SPA Girls Podcast

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we were lucky enough to have a repeat guest - Kathryn Burnett, a well-known New Zealand playwright and screenwriter. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Kathryn is chocka full of useful knowledge on the craft of writing as well as...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we had as our guest the lovely Melissa Storm, who runs several author businesses, and is also a very successful indie author in her own right. Along with her training courses through the Author Engine, and editing, marketing and formatting servi...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  For prolific author, Zoe Dawson, it's all about the happily ever afters. Zoe writes across several genres including romantic suspense, small town romance, new adult, urban fantasy and romantic comedy. We talk with Zoe about the challenges and rewards of w...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk to bestselling self-published author Dave Chesson.  He's the genius behind the Kindlepreneur.com blog, which provides loads of step-by-step information for self published authors, and he's also the creator of the fabulous app KDP Rocket,...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk about Kindle Unlimited, or KU, as it's commonly known. KU is the exclusive readers' programme for Kindle customers on Amazon, which authors can join as long as they give exclusivity to Amazon. We discuss the pros and cons of going into t...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, writers around the world challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in a month. We talk about the challenge, why it's been so successful, the aspects of it that we...

This week we're dealing out the "truthslaps" – in a loving way, of course. Wendy, Cher and Shar discuss ten truths for self-publishers that will help you navigate the choppy waters of a new indie author career.  We want to be positive, but also realistic, so we are holding nothing back here. This is a rewarding (but tough) business and it requires patience and persistence.  When you're starting ou...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk about the multitude of ways that we've managed to get more writing time in our days. We're all busy, we have other jobs, kids, husbands, wives, partners and other commitments in our days that mean there's not a lot of spare time for writ...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls for 30ish minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we tackle Christmas. Not literally. I mean we're not going after Santa or anything. No knocking him to the ground, and sitting on him til he gives us presents. That would be weird, right?  No, this week we're talking about what self-published authors s...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk to fantasy and young adult author Katie Cross about being a military wife, learning to be a nap-time authorpreneur, and making every moment count. She also gives us some amazing productivity tips for authors who are trying to squeeze the...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This is a very special episode of the SPA Girls Podcast - our 100th episode! Who'd have thought when we nervously started our first episode that we'd make it this far??  We talk through everything we've learned about self publishing and writing over the l...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we have authorpreneur and automation expert Arianna Golden. She's great at helping authors set up systems in their business, to amp up their productivity, and enhance their ability to write.  Automation doesn't have to be a scary word. As Ariann...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week Shar and Trudi interview Wendy and Cheryl about their trip to Orlando for the Romance Writers of America 2017 conference. They give tips on surviving a conference with 2,000 other people, plus talk about what they learned from meeting self publi...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we interviewed best selling urban fantasy author Shayne Silvers, who gives us the inside scoop on his writing processes, his beta reading team, and how he markets his popular Nate Temple series. Spoiler warning: Shayne works really hard, set eve...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we're live from the RWNZ conference here in New Zealand, and we're talking with New York Times bestselling author Christie Craig. Christie writes humorous romantic suspense under her real name, and young adult paranormal under the pen name CC Hu...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we have a fantastic interview with the delightful Brian Meeks, who talked to us about creating and making money on Amazon Ads. Brian recently published a book on how to master Amazon ads, and runs a very successful Facebook group on the same top...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we chat to Monica Leonelle about marketing for indie authors, and the lessons she's learned after a career in marketing and copywriting. Specifically, Monica took us through some of the psychological triggers that you can use to amp up your effo...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  Cheryl and Wendy are still in Orlando at the RWA conference, and this time they're interviewing the wonderful Roxanne St. Claire, a multi-award-winning indie author who opens up about her career, what she does to get her books published, and what she's do...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week Wendy and Cheryl were lucky enough to interview Mark Dawson at the Romance Writers of America conference in Orlando, Florida. (Trudi and Shar jealous? Nah, of course not....)  He was a lovely guest, and was very gracious about giving some great...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we talk about the best ways to find and keep focused. We're talking about the mental stuff around focus, and how to avoid self sabotage in your writing career. We talk about self awareness, the overstimulation and desensitisation that exists in...

This week we're launching our brand new book: Kick Author Overwhelm in the B*tt! and we invited three self published authors to talk to us about their careers, and how they've faced and overcome Author Overwhelm in their own lives.  Louisa George, Toni Kenyon and Karina Bliss are three very talented authors who kindly agreed to join us for this very special episode of the SPA Girls Podcast to help...

Thinking of self publishing but don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we decided to go a little bit behind the scenes of the SPA Girls side of things. Instead of talking about our fiction books, we talk about how the SPA Girls came about, what we were trying to achieve when we decided to start the podcast, why we're...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we try to nut out our own personal author values, and try to distill down a mission statement for each of us as authors. We believe that defining your core values as an author will help you make decisions in your author career, keep your focus l...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we take a look at our fears, the mental stuff that's stopping us from getting ahead. We look at the fears that stopped us, how we got over them and how you can too. We talk about some of the fears we've had through our careers, the ones we still...

Thinking about self publishing and don't know where to start? Join the SPA Girls each week for 30 minutes of honest advice, tips and resources.  This week we decided to talk about the writing program that nobody else is mentioning... Word.  We go through the program, talk about how we use it, and give some tips and advice on how to use it better.