Pen Pals

The Final Chapter: Season One Finale

• Krisserin Canary and Kelton Wright • Season 1 • Episode 18

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It’s the season one finale! We’re talking endings—what makes them work, what makes them fail, and how we’re both rethinking the ends of our own books. Krisserin gets real about the feedback that’s forcing her to rewrite, and Kelton opens up about moral ambiguity, memoir structure, and what she’ll be working on over the summer. Plus: North & South yearning, Romantasy fatigue, and the rise of the goddamn.

We’ll be back after Labor Day with Season Two—new guests, new books, and (hopefully) new success.

Stay in touch with us over the summer! Subscribe to the Pen Pals Podcast substack here: https://penpalspod.substack.com/

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Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Krisserin:

Hi, Kelton.

Kelton:

How you doing?

Krisserin:

I can't believe, I can't believe it's the end of season one.

Kelton:

I know it's hard to believe. I listeners, I don't know if you realized, but we had an, an end date in mind for season one and this is it. So, yeah, we're taking the summer off, like, like students and we are, we're students of our craft. Okay. We deserve a summer. Except it's gonna be a summer where I, I feel like I'm gonna work harder than ever, whatever.

Krisserin:

Yeah. Well the summer of our lives is meant to be the most productive time, so

Kelton:

Oh yes. Thank you for that seasonal wisdom.

I'm Krisserin Canary. And I'm Kelton Wright. Follow our quest to publish our first novels from first drafts, to query letters through inevitable rejections and hopefully eventual success from California to Colorado. This is pen pals.

Kelton:

all right, we gotta talk goals because I was a bad girl. I said I was gonna do research on narration apps. You sent me one, and then I had a couple conversations this week that just fully derailed what I wanted to be working on. And instead of narrating a single scene, I thought entirely about a book proposal.

Krisserin:

I love it though. I.

Kelton:

Ugh, God. I mean, kind of, you know, I'm, I am excited about this idea, but this is really typical of me to be like, Ooh, fancy new idea. Let's do that instead. So, I, I am, I am thinking long and hard about how to do both at the same time.'cause I don't wanna give up the novel for non-fiction essay book.

Krisserin:

I think give yourself amount of time for the proposal and give yourself some time for the novel. Not that you have all the time in the world to do all the things, but do really feel like for you, this is a strong path forward

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

what you wanna achieve. And I would read the shit out of a book of essays from you, so sure all of our listeners would as well

Kelton:

I'm already counting your pre-orders for the people out there who peer pressured me into this direction, which I fully agree with. So, um, how about your goals?

Krisserin:

I with one of my alpha readers last Friday, and then my mother, who's my, first alpha reader, I was like, is there something before Alpha, my zero reader? Sent me pages and pages of notes. So my, my plan is to actually spend the weekend going through them and. Figuring out like what I wanna work on. But you know, funny enough, the reason why today's episode is going to be about endings is because my ending is the thing that my mother had the biggest problem with. it's, yeah, it's something that I'm gonna have to really think about and focus on. But, overall this week I slept a lot, which is something that I was really looking forward to doing. And then been reading. I started reading, the third book in the Skyland series from Kennedy ryan and I finally finished the series from Robin Hobb, started the last series in this world that she's created. So I've just been doing a lot of reading and relaxing and waiting knowing that I'm gonna have a lot of work ahead of me. So, yeah.

Kelton:

Yeah. Yeah, I have my TBR list right now is daunting. I took out a bunch of memoirs just to investigate some structure. And I just finished reading Emily Lenin's to the Gorge, which is like a grief and running memoir. And I, I think I cried every single chapter. So if you want a little, if you want a little crying catharsis, I highly recommend that book. But now, yeah, my reading list for the summer is outta control. It's like over a foot high.

