New Author Podcast

Jerry’s deep in his final revision of book three — up to chapter 10 of 43, hunting down “band words” like just, actually, and glanced that sneak into his prose without him noticing, then running each chapter through a layered process of text-to-speech listening, AI grammar review, and ElevenLabs narration before calling it done. He also gets a rude pricing surprise: the discounted ElevenLabs voice...

Big milestone episode: Jerry officially finishes the latest revision of book three at 61,718 words and 43 chapters, then dives straight into his final draft pass. He also hands Claude Code a five-file plan for his reader-engagement mystery puzzle website and literally just... watches it build the whole thing from the couch, which is somehow both the most normal and most science-fiction moment of h...

Good news to open: last week's missing-chapter cliffhanger resolves itself, as Jerry's backup-hunting with Claude paid off and book three is back intact, now sitting at 57,381 words and over 70% through its second edit. He also gets real numbers back from his contractor on that long-gutted upstairs bathroom — a jaw-dropping $25,000 quote that gets an immediate, dad-approved "absolutel...

This one opens with a genuine cliffhanger: right before recording, Jerry discovers chapter one has vanished from his writing app, and spends the whole episode with Claude in another tab hunting through backup files to recover it (you'll have to listen to find out if it worked). From there, Jerry unveils a genuinely clever idea for capturing reader contact info from his 4,800 free-promo downloa...

Jerry hits a huge milestone this episode: the full second revision of book three is officially done, powered by an absurd ten-day stretch off work that also included two high school football games, a Top Golf outing in the rain, a casino stop that reminded him why he quit going, and roughly a dozen fantasy football drafts (including a Claude-built auction tracker he's using for real this time)...

Big marketing episode this week. Jerry runs a full free Kindle promo for book one and shares the play-by-play numbers as they happen: 187 downloads day one, then an explosive 2,500-plus after hitting FreeBooksy's massive email list, eventually landing him at #1 in Private Investigators, #1 in Amateur Sleuth, and #9 overall in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense on Amazon. He walks through real-ti...

This episode has a little bit of everything. Jerry keeps grinding through the edit of book three, technically hitting his "chapter 11" goal by splitting oversized chapters into smaller ones (a trick he's fully owning at this point). But the real highlight is a genuinely fun creative tangent: a vivid dream sparks the concept for a soap-opera-flavored murder mystery for book four, comp...

Both hosts admit up front this was a light writing week, and honestly, it makes for one of the more entertaining episodes. Jerry's stuck in his familiar Friday-Saturday-Sunday-writing, rest-of-the-week-nothing rut, though he does get real editing done on a tense "trapped on a mountain" chapter he's excited to read to his writers' club. He also goes deep on the strategy behind...

This one starts with a genuinely useful craft conversation: Rich is stuck on how to make his amateur-sleuth protagonist believable when she's embedded with the police, and Jerry walks through how he solved the exact same problem across his own series — building real tension and a slow-earned trust with law enforcement instead of just handing his character access. From there it's a packed e...

Two weeks off means twice the stats and twice the news in this one. Jerry closes out the first draft of book three — 45,512 words, 29 chapters, finished just two days after his own deadline — right in the middle of switching jobs and getting his driveway redone. He also shares real numbers from his book two Kindle Daily Countdown, which quietly outperformed his book one promo and is still generati...

Episode 362 opens with Jerry literally making a fantasy football draft pick mid-recording (Houston Texans defense, sixteenth round, no regrets), a genuinely funny multi-minute detour about Rich's display name blending into his window blinds, and then gets into some real news: as of July 31st, Jerry's current job no longer exists which means his whole writing-at-lunch routine is about to ch...

Episode 361 kicks off with Rich recording under the alias Captain Beefheart for reasons nobody fully explains, a Steven Wright joke about the Grateful Dead, and Jerry teasing some mysterious "big news" he can't talk about yet (subscribe if you want to find out when he finally spills it). From there it's a genuinely packed episode. Jerry had a monster writing week — book three jum...

This week, Jerry finally has the kind of update that makes a writer breathe like a human again: real progress. Book 3 is moving. He adds 13,970 words over the last two weeks, pushes the manuscript past 21,000 words, gets about a third of the way through the rewrite, and starts sounding like somebody who can actually see the road instead of just the potholes. Which is nice, because for a while ther...

