Instant Replay - Author Spotlight: Scarlett Cole

FINAL AUDIO - Instant Replay - Author Spotlight: A Conversation with Scarlett Cole

Matt: Welcome everybody back to write Out Loud the podcast about writing storytelling and what? 

Christina: Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no, no. 

Matt: What? 

Christina: We weren't gonna record tonight. 

Matt: What? You, you said we didn't 

Christina: have to record tonight? 

Matt: No, we, we had a whole thing. I got a whole thing planned out, 

Christina: but, but I can't. I can't. I can't.

Why? Because Scarlet Cole's new book just came out and I have to read it. I can't record tonight. 

Matt: Oh, uh, okay. Um, the, the 

Christina: oath we take mm-hmm. Just came out 

Matt: Mm. 

Christina: Just came out and I've gotta go read it. 

Matt: Oh, okay. I guess we're, we're gonna, we're both gonna get, I mean, uh, all right, fine. I'll pick it up too. 

Christina: Okay.

Matt: I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it. In case you We'll, me back here, you know, don't remember we had Scarlet Cole on 

Christina: Yes. This 

Matt: podcast, right? 

Christina: Oh, yes. I know what you're gonna say. 

Matt: Yeah. So I think here's what we'll do. You and I, we're gonna run away. We're gonna read Scarlet Cole's new book that just came out, the oath we take, and we're gonna let you listen to the episode that we recorded with Scarlet Cole.

Yes. And once you're done, then we would also recommend that you go ahead and get her book and start reading. 

Christina: Yep. And, and if you haven't read the others, start with the first book and, yeah. There you go. Read the rest. Keep yourself busy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Can we also, can we also go on a cruise to The Bahamas?

Sure. So I can read my book? 

Matt: Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Plenty of time. The sun 

Christina: it sunset. 

Matt: Perfect. Alright, well here it is our, I guess, instant replay, Scarlet Cole. Welcome back to Write Out Loud, the podcast about storytelling, writing, authorship, and all of the creative arts that go into that. I, of course, am Matt Cassem, and I'm joined by the lovely, amazing, stupendous, wonderful, magical, mystical.

Christina 

Christina: and 

Matt: hello. Hello. And Christina, we have a special guest. Why don't you tell us? We do. 

Christina: I spent the first few minutes of. The intro before the podcast fangirling over our guest today. I have been reading her for a long time and it, it absolutely a thrill. We actually talked about her a couple weeks ago on the podcast because it was so blown away by a post she wrote in a writer's group on on Facebook, and so I reached out to her.

I didn't wait for her to listen to that podcast. I reached out to her. And asked her if she would join us to talk about that post. Uh, welcome to the podcast, miss Scarlet Cole. Hey, 

Matt: Scarlet. 

Scarlett Cole: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here. 

Matt: We're super, super excited to have you as well. Tell us a little bit about yourself, or maybe if we're not familiar with your work, tell us a little bit about you and, and kind of the, the work you've done.

Scarlett Cole: So, I am an utterly unapologetic romance writer. Wholeheartedly believe in the happily ever after. I call Toronto, Canada and Manchester England home. I was a reader long before I was a writer. I picked up my first ever romance book in Chicago O'Hare Airport, where I was stranded in a snow storm. It was a Nora Roberts book, and I have been hooked ever since.

Matt: That is awesome. Love that Nora Roberts. Okay. You know, doesn't 

Christina: it, Matt? 

Matt: Yes, yes it does. Yeah. I mean, Christina, of course has been just like really bathed in romance almost, I think her entire life, so, yeah. Well, it, I've only known her to be fans of, of all, all Romance. 

Christina: Yes. Mm-hmm. Similar story only Mine was at the end of a grocery store aisle, and I saw the, the pirate and the princess.

It was one of those zebra romances with the iridescent icon. Aging myself a little bit, but yeah, I was hook, line and sinker and you know, ended up making a career out of it. So obviously you did too. So there's, there's something to it. And I think perhaps you just actually stated why I connected with your book so well and why I'm such a fan is I have noticed the best writers never forget that they're a reader too.

