episodes, was supposed to be a short story, just became the Omnilogos novella. Something like 5,000 something words-story will break the five digit number by the time Iām done with the third rewriting.
I am very excited to be back in this sci-fi world that kept me entertained for around three, three years and a half. And also the rising sales of this series are definitely keeping me motivated on writing a bit more another chapter of the Omnilogos series. Again, I will keep you updated on now that go.
This novella will be a newsletter cookie for people that buy the series. If they want to sign up on my newsletter.
Scion of Gaia, my mythological retelling number four will be released in less than two weeks. And I already summoned my ARC team and Iām getting ready for an awesome release.
This is the first installment of a new series, and I have no idea how it’s going to go with most of the things that I’m doing. Again the only antidote for not freaking out, it’s just doing the thing and see how it goes. So I will keep you updated. King of Defiance is schedule 60 days after, and then there’s going to be Song of Forever in early 2022.
Italian nonfiction number two is out. It hit to the number one spot on several categories on Amazon Italy. Nothing to brag about sales-wise. It’s pretty easy to be up in Italy in the charts, but I wanted this particular book to be a best seller for marketing purposes. And now it’s a best seller in that particular category, which will help me market more effectively nonfiction number three, which is scheduled to be released on September.
Ā And that was it for me, Crystal. I’m also excited to know what happened to you in the last couple of weeks. Fall is almost upon us. And I know that’s one of your favorite times of the year, any project you’re working on right now?Ā
Crystal Hunt: I do love fall. Love the cooler temperatures. My little Irish soul does not do well in the heat.
So I tend to kind of just melt into a puddle over the summer and a really summers traditionally been kind of reading time and being active time and visiting with family and catching up with all of the things. But I’ve, I’ve been doing all kinds of exciting writerly things. I got to drink a little bottle of champagne that had the co-author book label on it.
As I have finished the drafting. And we areā¦ by the time you’re hearing this, it’s often the editor and well in Amanda’s capable hands for polishing up. So Create with Co-authors will be coming out late October. We haven’t set a firm date yet until we get it back from the editor. And we’ll keep you posted as soon as we have a live date for that of the pre-order will be up really soon.Ā
We also had an unexpected week of vacation, which timed itself perfectly. The day I finished the coauthor book my husband found out he got an unexpected week off work and so we decided to take it and run with it. So we’ve had a week of vacation, which I’ve actually spent a lot of work on a new book because traditionally that was the deal if we were on vacation and we didn’t have actual activities to do, which right now we’re kind of in lockdown.
So we were just doing staycation stuff. And so in between letting people bring us tasty food and sitting on the patio, reading lots and lots of books, I have been working on two novellas that go together that are the next two books in the Martinez family series in Rivers End and they are about Daniel’s twin brothers who are staying in his house while he is in Mexico with Lucy.
So I’m having some fun with that, getting back into the swing of that family and all of their various adventures and also working on the book. So in the reading world, my non-fiction reading right now is a book called Play which I have completely forgotten the name of the author, but it is all about sort of re-introducing play into your life and the importance of play.
And that’s been a focus for me with my writing is really just having fun with it. And so in that same vein, I’ve been reading, Writing Into the Dark, which was a very quick read. It’s not a super long book that is by Dean Wesley Smith and I think we mentioned it on the last. And it was interesting how much of that book actually describes my writing process and some of the things that I was like, oh, I really should be like more organized about this or I should probably know a bit more about some of this stuff before I dive into it. Yeah, no, I do exactly what he talks about with cycling and I ended up with a very clean first draft. Which really isn’t a first draft at all, but you know, just looking at, at that, it was really interesting to see someone describing effectively my process and realize that my seeming lack of a process actually really is a process and trusting that and just going with it.
So that’s kind of been the focus in both the fiction and nonfiction stuff that I’m doing right now is letting myself just trust my own instincts and not feel like I have to be more organized about plotting or how that’s going to work. The most interesting stuff comes when I just open up and let in whatever wants to come in and be part of the story.