This week, Jerry actually has real writing progress to report, which is nice, because lately Book 3 has felt like one long hostage situation involving outlines, rewrites, and editor notes. He adds 5,643 new words to Networking Murder , pushes his yearly total to 15,240, gets the green light from Super Editor Cee, and starts moving through the early chapters for real. So yes, the rewrite is still a...

This week, Jerry and Rich start out where all serious writing podcasts should: with World Cup fans losing their minds in America, Buc-ee’s getting the kind of free advertising money can’t buy, and the growing realization that half the internet is now just Europeans discovering that the United States is not, in fact, one long action-movie chase scene. So yes, before we get to books, there is a lot...

This week, Jerry and Rich both show up looking like they’ve been dragged behind their own projects for a few miles. Rich is getting swarmed at the library now that school’s out and kids are pouring in for summer programs and free lunches, while Jerry is staring down the reality that Book 3 is no longer a revision job. It’s a full rebuild. So yes, this one has that fun “everything is under control...

This week, Jerry and Rich show up for what Jerry calls “real podcasting,” which means no editing, a sagging microphone, and two writers trying to sound calm while both of them are standing in the middle of some very specific chaos. Jerry opens with the results of his recent promo run for Book 1: 98 total orders for the month, including 92 discounted copies of Book 1, 6 copies of Book 2, 1,037 page...

This week, Jerry is knee-deep in promo-stack numbers, Facebook ad stats, Amazon rankings, and the slow, humbling reality that book marketing rarely arrives like a fireworks show. Book 1 is in a Kindle Countdown deal, the promo sites are rolling, the emails are out, and the results are... fine. Not awful, not magical, and very much the kind of real-world author experience nobody puts on a motivatio...

This week’s episode is a shorter one, which in New Author Podcast terms means Jerry only reorganized half a novel instead of the whole publishing industry. He talks about taking a knife to Book 3, cutting scenes, moving key beats around, redefining the midpoint and pinch points, and finally starting to feel like the first half of the story has some real momentum instead of just politely standing t...

This week, Jerry shows up in a Star Wars shirt on May the Fourth, Rich brings the energy of a man enjoying spring fever a little too much, and the episode turns into a mix of writing therapy, publishing strategy, and the sort of side quests that somehow become the whole job. Jerry recaps the release aftermath for Book 2, the preorder setup for Book 3, the endless website and promo work, and the de...

This week, Jerry kicks things off on NFL Draft night in full Browns gear, ready to podcast, watch the draft, and somehow still pretend he’s focused. Rich opens with a writer personality quiz that includes Middlemarch , fountain pens, complicated mothers, and being from Ohio “in a very sad way,” which is honestly a strong start for two guys who then spend the next hour proving they absolutely do ha...

This week, Jerry and Rich return under storm clouds, weak internet, and the comforting glow of Jerry trying to watch The A-Team while podcasting like the professional he absolutely claims to be. Rich opens with the joy of spending two hours on the phone with Bank of America while dealing with his mother’s estate, which sounds exactly as fun as you’d imagine. Jerry counters by explaining that he is...

In this episode, Jerry somehow turns one busy release week into six separate side quests. He finishes revisions on Book 2, gets the covers in, pushes the release back two weeks, works through the final pass on Book 1.5, discovers his big TV has died after only 18 months, survives a rough Columbus sports weekend, and then casually drops the kind of news that probably should have come with its own d...

This week, Jerry is deep in the author bunker, trying to finish approximately seventeen publishing tasks at the same time. Book 1.5 is nearly done, Book 2 is buried under editor notes, Book 3 needs a preorder, covers are still in motion, front matter and back matter still exist to ruin a perfectly good afternoon, and the release calendar is getting close enough to feel personal. He walks through t...

This week on the New Author Podcast , Jerry and Rich kick things off with Midwest weather chaos, loud neighbors with louder trucks, and the annual tradition of dressing for four different seasons in a single week. From there, it’s back into the writing trenches. Jerry is deep into what he calls Revision Z , the final editing pass before sending his mystery novel to the editor. The plan: power thro...