And I think that just comes across in the book and we just, we get sucked in. Um. Along for the ride. So, so thank you so much, um, for being here, for this episode that I am actually calling the Great Pivot, uh, because you had titled your, that's a good title. Yes, yes. You had titled your article The Pivot, and one of my clients is actually in that group.

I'm not in that group, but she's in there and she cut and pasted and sent it to me and said. Oh my gosh, you have to read this. And I'm not even sure she was aware that I was a fan of yours at the time, but everything that you said in that post is stuff that I have said to her before that you really do have to really know and understand who you are as a writer in order to make the best of it.

So what I hope we can do is maybe. Take it a little bit, bit by bit and go through not only some of your key points, but some of the things that you learned mm-hmm. Afterwards. So actually, absolutely. I'm actually gonna start at the beginning where you said you went from being a full time writer to going back to work, uh, part-time.

And that first of all, I think really, um, throws off writers because I. You know, nine times outta 10 when you meet somebody who's a writer, their number one goal is quit my day job. Um, yet here you were writing full time and said, I need to go back to that day job because it was helping me. Can you talk a little bit about that transition?

Scarlett Cole: Yeah, and I think to answer that question, I have to go back one pivot before that. Before I started writing romance, I was senior vice president of strategy for a $42 billion company. Wow. And I was on a path to becoming COO of that company. I was rated as exceptional at the time. That was my review rating, and everybody expected me to carry on with that path, but I'd always felt like I wanted to write.

And family circumstances were such that. I had an opportunity to move back to the UK from Canada with my family, and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm gonna give it a try at writing a book when I get there, because it will also mean I'm around for my family to help everybody settle back in a new country, get them into schools, and all those kinds of good things.

So I've always believed in this idea that we're put on this planet to be good at more than one thing. Very many of us fall into a path. It comes from our first job or whatever. Degree we choose when we're at university and we sort of set off on this path and, and generally it's about how do you continue to move up on that path you're already on.

But I've always felt like sometimes you've gotta look sideways, you've gotta look what else, where else could you go up? Isn't necessarily always the right, the right move. Sometimes going across or even down to a different level to then pick up new skills to then move forward in something else. And so I've never been scared of the pivot.

So I left that job. I did a lot of women's mentoring and coaching. I was very involved in strategy and executive leadership, and then I'm writing romance and there's a lot of differences between the two. One is very in person, one is very solitary. I. In leadership, it's moment to moment decisions where in writing you end up on this sort of writing cycle of it's gonna take me X weeks to write the book and so many weeks to edit the book and then I'll put the book out and then I'll put a book out every X many weeks or how months or whatever it is you want to put one out on.

And so I had been doing, I was very fortunate, I got a publishing deal with the very first book I wrote. But in furnace, I did use the strategy knowledge I had at the time. Part of my job included predicting where economic landscapes were going. And so I did the same and I applied it to romance. Where are the trends in romance?

Where are they going? What are readers looking for? What are they falling out of love with? And I wrote the Strongest Steel. I was super fortunate that I got an agent with that book and I got a record publishing deal with St. Martin's Press with that book. And so I had my first book and, and I got a publishing deal and I got an advance.

And so from day one of being a writer, I was a full-time writer in my, that first series led to a seven book deal with St. Martin's Press, and I was just able to continue. And what I realized, sort of the backend of 2022 probably, is that I could keep doing this. I could keep writing books and I could keep writing books and I could keep writing books, but I felt like I still had more to give.

Outside of writing too. And so while I was fortunate enough that I could have continued financially as a full-time writer, I wasn't failing fully fulfilled, I felt very fulfilled as a romance writer. If you'd asked me was I happy with my career and my agent and the books I was putting out and the platform I was building, and all of those kinds of things, the answers to all of those would've been yes.

But there was something else inside me that was saying, nah, you've still got more to give. In the public domain in some way. You need to figure out what that is. And so that was where the decision came to then pivot and go, right, I'm going to make this decision to quite determinedly, make two separate careers that would have equal priority in my life.

Christina: Yeah. Do you feel that they feed one another, they feed into one another? 

Scarlett Cole: I think there's different ways they feed into each other. I. I, I get a different kind of energy from both. So actually having time away where I go do the other thing for a bit, I come back to the other feeling energized and refreshed and ready to do it.