Krisserin:

Are you gonna read all of the books all the way through or

Kelton:

No, if I really don't like a book, I don't finish it, but. The, my TBR list right now consists of a few people that I know, and so I really, those books I'll definitely finish because I wanna support and I'm curious about their, their methods and their madness. But for all the books, I got a bunch of memoirs out of the library just because I wanna leaf through and look at structure and see what their, what their thing is, like why their, what their path to writing a memoir is. I, for the longest time. Really just thought a memoir was like, here's where I was born, this is what my childhood was like, this is what, you know, my twenties were like, and I was like, I just don't care. And I didn't know until later that a memoir can be like, just a year of your life. It could be a month. You know, it's, it's like a, just a category that's very, very broad. And it's personal essay basically. So, knowing that I won't be bored to tears'cause I just don't wanna hear about anybody's. Like, I just don't care, you know, I'm like, write about something that interests me. And so one book I'm really excited about is called Raising Hare. And it's about a woman taking care of a rabbit. And I was like, that that is up my alley.

Krisserin:

That sounds not me.

Kelton:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love, um, I love animal tending books, especially wild animals. And so, um. That I was like, I, I think this is, a book I should read, so it's at the top.

Krisserin:

I listen to a lot of memoir, mainly because a lot of memoirs read by the author I find it really like fun to listen to audiobooks that are memoir, because you get a really interesting perspective on the author when they're telling their own story

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

And I've, in the last year, I listened to Julia Fox's memoir, which was really good. She's

Kelton:

bet. Yeah. She's wild, wild cat.

Krisserin:

I think that I recommended to you Youngme Mayer. I'm laughing because I'm crying or I'm because I'm

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

Oh, that is, she is, she is a writer. You know, she's first and foremost a writer, and then she had this really interesting life. But, it is a really interesting format and you do wonder about a lot of people who kind of write these naval gazing, accounts of their life when things that they've done or haven't done aren't really that interesting. But the one about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail sounds really interesting, the Gorge. and then of course, like with these famous people, hearing the behind the scenes of their lives. Like I listened to Britney's memoir, read by Michelle Williams.

Kelton:

I heard, I heard that. That was quite good.

Krisserin:

Yeah. By the end I was like, wait, this isn't Britney reading it, like she took on all of her vocal tics

Kelton:

Oh, funny.

Krisserin:

it

Kelton:

Weird.

Krisserin:

Would you read your own memoir?

Kelton:

Absolutely.

Krisserin:

Yeah,

Kelton:

hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, I love, I don't often, there is an option to include narration, substack, and I do it every, like 20 essays probably. But when I do it, I enjoy doing it. I think it's really fun. So, yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna write the book and then I'm gonna narrate it. So get ready.

Krisserin:

I can't wait. I cannot wait. well, you know, there were a couple things that I wanted to touch on before we launch into our last episode. One of them was, I messaged Kelton at the end of last week. So we have all of our episodes on YouTube'cause we record video while we are recording the audio for this podcast. And the title of one of our last episodes was the Fool, the, the Villain and the Wedgie, A Guide to Better Characters. And it all of a sudden got the spike in views and I was like, wow, our YouTube is blowing up. And then I went to the analytics on YouTube and I was like, oh, a hundred percent of this of the audience is male. That's weird. I would not have expected a writing podcast hosted by two women who talk about their periods all the time, to have a male dominated audience. And then I looked in the, it was like a hundred percent of traffic was from YouTube search. And then I looked in the keywords and they were all wedgie keywords. men searching for videos about wedgies.

Kelton:

Oh my God.

Krisserin:

this a kink that I was unaware of?

Kelton:

I mean, apparently that is so gross. That is so gross. I hate that all these horny men saw us at all.

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

out of here.

Krisserin:

sucks to be them because I was, I clicked into the episode to listen to it. And the first minute is you just describing how woods is puking all over yourself. They

Kelton:

Yay.

Krisserin:

what they deserve.

Kelton:

Yeah, they sure did. You came for a wedgie and you got full on motherhood.

Krisserin:

And then speaking of men getting what they deserve or not deserve, did you hear about this book Talker who got a two book deal without having written a manuscript at all?

Kelton:

So I read, Marie Claire piece on it. I mean, I still am not really on TikTok. I also saw that he was a former cast member of The Bachelor. And I haven't watched The Bachelor in the last few years, so I'm very behind on all of this. Will you fill me in?