And I found, doing that, I found a couple of ways that the two novella that I’m working on connect into other miniseries and other books in the series, which often just comes from being flexible enough to let the plot bend from where I thought it was originally going to go. So I’m feeling really good about those and really excited.
I’m hoping to finish the first of those two novellas this week and the second within the next three or four weeks. So that is really fun to see all of that coming together. But now we are going to switch gears. We’re gonna chat with clay and talk a little mystery, thriller and suspense.
About Clay Stafford
All right. So we are here with Clay Stafford today, and we are talking about mystery, thriller and suspense stuff. Welcome to the Strategic Auhorpreneur Podcast. We’re super excited to have you here all the way from Nashville. So today we are truly an international podcast because we have uh, Michele here from Italy, I am here from Canada and we have Clay representing America. So we have the three different countries,Ā
Clay Stafford: Four different countries cause Nashville is consider a different country.
Crystal Hunt: There you go. Perfect. So we’ve got, we’ve got a wide selection of things here today. Now Clay, I was reading your bio and trolling through all your websites and all your various projects and stuff.
We were getting ready to have you on the show. And holy cow, dude, that’s a, that’s a bio. I was trying to like summarize all the things down. It was just like, yeah, that isn’t going to work. So some of the things. I sort of popped out to me, which we would love to hear a little bit more about your background as you’ve been in movies and film, you’ve been book packaging, you’ve been writing, you have a publishing company or writing in residence, you run a conference. So many different parts that we could talk about. So I’m wondering if you could just give us a little bit of a starting place. Like how did you get into writing in the first place? What’s tell us a little bit about the guy behind the bio.
Clay Stafford: Okay. I really, I really think everything that you’ve mentioned comes down to story. And that’s basically what I’ve always been interested in. And I grew up in an Appalachian community. And if you know the stereotype of the Southern Appalachian community, you know, it is a heaven for storytellers. And I had a grandmother who was an avid storyteller, and I can remember walking the railroad tracks that ran through, you know, behind our house and thinking about what could be beyond that.
And I think pretty much, it’s just my journey as a storyteller all the way through. So everything that you’ve mentioned. Has to do with telling stories, you’re either acting or you’re producing or directing or you’re guiding or you’re publishing whatever. It’s just about the story. And I just happened to be a reader first. I love stories.Ā
Michele Amitrani: And if I can ask you Clay…
Clay Stafford: You can ask me anything!
Michele Amitrani: If I can ask you only one thingā¦
Clay Stafford: Well thatās gonna be a short interview. One thing,Ā
Michele Amitrani: But itās going to be with a lot of hopefully packed-a-bunch questions. As writers weāre usually writing in one genre, so it might be fantasy to see science fiction.
You elected as yours, among others, the mystery, thriller and suspense. And I was wondering what is that really pulls you into these genres.
Clay Stafford: You know, I think, and I’m going to give you a more general thing, because if you really look at what it says on the website, it says elements of mystery, thriller and suspense, which to me, I think is common to all genres.
And I’m an eclectic and very wide reader. I am an eclectic writer, and I am an eclectic developer of various types of stories, but all of them have the commonality to me of mystery, suspense, and thriller. Now you can narrow that down and focus that it’s really hard core mystery, hardcore thriller, hardcore suspense, but there are many literary novels that succeed because of those three elements.
They are just not packaged on a bookshelf in a bookstore under that. So what we’re trying to do is basically with Killer Nashville, to be able to help people incorporate those elements across a wide variety of genres, whether it be romantic suspense, science fiction, you can have mystery and science fiction and then we put it in the science fiction category. So if you look at the awards categories, if you look at our Claymore where we try to help people get published, you’re going to find a wide variety of what is known as traditional genre, but they’re going to contain the elements of mystery, thriller suspense, even in nonfiction, a biography, you’re going to have those same elements.
So we have nonfiction tracks there because really that’s what we’re trying to do because in my personal opinion, those three elements are what propel a story forward, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.Ā
Crystal Hunt: And do you think that folks who are winding those pieces into their stories are different in some way, or is there any kind of common characteristics about people who like to write in the, within those genres?