So that's one way they sort of feed into each other in that they keep me whole, my brain feels stimulated with the two different parts. It's kind of entertaining 'cause I also have a DHD. So I, I'll go off a corporate business call and then I'll go back to writing a super steamy sex scene and then I'll do that for two hours and then I'll go off and write a presentation deck to go in front of leading philanthropists.

So I, I juggle these things so that feeds into each other. I also think it feeds into the kind of stories I want to tell. 

Christina: Yeah. 

Scarlett Cole: You know, even from my executive life. I've always been about empowering women. How do you give women a platform for growth? How do you encourage women to seek out careers and lives that add meaning for them?

And so when I write my heroines, I think a lot about that. About what is all of the, what are all of these different women's character acts that take them from where they are to this place of self possession by the end of the book, that they know more about themselves. And are living more of the life they actually wanna be living.

So I think it feeds that way too. 

Christina: Yeah, that's really fascinating. You also said that you pivoted in what you wrote. You went from those contemporaries to more darker romance as the motorcycle club, the mc romances. You also went from third person to first person. What do you think? The difference was in those And why did you feel you wanted to pivot, you needed to pivot.

Where did that come from? 

Scarlett Cole: So I think some of it was personal development. I was writing the Excess All Areas series, my Rockstar Romance series, and I was working on, in the background, I have this process I call percolation. So I've got things in various stages of percolation, so I know. What the next series is going to be.

And I'm collecting inspiration pieces and possible character names, and I'm, I'm thinking about where it's gonna go next, and I was struggling to get excited about the idea I'd had for what came next. And it's a perfectly good idea. Like I could absolutely sit down and write it, and I, it would've been, would've done just fine, but has really struggling to get motivated to do it.

And I thought, you know what? You've been doing this for however many books now. Maybe you just need to try something different. And so my first kick at that can, and I'm still working at it, is I'm working on a narrative nonfiction off to one side. It'll have a different name on it obviously. 'cause I don't want a romance and narrative nonfiction readers coming together and getting confused.

'cause that could be awkward. But I thought, you know what, why don't you just give writing? What happened if you wrote in first person instead of third? Maybe that's what'll mix it up. So though, that's what I'll do. I'll do something in first person. And then I was thinking, well, in my career when I've had I finaled for the readers, the Romance Rights America Now Defunct award.

Christina: Yeah. 

Scarlett Cole: I finaled four times in that. And the four times I finaled were with books that were romantic suspense and the Excess All Areas series was just straight up contemporary. So I was like, well, maybe I should go back to writing that. 'cause people obviously think I do it better, so maybe I should do a romantic suspense too.

A lot of people were talking about Kindle Limited. Should you be in Kindle Limited? Should you not? I'd always been wide. I thought, well, what if I wanted to give Kindle Limited a go to, and so I was sort of putting all these pieces together, first person versus third. Well, there's some genres that that really speaks to now.

Mafia, mc, et cetera. Romantic suspense lends itself very well to those kind of books. Kindle Limited, that's where a lot of the readers are for those kind of books. So I thought, you know what? I go to CrossFit four times a week and my CrossFit class used to start at seven 30. I now do the 6:30 AM class, but I used to go at six, at seven 30, and I thought if I just got up an hour earlier, I wonder if I could write this experimental book that I had in my head.

I could just write it. Hour. I won't set myself a deadline. I won't say it's got to be done by whenever or when I'm gonna release it. I'm just gonna quietly go about my business for that one hour in the morning when all is quiet and write this book. And so I, oh, and I'm normally a plotter. So I use a, an outline based on story Engineering by Larry Brooks is the four act versus a three act I've found that works really well for me.

I'm like, do you know what? I'm gonna throw the plot out the window too. I am just gonna pounce the heck out of this thing. And so that's what I did. I just started that, started writing this book, and I would go and I would write first person mc romance, go to CrossFit, come home and write third person contemporary, and out of writing two books in parallel that I only wrote one scene in the wrong POV in any of the books.

Wow. So, 'cause only one scene I had to rewrite. 

Christina: Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Christina: So I think at that point too, had you made a conscious decision not just going into Kindle Unlimited, but with the contracts with New York, you're now indie, you're now publishing on your own. Was that part of that pivot That I want more control.

I want. 