Krisserin:

You know what's crazy is that I only heard about it because of people reacting to it on TikTok. And then I had to kind of do a deep dive into what was going on. And surprised that people are surprised because this

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

rugby player. I, I don't know how professional he was, but he is a former rugby player, some Australian dude. I think he was on the Australian Bachelor,

Kelton:

Okay.

Krisserin:

heard of him. He's a very handsome, very charming man. I've actually seen him, his tiktoks talking about books before. And I was like, oh, how cute. And he was, he's really into like, Romantasy and the things that are popular on booktok I don't know why everyone's surprised. He built this huge following in a like a month, like millions of followers on TikTok, and then he got a book deal, but he's also already famous. And so I don't know why people are shocked that he would be handed a publication deal when he has a platform people are engaging with him and the genre that he wants to write in is a popular and publishable genre. So,

Kelton:

I mean the, the gist I got from the article was that. People were like, oh, cool. Like all of a sudden a white boy's interested in this and he gets a book deal. But I think that they're, they're missing the fact that he's just famous and it's like, yeah, it is novel to have a white boy hot one want this. And like, of course, yeah. I would much rather have all the like underrepresented voices get the two book deal. But like, are we like new to the planet? He's famous. These famous people get book deals. It's annoying.

Krisserin:

It would be like if one of the moms from Secret Lives and Mormon wives was like, I wanna write a fantasy novel. Someone would write them a check immediately

Kelton:

I ever tell you that, in the first few months of having the baby, when Ben and I could just like watch Trash TV without worrying about the impact on his development, we watched like every single season of British Love Island, I. Um, and I

Krisserin:

I, that was my pandemic.

Kelton:

and I, I was just googling some of those people to be like, what are they up to now? And one of them is just like a very successful romance author and she's like, 24. And I was like, bitch. And I was like, of course though, you know, she has a platform.

Krisserin:

how

Kelton:

to just, you know, delete my Instagram and start all over.

Krisserin:

Oh,

Kelton:

And then I'd also, I'd have to just,

Krisserin:

should do that.

Kelton:

I just can't do it. I can't, I can't do it. I closer her to just, it's murder, murdering other people, not you. I know the realities, but I don't wanna deal with them.

Krisserin:

Okay. We don't have to this in our safe little bubble of the one hour that we talk about books. We don't have to deal with reality. We can just like it over there in the corner. Oh, should we talk about endings? this is the end of season one, it would,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

would be a, an apt topic for us to chat about. To start, I pulled some quotes about endings that I thought share and we can discuss. I really like this quote John Irving said, A good ending should be both surprising and inevitable. Something the reader didn't see coming, but in retrospect couldn't have ended any other way away.

Kelton:

I feel like John Irving should have said, I like endings that are surprising and inevitable. Something I didn't see coming, but in retrospect, wouldn't have it end any other way. I listen, I agree with Mr. Irving on this. I totally agree. I like to be taken where I think the train is going. I don't like when the train goes off the rails at the end of the book and we end in the gully. You know that for me. I'm like, why did you do that to me? Why? Why would you do that to me? Why would you get me on this train?

Krisserin:

I'm laughing'cause I'm thinking about what you said last week when, um. were talking about getting pissed off with people telling you how you were gonna feel about Woods turning one years old. I just think that you don't like it when people tell you how you should feel about

Kelton:

You are absolutely right. You are absolutely accurate.

Krisserin:

Oh, um, the last one is from Gillian Flynn, which is the ending is where you prove whether you've been honest with your reader, and I really liked that one.

Kelton:

I do love that.

Krisserin:

Yeah. you know, ultimately when I think about endings, I feel like for me, endings are the whole point of the book.

Kelton:

Hmm.

Krisserin:

point of the book, it is what we are working towards and what the reader is racing towards. Trying to understand how this conflict that you've made the center of your novel is gonna be resolved. And, really as readers, we are trusting the author to take us on a journey and trusting that all of the trials and tribulations that they put us and the characters through are gonna pay off and have meaning at the end of it. And so when we're not honest with the reader or we pull some fuck shit at the end of a book, do think that, that is when like you, I get really angry because it is. Almost trying, like again, trying to trick the reader, trying to impress upon the reader some idea that you have that you haven't earned the right to fully express by the end of the book. Does that make sense?