Story elements into their stories? What do you think makes those people unique from, from other writers?
How are mystery and thriller writers different from others?
Clay Stafford: You know, I think well, if you, if you’re going like mystery, thriller, suspense as the hardcore genre itself, Yes, youāve got people who have some sort of reason to be interested in crime and obsession with crime of some sort.
And not everybody likes to go there. My wife, for instance, will not read myā¦ Jeffery Dever is a business partner of mine on a project and we know, you know, Jeffery Deaver. And so the Bone Collector, other stuff but my wife, will not read Jeff’s books because they just terrify her to death.
And I think that for people who wish to incorporate that, you’ve got that sort of a cob feeling that you’ve got to go into the darkness of humanity and that’s what makes those particular genres different.Ā
Crystal Hunt: And I think the puzzle solving itself. There’s that element of moving those threads together and, and kind of wondering how things turn out, which is also an interesting sideline.
Clay Stafford: I was just gonna say, I think of course, you know, it’s, once again, it’s not necessarily for me as a reader is not just the problem solving itself. It’s the characters themselves and the why that it takes place within that mystery itself.Ā
Crystal Hunt: Yeah, definitely. I’m a health psychologist by background…
Clay Stafford: Ahhhh.
Crystal Hunt: And so the part has always been the fascinating criminology and stuff, but I write romance primarily.
Clay Stafford: Well there is lot of psychology in romance too.
Crystal Hunt: There is and well, and I, you know, I do write some romantic suspense and cozy mysteries and things like that as well. So it’s just an interesting thing where are those genres intersect and how you get the you know, I liked how you said it’s those story threads that are part of the mystery thriller and suspense categories that are really the weaving parts, because I think there are so many other genres that it also gives you a little more to work with when you are writing the same genre over a long period of time, if you can weave in some other sub-genres or story elements, it gives you a little more flexibility. And if you’re looking at writing over an entire career and staying in your lane, so to speak. If you are building a strategic author career, then genre hopping every book is going to be a little harder usually to build up a long time career that’s a successful kind of business.Ā
Clay Stafford: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things I loved about the film businesses, because in terms of a director or producer, you can work on numerous types of stories rather than being pigeon-holed into one particular genre, which I think is either a blessing or a curse for an author, depending upon how they look at that and what their interest is. Of course, if you’re, if you’re like I ā¦ in my writer and residents work, I tell them I’m like an electron I’m bouncing all over the place. And so for meā¦ getting stuck in one particular genre is not something that delights me.
Because I want to be free to pick and choose as I go along, which might explain the kind of eclectic career path that you referenced at the very beginning. There’s always that need to go explore new ground.
Michele Amitrani: So I’m curious Clay, are there examples that you are maybe watching or reading right now on this genre that we are discussing that you think might be useful to listeners to point to? Some novels that you’re reading that is nailing it, especially in the suspense or the thriller genre, a series, TV show that is really doing a good job in making us understanding how pacing is done well, or characters are done well, anything on this side that you think might explain really how a story is crafted well.Ā
Clay’s thriller recommendationsĀ
Clay Stafford: You know, I think I will just, since we just finished with Killer Nashville, I’ll just look and, you know, give a plug for the three guests of honor that we had there. Walter Mosley is an excellent writer. He was our Sing and Thaller award winner this year.
And he’s got two books out on writing. Both of those are excellent books and to read his work is to see, you know, really well crafted JT Ellison’s new book that came out, and I can’t remember the title off the top of my head, but it’s the current book that’s out right now is a really well done homage to Daphne Nemours Rebecca and really creates almost a closed room type situation in terms of the mystery thriller that’s going on. And then there’s Lisa Black who joined us, who writes procedurals. And I think, you know, just depending upon the interest in any of those three would be great, but those, those are there’s the ones I’ve currently read.