Scarlett Cole: That was a pivot. I'd made eight books earlier. 

Christina: Okay. 

Scarlett Cole: Um, so I had, I had mixed feelings about the traditional publishing deals that I had. I am eternally grateful, very, very grateful that I got those first publishing deals, and those books did well and they were well supported. But we're talking back in 2015.

When publishing houses did a lot more to help you get that momentum as a debut author, right. And so I'll be forever grateful for that. And I learned a tremendous amount and it certainly is a helpful way to ease into publishing if you don't have to worry about trying to find a pub, an editor, and trying to find a copy editor and figuring out how to format and all the business elements of it.

So there was a lot of good, 

Christina: yeah, 

Scarlett Cole: but I struggled with the things that were out of my control. And so, for example, I had four books out one year. Two Navy Seal and two Rockstar, and the publisher made the decision to put one rockstar on one Navy seal out in one month, and then six months later do the same again.

And so I had two books out in one month, a six month gap, two books out in one month, and my readers were like, we're choosing which books to get. I didn't have momentum. I had nothing to talk about for months because I could just keep talking about the same books. Because they were romantic suspense and one was rockstar.

My social media was a hot mess of mixed messages, and so I found that as a strategic person, I found that really frustrating. And so when I decided to start the Love Distilled series I, I spoke to my agent and I just made the decision that I was going to be indie. So I'd made the decision to be indie eight months earlier.

I have them traditionally published in foreign language rights, but I'm, I'm an indie author in world English. 

Christina: Yeah, the love distilled. I think for me as a reader, and you have to understand too, I'm coming from an, an editing background. I'm, I'm an editor as my full-time job now, full-time reader from the age of 15.

So I have a little bit different perspective. But those love distilled were so distinctly different in my mind from the previous that it almost felt like for me, I really felt you were super passionate about these. Like I have always noticed when a writer is super passionate about something, you know, it elevates the game.

It elevates what they're writing. It really. Drives them in a different direction. One, one of my clients, this was really her first time writing a full length novel. She had written some short stories and put 'em up on Kindle Unlimited, but this was her first time writing. And as I was editing it, I could tell she was not writing what she wanted to write.

She was writing to trend, which at that time was, uh, reverse harem. But like, I'm like, this hero is so not into this. He is like, no, she's super mine. I want her, I don't wanna share her with anybody. And so I talked to her about it and asked her what she really wanted to write. And she said, yeah, I really would like to write it that way, but if I write it this other way, I might sell more.

And I said, in the long, in the long run, in the short run, that might be true. Um, in the long run though, you are not gonna be happy as a writer and you're gonna have to drag yourself to that computer and say, but I have to write this. I have to write this. Rather than, at that time, this was pre pandemic, she was writing a pandemic book and she had finished just at the time in 2020.

She wasn't going to release that book until the following year. That was the plan. And so long story short, that book that she produced is her best selling book and we're still, we're. Eight books into her writing career now, and now she's writing a series that she's even more passionate about. And again, those sales are going up too.

That kind of leads me into the next piece of this, um, in that you talked a little bit about your sales, and this is a quote from your, your post that the first book in the mc, after all of these changes. Smashed any previous releases multiple times over. Can you talk a little bit about why you think these, this mc series smashed all of those previous sales?

Is it because you're writing what you love? Is it because you're doing what you want? Is it because the other job is filling into that? 

Scarlett Cole: I think it's a great question to look at why the books did so well, and I think there's a few things. I think the first one is it's very on brand right now. Mc Romance is very popular.

It's well supported in those categories of organized crime with Mafia Romance, and so it's really about timing and it's having a moment. I think that is one reason they've done so well. I think the second thing is it is a return to what I do well, which is romantic suspense, and so the people who. Those early romantic suspense books like The Strongest Deal and The Fractured Heart, and those books saw in these stories a little bit of what, you know, I used to write.

And so I think that's a positive driver of it. I think the third one is I changed the way I think about marketing. I, I am not one who likes to do the happy look at me with the big pointy arrows. Right? Yeah. You'll not find me on TikTok naming to songs. Um. I rarely post pictures of myself on Instagram.