Kelton:

Yeah, absolutely it does. And I, I think it's like, yeah, when it goes somewhere where you're like, what? That often does feel like a writer trying to like, do something and it's, you know, you gotta be like a. I mean, I, I guess good for them being brazen and, you know, their editor and their agent liking that direction. But it's not for me. Curiously, though, I'm sort of not, I, I kind of don't care about endings in a lot of ways. Like, I, you know, those last few pages, I'm like, yeah, whatever, whatever. I just kind of skim. I'm like, I get it. I drives one of my dearest friends crazy that I don't finish TV shows. I've like never seen the final three episodes of any show that I like. I just like, yeah, I kind of just give, give up drives Ben crazy. He hates it because I, it's not like I'm like, oh no, the three episodes are coming up. We can't watch those. I just lose interest by the end. And then I'm like, eh, and with books I will, I'll just like kind graze those last few pages. It's just like, most of the time the writer just feels like, okay, here we go. Just tying my little bows. I should read them more fastidiously because I get angry when I don't like them, but when I do like them, I just breeze through them.

Krisserin:

I don't know if that is a fault of the ending or that the way that the author has constructed the book, the conclusion of the conflict is enough for you to be done

Kelton:

Yeah, I, I think that's true. You know, I'm like, okay, well, we, I know what happens. Like, I don't need to, we're all good here. These last few pages feel superfluous to me.

Krisserin:

But you recently read a book that the ending, made the whole book for you.

Kelton:

It, well, it was the climax of the action that made the book not like the ending specifically. And what really nailed it for me was the acknowledgements at the end. So that wasn't technically the end of the story, it was the end of the book. But the way that, T. Kingfisher wrote the Action Climax, all the mishaps and adventures and the way they pile on top of each other, that was what did it for me. And that was, you know, she really jammed that into like the very tail end of the book. But even with that book, the last few pages, I was just like, okay, cute. But then I read the acknowledgements and was like, yeah, I love it.

Krisserin:

I guess to me the definition of the ending is really how the conflict is resolved in the book. It's not like the, the

Kelton:

The Epilogues.

Krisserin:

the last, the epilogue of it because I'm with you. Like sometimes the only time I read an epilogue is when the story's been so good. I don't mind spending more time with the characters after the end of it, but I hate a long drawn out ending. I, and I mean, I guess my question to you would be, especially with fantasy novels, I feel like because there are so many books in them, a lot of times the last couple chapters, it's like, let's tie every little storyline off so that we can close the book on every character and every side quest. I almost feel that that's fan service at some point. I don't how, additive to the book it is, the worst offender for me is the Lord of the Rings movies. Like the last book, the last movie, I think the ending was like over a half an hour long. Right. That just

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

I can't deal with. But I do think that when an ending is good, there is something about it that it overwhelms the whole reading experience, you know?

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

and when they're bad it just ruins it.

Kelton:

Yeah. I mean, I, I was just thinking about tying all those ends at the end of a fantasy novel. Did you ever watch Bakeoff

Krisserin:

Yeah.

Kelton:

at like the earlier the great British bakeoff at the earlier seasons of Bakeoff that the very end of the season, they would be like, Chelsea now has a cake shop in Essex. Matthew is bringing logo cakes to his orphanage every weekend. You know, it's just like, do they say that? I feel like they just were like, these people are friends now. These, maybe that's just like, you can't be a huge success from the Bake off anymore. But the earlier seasons it was always like life changing. But I did like. In that way, I liked knowing what all the characters were up to, but in a book, I, I sort of am like, I'm like, you can leave it open for me. Maybe you'll write a book about that character. You don't need to tie them up. You can leave them out in the Netherlands, you know, and let, let's get back to them in another story. Take me on a universe adventure. I don't need bows.

Krisserin:

I don't need bows so much either. Especially if the author's done a really good job of. Setting up what the expectation for that character is

Kelton:

Yeah,

Krisserin:

sometimes I prefer not to have a bow because I don't like the way that the author

Kelton:

yeah,

Krisserin:

like, I've decided in my mind that this is how the character lives on

Kelton:

totally.