I’ve got, I’m one of those that reads, you know, like 12 books at a time and I’ll read, I think it comes from, you know, growing up watching TV that you to see an episode here. So you read a chapter of this book, then read a chapter of that book and it’s just whatever you’re in the mood for that night. So I’ve got a ton of books on my desk and on my to read list as everybody does. Right? But I just citing those three authors I think is is, is you can’t go wrong with them.
Crystal Hunt: And so you’ve mentioned Killer Nashville conference a few times. Can you tell us a little bit more about that for folks who haven’t had the benefit of trolling through all the materials yet and what’s, what’s that all about?.
About Killer Nashville
Clay Stafford: And it’s all always exciting when, you know, for anybody. With a media when someone’s trolling, but when you go trolling through the site, basically Killer Nashville was started in 2006 to help beginning authors and that goes back to a personal story of mine. A lot of people helped me along the way. And so I got to a point that I wanted to give back. And I came home in 2006 and said, I think I’m going to do a writers’ conference in this matter of fact, I’d like to do an international writer’s conference because we’re becoming a very globalā¦ the internet was making it possible for me to communicate with people and meet people, wonderful people that I had never been able to meet before.Ā
And so we decided to create an international conference and it has worked out well every yea weā¦ well, COVID limiting, you know, who can get back into their country and who can get out of their country.
We continue to be truly an international conference and that’s really good because of the dynamics and the culture that were, that are brought in. But we were, the premise was to help provide a network system to help people who are trying to break into the profession. So we’ve got people who are just beginning and have an idea with nowhere else to go. And then we go all the way through to people who are actually already New York times bestsellers. And we wanted to look at the latest kind of pardon my dog. I think someone came to the doorā¦ but to provide for best sellers and we’ve had New York times best sellers come repeatedly every year, just to look at our tracks on publicity and marketing and then also one of the things I think that makes us different from the very start we’ve been cooperating with what I call the ABCs of the government, the CIA, the FBI, the TBI local Sheriff’s departments to have a forensic track that runs the full conference. Every, every session talking about getting it right in terms of the authors themselves.
So that’s pretty much what happens at Killer Nashville.Ā
Crystal Hunt: Well, one of the things about those live in person events is that often they develop kind of a personality, the different conferences have a real feel to them, or, you know, some of that will be locally based or events based. If you had to describe your conference as a character, what kind of personality would you ascribe to that event?
Clay Stafford: I would say that we are a family. And if you attend the conference, you see that it is more of a family, the networking that takes place, the relationships that develop and at times I would say sometimes, you know, we are a delightful family, sometimes we’re a dysfunctional family, but we are a family nonetheless.
And I think when, if you look at the social media posts from people who have attended Killer Nashville you will see that they constantly reference that family environment. And it’s just long-term friendships that are made. And we’ve got this policy that everybody who comes in to Killer Nashville has to be able to not just make an appearance now, but share their business card and share their email, share their phone number so that all of these people areā¦ You’re able to make true relationships with other people. And that’s, that’s invaluable for example, let’s say that there’s a presentation from an FBI special agent. I am not doing anything right now with an FBI special agent, but maybe two years from now. I am. So we encourage everybody to collect business cards and phone numbers and contact info from everybody.
Because when I get ready to write about the FBI agent, I’ve got a contact who has agreed before they come to Killer Nashville to constantly be available into the future for the people they meet act through or Nashville itself. So it’s really the, I think the thing that makes us different is that access that we constantly give to whoever comes in and we vet very carefully, all of our agents and editors and law enforcement personnel and our best-sellers to make sure that everybody is the accessible type person, because not everybody is, but we want Killer Nashville to be that way. Plus it’s that Southern hospitality, right?Ā
Michele Amitrani: Yeah, I think curating the guests and the people that are going to do the talking is very important.
Crystal will say that even the Surrey International Writing Conference, they do exactly that providing the best experience that they possibly can. You mentioned something about people attending the conference because they want to know a bit more about writing and also the publishing world.