I'm not deliberately trying to be evasive and mysterious. I just, I don't necessarily feel all that comfortable sticking my face on things. And so with this one, I was a bit more deliberate in how I talked about the books. I talk about the books with a lot of pride 'cause I have a lot of pride in them because I do believe they are great stories.

I was super selective on covers. I think if you look at the branding of the series, yeah, I knew from the get go and I tend to do this anyway. If you look at any of my books, you'll see that series titles always match the strongest steel, the fractured heart, the purest took, and then you've got Love in numbers, love in moments, love secrets, right?

Like I'd like to brand the things I do. The excess all areas are all forward song titles. That also tie into what the story's actually about. So, um, I always have a, a strong mind about what's going to tie the cupboard together. But I work with Leticia Hasser on my covers and I think she just nailed that slightly grungy, um, mc vibe.

Looks like it could be on a bottle of Tennessee whiskey font kind of Yeah. Branding to it. And I put Josh, Mario John on the cover, which handles down one of the best decisions I ever made. I wanted Josh, Mario o John as the cover for Jordan Reclaimed and my publishing house said, no way are we paying that much money for Josh, Mario, John cover.

Christina: Yep. 

Scarlett Cole: And so I thought, this is my moment. I'm gonna do it for the sins we hide. So yeah, it's been a lot more deliberate in the way I branded it. And then I, I think there's a little bit of luck too. You, you end up in the right blogger's homes who read an arc and they speak about it and they're. The strongest Steel did so well because Esther's book blog picked it up.

I went to bed and it was like 27,000 on Amazon. And then I, I just wanted somebody other than my mom and my sister to buy it. And I went to bed and it was super high. And then the next morning I was in Primark shopping and my editor called me and she's like, have you seen the numbers for where the strongest deal's at?

And I was like, no. She's like, it's at like 352 on Amazon. And I was like, what does, what does that mean in numbers? And then she told me what my sales were and I nearly fell off my chair. Well, actually I was in the queue, so like I didn't fall off my chair. It was a proverbial chair. I almost squealed in the line, to be fair.

So like sometimes a little bit of luck that you end up in the right blogger's hand. 

Christina: Yeah. 

Scarlett Cole: Queue talks a lot about your book, bigs up your book, shares the images every time you see them. And I just then lucked out because with that writing. I then put a super clicky epilogue in the back for the next book in the series that kind of identifies who the hero of the next book is.

Gives them some insight into the conflict and with a big giant read on site. And I'm really fortunate that 80% of the people who read Book one have read all the way through to, well, what will soon be Book six this week. So, yeah, sometimes I think it's just a case of putting the book out at the right time and getting it into the right people's hands.

But yeah, there was all the other efforts about the branding and the writing and the pivot and the point of view change and everything else that I think just helped it really appeal to readers. 

Christina: Yeah, I, I think sometimes it is a little bit of luck in there that the right things are are happening. But it also sounds like a lot of this came down to.

Knowing yourself as a writer, you knew this pivot, going back to work, was gonna fill something that you could still write and get books out. And in fact, I think in the post you wrote that in that year, so it would've been last year, I believe you put out six books, which was actually two more than you did when you were a full-time writer.

So do you think that, um, is it because there's more of a drive? Is it less procrastination? What do you think that magic sauce was in going back to work that allowed you to write more? 

Scarlett Cole: Yeah, it's, it's a rather embarrassing fact to admit I actually wrote more doing it part-time than I did with a full-time job.

Yeah, I think, I think it's a bunch of different things. I think if you only have a limited time, you plan that time differently. When I was a senior executive, I used to talk to women a lot about how do you manage the eight till 10? Because I realized that I was watching a lot of CSI reruns between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM and, and so I realized that that was a problem and I sort of gave it up so that I could do other things and I took piano lessons and various other things in it.

I think same with writing, like if you have all day to do something, you take all day to do it. Yeah. Um. I was as guilty as anyone else of doing that when it came to my writing and knowing that Monday afternoons I tend to do my work, for example, with one of my clients. I knew I only had a certain amount of time yesterday morning and I've got a book due to my editor on Sunday.

So, well then you better crack on with it, right? You can't waste an hour reading a book over breakfast and then dole your way to the gym and then sit down at your desk and check Facebook and Instagram for half an hour. 'cause then suddenly it's one o'clock and I've gotta change gears. So I think there is a level of drive that comes from having not enough time and too much to do.