Krisserin:

Which is kind of why you won't read the last chapter of Bel Canto, right?

Kelton:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I'm foregoing that chapter for the rest of my life because for me, something else happens to the characters. I just deleted it and rewrote it for myself in my head, which, you know, fine with me. But what's wrong with your ending? Can you tell us anything about what your mom said about your ending?

Krisserin:

The couple of notes that I've gotten, one is that because my main character at the very beginning of the novel is displaying tendencies, drinking like an alcoholic. And the book, alcohol is very much a main part of her storyline. I, I didn't wrap that up

Kelton:

Mm.

Krisserin:

of like at the end of the book or anywhere towards like the climax where her, when her relationship with alcohol does change. As I was speaking with one of my alpha readers who is a recovered alcoholic. She and I were talking about why we both quit drinking and what led to us doing it. And for both of us, we made a conscious decision where we're like, I'm not doing this anymore. You know?

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

I didn't have that moment in my novel with my main character. And I do think it is its own storyline and I didn't, I didn't wrap that up. So that is something I definitely have to take care of. And I did something in my book that I hate when other people do in their books, is. When authors exert their, their own will or their politics into how something happens without actually earning the right to that kind of idea. And I think that I kind of did, but not very, in the way that I think is successful, but there is, part of the novel is this character commits this huge fraud and he gets away with it. And we've seen anything about the way the world works right now, it's very common that

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

Especially with our current administration being filled with fraudsters liars and cheats. So I think that, really clear about the consequences of that and how it worked out and how we got away with it is something that I need to do a better job of explaining. When I sent it to my Alpha readers, I knew that I was unsatisfied with the ending.

Kelton:

Okay.

Krisserin:

getting back the notes that I am receiving, it's just confirming what I thought. I like to say that when you're sharing your book with people and asking for feedback, you really want to have it in pristine condition so that when they come back to you, they're giving you notes on things that you hadn't thought of before, that you don't wanna just be like, yeah, all of

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

because people can get fixated on things that you already know need to be fixed,

Kelton:

Yeah,

Krisserin:

don't really wanna do that. But that was one area where I was like, I can't invest any more energy in this ending just gonna

Kelton:

yeah,

Krisserin:

send it out into the world and get it back and focus on it afterwards.

Kelton:

yeah. Okay. Well that's, I mean, it's good to know that your readers are aligned with you.

Krisserin:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kelton:

You know, you didn't get something. Well, did you get, did you get any feedback where you were like, what?

Krisserin:

I did get one piece of feedback, um, that I was a little bit surprised by regarding underage sexual encounter that happens in the book that one of my thought was

Kelton:

Hmm,

Krisserin:

too far, a too

Kelton:

hmm.

Krisserin:

trauma.

Kelton:

Oh,

Krisserin:

And it's interesting because, it's a note that I've gotten before about this particular, plot piece. The thing is that in the current iteration of the book, it happens a lot further into the book. And the first time I wrote it, it was a lot like sooner in So

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

maybe buried as much as it is, it doesn't work.'cause it feels like a little bit of like a Whoa, she was that whole time without any hints to it. So,

Kelton:

Hmm.

Krisserin:

yeah, and it happens with, uh, you know, her teacher, and while of course it's sexual abuse because she was underage, et cetera. The point of it is that it's someone who poured a lot of confidence into her when she was with living alone with her alcoholic mother and have a lot to be confident about. And then to have that person

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

it completely devalued all of the confidence that she had built up her

Kelton:

Yeah,

Krisserin:

she wasn't as good or as smart or as brilliant as she had believed herself to be. So I think there's ways to, to navigate that without it about the trauma. Yeah, what my

Kelton:

I.

Krisserin:

reader said to me is like, what woman has not been in a situation where had a man, you know, um, come onto her in that way and devalue the relationship they had or whatever it may be. So to me with a writing teacher that I had that I thought thought I, you know, made me feel really talented and, built me up. And then at the end of class when he admitted that he other feelings for me, I was like, oh so everything that you said to me for the last 10 weeks was absolute bullshit. Cool.