What do you think is the number one difficulty, the more difficult thing for people that are at the conference and they want to write a book and publish it, but they can’t. What’s the number one thing that stops them doing that?
Clay Stafford: I think I, I, for me, it’s just a simple answer: they stop. I don’t want to be silly by saying that, but I think that there’s much to be said as both of you know, through your various other activities. You know, this podcast that tenacity and ambition and drive are the things that people people forward.
I’ve seen, I’ve seen people with very good manuscripts that have submitted to a few agents, got a few agents rejections, and then decided to give up completely. And I think it all falls within the hands. And also I think, you know, we were one of the first people encouraging self-published authors.
We believe that, you know, different people have different audiences and different desires and different ambitions and not everyone wants to be with the big five. And there’s very good reasons for not being with the big five. And so we try to encourage people in different directions, but sometimes I think people have preconceived notions of what they’re wanting out of their career.
And for example, say somebody who is writing something that is so eclectic, but yet a wonderful book, but so eclectic that he can’t find a spot and a publisher and you have an agent that doesn’t want it. Maybe that’s something that you need to look intoā¦. If it’s really a good book, self publishing, but there may be a bias towards self publishing.
So I think the main answer to your question is what gets in their way I think they get in their way, and that’s the thing that I see more than anything.
Crystal Hunt: Yeah. The only way to guarantee losing is taking yourself out of the game completely.Ā
Clay Stafford: Yes, exactly.Ā
Crystal Hunt: Yeah. And I think, you know, as writers, we’re so often looking for external validation or somebody else to tell us the story is good. Cause we live in our own heads with our own imaginary friends very often. And it’s definitely, you’ve got to have enough confidence in your own judgment and that is definitely something that we see coming up over and over again in interviews with people and in the writers that we know is just having that confidence and having the tenacity, as you said, just to stick in it is important.Ā
Clay Stafford: I think it’s important for people to be very honest, ask a lot of why. Why do you want this? Why do you want that? Why? Rather than accept something, thatās a casual desire because that’s not going to carry you through.Ā
For me again, I love story. So to me, the creation of the story is the thing that drives me, not necessarily the publication. And there are a lot of people who are motivated by the publication of it, but for me, I’m like that crazy painter who is painting on a canvas and obsessed with a canvas, and then once I am finished with that reallyā¦ thank goodness I have an agent and you know, an entertainment attorney to make sure that thingsā¦ something happens after that. Because for me as soon as that painting is finished, I set it up against the wall and begin on a new canvas because that’s what interests me.
And for me, I know that that’s my asset but I also know that’s my liability. And I think everyone who has aspirations as writers needs to take a full assessment of who you really are and what you really want, not what you think you want, but what you really want. There is a certain lifestyle with being a best-selling author that you may not like at all.Ā
And you may find that you prefer, you know, to go a different route from someone else, but I think a lot of people haven’t thought it through well, enough, exactly what you want. And I think you’ll find your happiness if you really spend some self time trying to think, what do I want out of this career?
What do I love about what I’m doing? And I think that if you know that if you define that, then you don’t have that stop that we were talking about before, because it doesn’t really matter, you know, in my life, it doesn’t matter if I get published or not, or it doesn’t matter if my film gets made or not.
I may spend two years on a film that never gets made. I may spend five years with a production at Sony pictures which I have. With projects in development. And I love the part of the development. The thing never got made everybody got, you know, the guy shepherding it through, moved on and so nobody else wanted to take an orphaned project and that was fine with me. I had a blast in development all the way through theā¦ you know, and you got money in the mail. And for me, it’s just that creative things. So I think everybody just needs to decide what it is they want to do and why. And then you’ll be happy.
Crystal Hunt: I was going to say that’s the one thing I think that we can learn a lot in the writing world from the film world, which you just kind of hit on the head there, which is so often in film and TV, the project never actually gets made, or it never actually gets all the way through the process and makes it to the readers and thatās just the industry, like, yes, it’s disappointing, but there isn’t the expectation that every project you work on is going to end up as a finished product. And I think that’s something that as writers, we don’t necessarily grasp that the same way because it’s not always dependent on other people to make it happen.