Yeah. I do also think that what we talked about earlier about that feeling something inside of yourself when you feel fulfilled. 

Christina: Yeah, it 

Scarlett Cole: feels easier to get the thing done. It feels less of a chore. And so there obviously is a part of me, there's a lot more content with more social interaction over the course of the week than I was perhaps having.

I think that fuels me in a certain way, um, that when I get back to my desk, I do actually feel. More energized and therefore ready to say, right, how do I get 3000 words written in the next three, four hours? So yeah, I've managed to keep up that writing speed last year and I'll, I'll do the same again this year.

I'm already on track to, to do that. This year is definitely five. There's just a timing thing. I put out six last year, but honestly, I wish I'd not put out a book in December. It was an experiment for me. And as anybody will tell you, December's a really tricky month. Your Facebook ads don't work the way they're supposed to, and it's just a, a lot of trial and error.

And I just didn't want readers to have to wait four months for Nero's story. 'cause then I would've had to push it out into, 'cause it was, the book before came out, the beginning of October. So I put it out in December, and I am not doing that again this year. So I've rejigged it a 

Christina: little bit. Yeah. From my book selling days, that was the number one month, not to put out anything romance.

Um, and it, and it's not because they're not reading or anything like that, it's just they're buying gifts, their money is going elsewhere and, and also they, they are getting ready for Christmas and, and maybe perhaps don't have a lot of time to read, but yeah, December was always the, the last month. You would wanna put out books?

Well, I, I think, 

Scarlett Cole: I think it's a bit different 'cause this is, this is in ku so I did think that people have already paid for ku 'cause it's a, a subscription. But I actually think it's a time, I don't think it's necessarily a money thing. I think it's a time thing. 

Christina: Yeah. That people don't have 

Scarlett Cole: the capacity to fit as many books in a month as they read.

Christina: Yep. They're getting ready for Christmas and out shopping, buying gifts and, and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. What is your publishing schedule is, is every three months is what you're, you're kind of aiming for? 

Scarlett Cole: It actually tends to be every 10 weeks-ish. 

Christina: Okay. So that's, yeah. Is what I'm a little, little over is what I'm 

Scarlett Cole: aiming for.

Okay. And then I, then I throw in, I usually throw in a seasonal novella somewhere. I've done Christmas the last couple, but I don't, I don't know what I'm going to do this year. 

Christina: Yeah. 

Scarlett Cole: I have ideas. 

Christina: One of the other things that you wrote in the post is that you need to trust your intuition. Can you talk a little bit more about why that was an important lesson for you to learn?

Scarlett Cole: Yeah. I Trusting your intuition is something we all, we, we, we have it when we're children, right? We're playing and we trust our own gut to tell us when we should or shouldn't do something. And then over time we start to override our intuition with our intellect. We try to outthink the things we, we know and feel, and I think it would've been easy to just keep writing contemporary romance because the, the sensible thing to do would be to say, I have a career that pays me enough to write full time, that I can continue to put out books that I want to put out, and there's no reason for me to change.

I'm safe. I have a career that a lot of writers would kill for to be able to have that kind of income where you can work full-time at this craft. But, but deep down inside me, I just, there was this voice that keeps saying, you are going to run outta steam because you're not writing what you truly love right now.

And you don't, you might not even know what that is, right? You just know that you're sort of falling out with what you are falling out of love with what you are writing. And I knew I needed that break. And I think in hindsight, if I'd listened to my instinct a bit sooner, I might have made that call before I wrote the Excess All Areas series.

Christina: Yeah. 

Scarlett Cole: Um, but I didn't, and I was, I'm happy with those books. Nobody should take away from this, that I'm not in any way, shape or form. I'm proud of them. They've done well. But I think maybe even as far back as then when I was having that, oh, are we doing another romance rockstar? Are we doing something else?

Are we trying? I wish I just sat with that thinking for just a little bit longer and I feel like I might have made the decision sooner than I did. 

Christina: Well, I'm certainly glad you wrote those 'cause uh, I love those books. So, um, oh, thank you. Yeah. So Matt, do you have anything you wanna follow up with? 