Kelton:

That's so gross.

Krisserin:

so gross.

Kelton:

Ugh.

Krisserin:

it is integral to the storyline, so I need to figure out a way to make it, make sense, but that it was, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that piece of feedback,

Kelton:

Yeah, that makes sense. That's, that's tough. It's, I was, on the other end of writing about, sexual experiences on the consensual end, I was reading a book called The Paradise Problem by the writing duo, Christina Lauren and I, I read it because this woman I follow on Instagram, I don't know her, we follow each other'cause we both foster animals. And she posts every book that she reads and gives it a rating. And she gave this one a seven outta 10, and she was like, a little too much sex. And I was like, let's get it from the library. Sign me up a little too much sex. Sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered. and I mean, you know, it's, it's interesting because like for her, this book was like a little, i, I presumably a little gross where she was like, okay, I don't need to know. And I was like, oh, I need to know. I, I also need you authors to, in, in the Paradise problem when the, the Maine, the protagonist is talking about her love interest and his dick. She calls it his God Damn the entire time. She's like, I finally saw his goddamn, and I'm like, okay.

Krisserin:

at

Kelton:

Oh my God. It stood out to me so much. I was like, we got, you gotta, you gotta call it his dick babe. Like if you call it his goddamn, one more time. I'm not gonna be able to read this. That's not enough sex for me. Okay. We're not 13. Just call it what it is. But yeah, throughout, read it again throughout the book. It's also, it's capitalized,

Krisserin:

Oh my

Kelton:

but it's tough when you're writing about that stuff.

Krisserin:

I saw a TikTok recently where someone was talking about how it seems like in romantasy, see the sex is the point a lot of the times, and just to like tie this back to, to endings a little bit, I was thinking, you know, uh, I was thinking about some of the romance novels, and they're not really romance novels, but they are love stories that I particularly enjoyed. Um, well, neither of them have sex in them, but I was thinking about Jane Eyre and I was thinking about North and South. And in both of those books, they come together at the end. Like the whole book is about the struggle of them to find their way to each other. I know you haven't watched North and South have you. Ugh. Ugh. I'm so jealous. I mean, that is something that I can re-watch again and I'm being an asshole because I've, it's, you know, it's a Victorian novel, um, by Elizabeth Gaskell. And it's about this daughter of a reverend who has to move up to the north and they get assigned to this industrial town during the Industrial Revolution. And there's all of these cotton mills, and she gets thrown together with this very stern, very serious, mill owner. And they just come from completely different worlds. She's from this beautiful southern town where the skies are blue and the garden is verdant and everything's blooming and life is beautiful. And she goes up to the north where it's just gray all the time and everybody's sick because they're working endless hours in the mills. And, not to spoil it, they literally get on trains and meet in the middle at the very end of the book, and they just like look at each other and get in the train and, and like that is the end. It is perfect and it is all the yearning that I think builds a beautiful love story. Whereas with Romantasy is just it's like how fast can we get them fucking,

Kelton:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's also like, how fast can we cycle through who they're fucking like, oh no, that first love interest was wrong. How could I have been so mistaken? Who is this wonderful stallion that's just walked into the castle? You know, when will I bet them?

Krisserin:

Yeah. Oh my

Kelton:

But yeah, a, a tour to force on foreplay.

Krisserin:

I think it's also why Korean dramas are so good, because a lot of it's yearning. They're not overly sexualized the way American TV is. But if you're watching a drama, by episode eight there's only 16 episodes. By episode eight, they're gonna have a kiss by the end.

Kelton:

Yeah, because like the endings of those, I'm thinking specifically of ACOTAR and how she ends each book. I can't remember exactly how the first one ends. It ends with her be with FAA being with Tamlin or something. It's curious'cause you know they're gonna be together. So like what makes an ending in one of those books even work? It's like the cliffhanger.

Krisserin:

These people who remember ACOTAR. all of the place in my head that ACOTAR had taken up is completely gone and replaced with other things by now. I

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

remember. The things that I remember from that book is she couldn't read. She vandalized her cabin. She started with Tamlin and ended with Rhys. I remember her being in the underground thing and having to fight a worm or

Kelton:

Yeah. The worm.