Like if you’re looking for guarantees, you can get them in writing because you can always choose to self publish something and get it out there but that, that point of really needing to know why you are doing it. And is it the love of the story process of making the thing? Or is it the love of having it in someone’s hands that you to know that to define your own success?
So I think that’s something that’s really, really great for people to think about is the, the why’s. And also just to understand, you don’t negate the process of creating something, just because it didn’t end up in the final product that you had envisioned maybe at time.Ā
Clay Stafford: Yeah. I think it’s aā¦ if you, if you want to look at it like that, and I guess maybe the film influence does have a factor on me, but I mean, I know people personally, who are making seven figures a year and never producing anything.
Everything is in development. As a matter of fact, there’s, if I looked deep enough, there’s probably those who are making that money and never done anything. And you would never know who they are, but they continue just to do development because that’s what they love. And I guess you understand you have an acceptance of the business.
I think to referencing the question, sometimes we want to change the publishing business, or we want to change the film and television business, but you’re not going to do it. So you operate within the system itself and you find your path within the system that’s already created because you’re not going to be this lone voice that suddenly changes how the publishing industry works.
And so I think you find your, your place in that, but in terms of defining what you are. I know there are people who’ve gone for years and are making plenty of money in the film business, and you’ve never seen anything they’ve done because it’s never been made.
Michele Amitrani: Yeah. Going back to the conference and the project the you have in store. What fun things are happening for you in 2022? Are you planning on working with other authors? You have some project that is baking something interesting on the horizon?Ā
What is Clay working on right now?
Clay Stafford: I always have things in the pot. And so I don’t want, you know, necessarily wanna go into detail because again the process, the creative process for me is the thing that I love.
I’ve been in this business long enough, you referenced acting, I started as a professional kid actor at the age of 10. Now I decided, I guess, early in life that I wanted to live a full life of rejection because you can’t get much further from rejection being a writer or being an actor or so. I think I, I made a choice of that.
I’ve been in this business for the decades that I’ve been in that I understand that rejection lettersā¦ I mean, you get to the point where, you know, rejection letters or whatever rejection from anybody really is just as I say, here, water on a duck’s back. It just kind of rolls off. It’s just part of it.
And I don’t think that thereā¦ I could read, I could read your book and love it. I could give it to my wife to read it and she wouldn’t like it at all. And it’s totally subjective. And I think that you’ve got to get to that point where it is just you concentrate on the work and then whatever else comes from that.
So getting back to your question, there’s a lot of things that I concentrate on. I developed with other writers, I develop books. I’ve got the conference going, I’ve got my own books and things that I’m working on. A fiction and a nonfiction book that I’m personally working on right now. And I’m really jazzed about both of them.
I work in on one in the morning and one in the after the different one in the afternoon, and then I’m constantly developing these other projects and I’m fortunate to have a very laid back company and team of people who are creative people who work with me. Not everybody has that, but I’ve developed that over the years and pretty much we’re all in it just to have a good time. I would say that I’m still a 10 year old boy, you know, with an eight millimeter camera. And so I show up with a wonderful idea and it may not work and who cares, but we had a heck of a time today, didnāt we? And so that’s pretty much what have I got in, you know, that’s exciting. Every day for me is exciting.
I wake up excited and wear myself out and just like a kid fall over at night and then just get back up in the morning and do it again. And it’s a matter of fact, my life is what I’m interested in, it’s play for me. And I think that that’s what writers need to do. They need to find the play, forget all of this other oppressive
stuff that’s that’s driving you crazy. Go back to the playing thing. The thing that wanted to made you want to come into it in the first place. I don’t take days off. I work every day. I work the weekends. I, but it’s not work and, you know, I’ve had some say. You’re, you’re a workaholic. I mean, you’ve seen my resume, so, you know, I’m busy, right?