Matt: I think it's very clear to me, um, Scarlet, just in listening to your journey, listening to the way that you go about the work that you do, whether that's the corporate work or the writing right.

That everything is very, there's a lot of intentionality behind it. Every step that you take is very thoughtful. It's very, I'll say planful in a way, right? But it, there's a lot of intentionality behind it, whether it's testing something. 

Scarlett Cole: Yeah. 

Matt: Trying to see what's going to work. Like I think you hear that adage, right?

What you know, and I think for you that's kind of doubly true, right? That you take all of the things that you've learned in your life up until this point and you've applied them to your writing career. Absolutely. But then you also have this, this new heroine that I think very similar. Yes. Maybe, right?

Yes. Tell us a little more. 

Scarlett Cole: Yes. The, the Loves We Lost was out last week, and the heroine is a romance writer, which I have. I've sort of, I've got a list of jobs the potential heroines could do, and because I have a DHD, I do like to go down. Sort of rabbit holes of YouTube videos about certain things. So like beekeeper is one of the things that I've got on my list that I think might be cool for a heroine to do.

But romance writer has always been sitting there as this. You've gotta do it one day. You've gotta do it one day. How can you write into a romance book without it being too on point? Right? How can you write a romance writer into a romance book? And so. Brainstorming all of these different ideas, and I was like, I know what it is.

It's a second chance romance, where the heroine was with the boy long before he became a member of a motorcycle club, but when he joins the motorcycle club, the life feels way too dangerous for her. And so when he proposes, she turns him down and leaves him, and then he finds out that she's written a book.

That's based on the two of them and she's given them the happily ever after that she wouldn't give him. And I was like, that's it. That's the book I need to write. Ah, 

Matt: that's awesome. I 

Christina: love that. 

Matt: Yes. That's phenomenal. So it's 

Scarlett Cole: father, it's Father romance readers. Yes. He shows up at a book signing. Yes. The people of the book signing thinks he's a cover model attending with one of the writers.

So yeah, it's this one is, this one is for the romance readers. 

Christina: Yes. Yes. Oh, that's awesome. Certainly sounds like it. And what is, what is the title of that one? It's the Loves We Lost. The Love We Loves, we've Lost, and it is available, we will, it's in ku. Okay. We will set up links on our social media and websites so everyone can click through to that and read to their heart's content.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Scarlet, this has been. Phenomenal. Thank you so much for joining us, and I just wanted to find out, is there anything else that you kind of wanna share? Anything else that you'd like, just like us to know? 

Scarlett Cole: No, I, I've had a fantastic afternoon speaking with you both before we recorded this and now, so thank you very much indeed for having me.

And just a quick reminder that I am on most social media, but you can find me on Instagram at Scarlet Cole. I have a Facebook group called Scarlet Cole Passionista, where I share early views of the cupboard and sneak peeks of the content if anybody wants to join. And that the Loves We Lost is the latest book in the mc, romance, iron Outlaw series.

Matt: Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Well, 

Scarlett Cole: well, thank, 

Matt: thank you once again. Thanks for the conversation and, and I think I will say for myself, I learned a lot. I, I really did. Thank you. I think it's fantastic, your approach to everything that you've done. Like I said, just a lot of intentionality behind it. And I love the shout out to the A DH ADHD 'cause I'm right there with you, so I feel it.

Scarlett Cole: Yeah, it's a journey, right? 

Matt: It is. Yeah. It absolutely is. 

Christina: Well, thank you so much for humming on. I, I appreciate it so much. So I could fan girl for a little bit, Anya, and talk about some of the books and. And I just, I think your journey is so unique and insightful that I think a lot of writers can learn from the experiences that you had and the courage that you took to make that great pivot and to know yourself and also to take the leap.

To take the leap and try something that was calling to you. I mean, that, that really does take. Courage. And what's the, what's the adage? No risk, no reward. So 

Scarlett Cole: yeah, absolutely. Take the risk. Absolutely 

Christina: jump. Take the leap. So thank you so much for coming on early. I really appreciate it. Thank you. 

Scarlett Cole: Thank you so much.

Absolutely. 

Matt: Well, that does it for our episode this week. Thanks again to Scarlet Cole for joining us, and again, we'll see you next time.