Krisserin:

Nobody helped her. And I was like, bitch, you're on your own. This is fucked up. Where's your man? what's going on? That's literally all I remember about all of those books, even though I read all of them.

Kelton:

Yeah, I really remember her vandalizing various pieces of furniture in the cabin, just painting little flowers and stars, just me little painting. It's like, like, why couldn't you have just made her like a carpenter or something cool, like she like rebuilt the shed or something.

Krisserin:

If it was modern day, she'd be like, get ready with me to go,

Kelton:

I have been thinking a lot about my ending, of the novel and because I, I kind of know, you know, like I know who the villains are. I know who I want to get their comeuppance. There's a couple of characters that I'm, I'm really not sure what their decision's gonna be at the end. Like the, this book is like a, a book where characters have to make a decision. And it connects to the moral and the purpose of the story. And I, I don't think there's a wrong decision making make, but I do think it will be interesting for the readers to see like who, who they really like and which way they go. And so I, I'm vacillating on that a lot.

Krisserin:

That's interesting. I was thinking about my speculative fiction novel, and I think that you read initial ending. I don't think you read the new ending. Um, yeah. So when I workshopped that book my teacher, mark, he read the ending and I, all read the ending and we got into workshop and he was like. Why did you make that decision? I

Kelton:

Mm.

Krisserin:

that it ended initially was, I had this idea that the main character like could never be impacted by this technology. Like her brain had to remain pure. And he was like, but what if she did, what if

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

fuck with her brain? And I was like, oh yeah. And I completely changed it.

Kelton:

Interesting.

Krisserin:

on

Kelton:

I.

Krisserin:

it better. And I do feel like, a lot of times when I've gone into stories and we talk about pantsers versus outlines, I did have a vague idea of how I wanted the story to end. I do think that endings are something you kind of have to like, feel your way through, if you are so set on it ending in a certain place, I think that you do yourself a bit of a disservice, which is why when I got feedback from my alpha readers about my ending. I was, I'm totally open now. I might completely change this

Kelton:

yeah,

Krisserin:

and completely change how I was thinking about the resolution of the storyline. I think for the most part, the train is on the right track. It just might end at a different station,

Kelton:

yeah.

Krisserin:

and I'm okay with that. And I think that being flexible with the ending and the beginning, where do you start the story? When does the camera turn on

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

on? I think having bit of

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

with that is a good thing. The story goes on for too long or when it's like super expected where you end up, that's when I think you write a, that's not memorable or impactful. I was thinking about Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang, which I don't think you've read before, but you

Kelton:

No.

Krisserin:

definitely up your alley. It's a standalone fantasy series and there is a love story in it, but it's not the point of the book. it has a, not a happy ending, but a perfect ending.

Kelton:

Mm.

Krisserin:

I'm going for how can it just feel completely right

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

when you're like, yes. And that's what my mom wanted from my book. She's like, I just wanted there to be one more, fuck you at the end. more like kick ass moment. And I didn't deliver it. Just kind of out. So that's what I'm looking for in an ending. That's what I think a good ending does for a book.

Kelton:

I totally agree. Getting too married to it, when you're writing the story, it just, you're, you kind of miss the trails at the end, like the different places it could take you. The reason I don't wanna decide what my characters do in the end yet is because I haven't spent enough time with them. I don't know them well enough. Like I wanna get through all of their trials and tribulations so that what, what they decide feels natural to that character and not like what I think they should be doing.'cause I, there is, for me, with the moral quandary at the end of my book, there is something I believe and I think, but not all of my characters should think that. because it's, you know, I'm a very opinionated little brat, so only one of them gets to think what I think.

Krisserin:

Also, I think that you can prove a point about something by having your character do the opposite. Doesn't have to be perfectly what you would do in that moment. We write books because there is something that we're trying to say and the ending is the period on the end of that sentence, how we prove our point has to be earned. I don't think being really explicit about how we feel about things or how things should be, or like

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

into the

Kelton:

Right,

Krisserin:

does anything for the reader. They're like, okay, you didn't convince me of that

Kelton:

right.