So, but people say I’m a workaholic, but I’m not a workaholic. I’m getting up and playing every day. I’m not riding my bicycle but I’m doing something else. Right. And so I think it’s a great way to live your life. When I do presentations and stuff on creativity and things, I’m trying, I try to get you back to that essence of what was exciting to you.
I read, you know, you’re doing your translation on your book and I listened to some of the podcast on that and you’re having a great time. You seem to be really, really enjoying it. And I think that that’s what it’s all about. So I’ve gotten a numerous things in the cooker. Some of them will go somewhere.
Some of them won’t and I don’t care. I’m just having a great time. Enough of them go somewhere that we can pay the rent. Right? So that’s, that’s all we need, right?
Crystal Hunt: Absolutely. One of the things that wasn’t that long and varied bio thatā¦
Clay Stafford: Long varied bio. That sounds like a Beatles song. Long and varied bioā¦
Crystal Hunt: I know like a memoir type. You talked about, there was a period of working with, or for, or as a book packager, and I was curious just because book packaging is something in the industry that not everyone is familiar with what that is or how it works. And so and I think it’s really interesting opportunity or avenue maybe just to kind of make people more aware of. So can you tell us a little bit more about that book packaging.
About book packaging
Clay Stafford: Yeah that started for me when I was working for PBS. And that was back in the days you remember you would watch a PBS show and then it would say āand the companion book isā¦ā dah dah, dah, dah.
And for me I was, I got my I was a publisher editor, developer packager for those PBS companion books for the national audience. And so I was green-lighting those projects and developing those projects and I think a book packager basically, and I just did the same thing with the Killer Nashville anthology packaged a book for a Diversion Books. You basically have the idea, but you find the necessary people in order to be able to put it together. You are the conduit between the publisher or the distributor and the person who has the criteria needed in order to be able to do the book itself. And so basically what I, what I do is you know, maybe a pitch from you coming to me, or it may be me having an idea of what I want and going out and trying to find someone that I can get to package that book.
And Iāve done very well, and in book packaging, and it’s a behind the scenes, you don’t see my name. You don’t see credits, you don’t see things, but it makes, you know, it makes people happy on both sides. You become a broker, I guess, of ideas. And we’ve, we’ve had a good, I had a good string with the PBS books that we worked on and then other projects that we’ve done, including the latest one I did with Diversion Books on short stories. So if youāveā¦ itās just, it’s an, it’s a, it’s a good thing too, because it provides one, you know, somebody may not have a way to get into the industry itself and if you’ve got a book packager who actually knows people and can orchestrate the behind the scenes movements necessary in order to get to distribution it’s a good find.
So it’s a, win-win all the way around forever.Ā
Michele Amitrani: And Clay our listeners are always looking for new places where to submit their stories and we know that you have several annual awards, that are presented at the conference. Would you like to talk a bit more about those?Ā
Awards at Killer Nashville
Clay Stafford: Yeah, we’ve got two awards. One is for published books of the previous best published books of the previous years and it goes across several genres. That’s the Silver Fashion award. But the one that really excites me is the Claymore Award because we take the first 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript and again, that goes back to being the little Appalachian kid with nowhere to go and what doors can we open up?
You know, to get me out of here? To bigger and better things than just, you know, chicken pens and hog pins and things that I grew up with. And so the Claymore Award has opened the doors, its first 50 pages, and basically what we’re doing is trying to, it’s so hard to get through the slush pile and so what we do is basically we have people in the industry, but agents writers, librarians who actually read the manuscripts and find the top books manuscripts and then we proceed not only just to give an award, but we also follow these authors and tried to develop their careers.
There’s book packaging again. Right? But we get we ha we get no profit or participation or anything, and it’s something that is a charity, what we do, but we help them get agents for those that are wanting to be traditionally published. We’ve had success stories between people finding their agent through the Claymore Award to getting published through the Claymore Award.
And we’ve had several movie deals as a result of those contacts that were made through the Claymore Award, and nothing makes me happier than to be at the conference itself and have one of our finalists there and go, they want to read my manuscript. They want to take my manuscript. And then we see people who are literally there, I mean, not to be sappy, but literally their dreams come true.Ā
And for me, that’s an incredibly rewarding thing. That’s the reason that we do that I started Killer Nashville and that’s the reason that I continue to do Killer Nashville. I am kind of the head of Killer Nashville, the spokesman of killer Nashville, but it’s a total charity on my part.
I’ve never taken a dime from Killer Nashville ever. All the profits that come from Nashville. If there are profits from Killer Nashville go back to the conference itself. And so it really is about developing those authors and the Claymores my personal favorite because I do see get to see dreams come true.
Crystal Hunt: And you have also developed a magazine, which is one of the things that I found when I went looking on the website and. And there are fantastic articles in there. One of the ones I noticed in the current issue was highlighting how the pandemic has changed book publicity for good. And so that I think is just something to draw people’s attention to that the magazine is a free resource. It looks fantastic. I’ve only kind of dug into the first issue that I got my hands on so far, but can you tell us a little bit about like who contributes to it? How does it work? How often does it come out and where do people get their hands on it more importantly?
Killer Nashville magazine
Clay Stafford: Well, you can go to KillerNashvilleMagazine.com. That’s very simple KillerNashvilleMagazine.com and the reason that it was started was because we there’s, there’s people who can’t come to Killer Nashville. And once again you know, I worked really hard in the industry and I’m at that point where I just feel like I need to be giving back and I feel like sometimes that the people who need the information the most are not necessarily the ones who can pay for it.
They’re the ones who are struggling. We’ve got are you familiar with Lisa Jackson? Best-selling author? She sponsors a scholarship with killer Nashville because she came to Killer Nashville and saw that what we were doing, basically coincided with her life story of being a single mom with kids, trying at the same time to write and trying to, you know, pay the bills and everything.
And I view the people that we’re trying to reach are people who may not necessarily be able to afford it. When we started Killer Nashville, how much are we going to charge for it? I’m not going to charge for it. I’m gonna give it away. And then who are we going to have writing the articles? Well, I’m going to have experts in publicity and marketing.
I’m going to have people who are actually, you know, bestselling, published authors. I’m going to have interviews with published authors. We’re going to talk about publishing because really what I’m wanting to do is make whatever you decide as your objective, your career objective, and remember that we went back earlier, the āwhyā you want to do it.
I just want to help you live that I’ve, I’ve lived that myself. I’ve had some wonderful experiences and I really don’t think locationā¦ because we’re on the internet, itās an internet magazine, no matter where you are. You can see it. If you have the internet, it’s free. There’s no excuse, not for you to be able to read there, and there’s a lot of inspiration and guidance to get you to where you want to go to next. So that was the idea behind Killer Nashville magazine.Ā
Crystal Hunt: Well, as usual, our time has flown by. We could probably…
Clay Stafford: No way!
Crystal Hunt: But we all have books to write. So thank you so much for taking time out of your extremely busy schedule to come and chat with us. And for folks who want to go troll your websites and whatnot as always, we put all the links in the show notes. So folks, you can go to the show notes, you can go and find Clay and all of his various projects, you can find the magazine, all that stuff is linked out. Clay is there anywhere else we should send people to get in touch with you? I don’t know if you’re a social media guy or not. What’s your favorite way for people to reach out if they find they’re fascinated by something?
Clay Stafford:You know, it just the, as just referenced here, you can find everything you need going to ClayStafford.com or KillerNashville.com or KillerNashvilleMagazine.com and that covers everything we’ve discussed right here. And you can find social media links attached on all those websites.Ā
Crystal Hunt: All right, folks. We hope you enjoyed today’s show. Remember to hit that subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to the podcast and to visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com for show notes and links to the books, resources and tools that we talked about in today’s episode, as always feel free to hit that bias a coffee button, if you find the show helpful, every contribution helps us keep the shows coming and keep our productions ads free. Until next time. Happy writing.
Michele Amitrani: Happy writing everyone.