Krisserin:

that signals something to my humanity. So that,

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

I think that's a big struggle actually. It's a big challenge for writers.

Kelton:

I sort of wanna make my specific opinion belong to a side character in the end. I'll weave it in, you'll see it, but it won't be like, this is what you should do and it probably won't be what the protagonist does. So well, we'll see when we get there. Thankfully on a book of essays and ending is much looser.

Krisserin:

Have you thought about what the framing of your

Kelton:

I, I have thought about it. I felt really out in the wind about that this week. I was thinking about it a lot, until my friend Alison, who's a performance artist, listened to our last episode, Alison Tarwater, and she was like, it's obvious and I don't wanna give away what it is.'cause I, I really liked the idea that she, she led me toward. There is one framework that I am currently pursuing right now. But that's also why I took all those books outta the library and ordered a bunch of books. Is so that I can see what other framework is so I can kind of shake some things, loose my head to see what comes out. It is tough, you know, it's like a lot of it is okay, well I could write about moving to a cabin in the woods, but like he, at the end of the day, like, I go buy my groceries, I watch YouTube. I don't really live to me in a cabin in the woods, it is a log cabin, it is in the woods. But I, I feel like I'd have to like, move out to the mesa and build a yurt to have that type of story. So I am

Krisserin:

or something.

Kelton:

Just earn it a little more. But, you know, maybe that's just not the framing. And then I also, I have to remind myself that where I live, when I do go to the town where I get groceries, there's a lot of people there who look at where I live and are like, you're crazy. And so if some, if all of LA was reading about where I live, most of them would be like, yeah, you're crazy. And so it's easy to like get into the routine of your life and not see what is special about it. If you're doing this kind of writing, and I, I do have to frequently step back and even for the essays, like the ongoing series of every Sunday to be like, what is different about this than the lives I've lived before? What stands out as unique about this? That to me is actually very mundane and common.

Krisserin:

I think it's a good segue to talk about our plans for the summer are.

Kelton:

Hmm.

Krisserin:

The plan is to take the summer off and come back after Labor Day spend these next couple of months towards a goal,

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

What are you planning to do? It sounds like you've got a book proposal in the works.

Kelton:

Yeah. So there is an agent who wants to see this proposal. Yeah, there is. She exists. I'm not, I can't, I don't wanna say anything else, but she exists, and wants to see the proposal. And I, I think many, many moons ago, when I was a fledgling writer, this was in like 2012, one of the pieces of writing I did on the internet got shared by Neil Gaiman. And it changed the course of my writing. And my friend Claire was like, you have six months to take advantage of this before he forgets who you are and your writing no longer makes an impact. And you know, at the time I was like 26 or something, I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't use those six months like. You know, I, I have his email address, but obviously those six months passed and now he got me too-ed and you know, it's like now I'm, I'm not gonna reach out to Neil Gaman to promote my book like Jesus Christ. So I feel like now that I'm on the wire for something, someone knows my name, knows my writing, and wants to see something, I have to deliver against that regardless of the novel. This is a person I would, I've, you know, I'd be like, great. Cool. So I have to write the proposal and in the background of that, I am planning on doing, are you familiar with the author Jamie Attenberg?

Krisserin:

And I know you've mentioned her in the in past episodes.

Kelton:

So by the time this episode comes out, she'll, we will be about three days into her thousand words of summer, which is a two week program where you write a thousand words a day. There's a slack group, there's a community of people participate on her substack. And I do wanna, I wanna try to do it,'cause that would churn out, 14,000 words. I would like to see a chunk of novel get done. I love the idea that that's May 31st through early June. And that I would then have June and July and August to really develop a book proposal and think about what that looks like. I'm also planning to take a couple weeks off from the newsletter this summer, when, specifically when I'm traveling. And so I wanna, I wanna give that, those weeks to my brain to be thinking about, the proposal.'cause it, it's hard. It's, the proposal feels so close to the newsletter. They feel intertwined. They are similar subjects. And thinking about how I make the book something bigger than the newsletter is a challenge. So those are my goals. It's starting tomorrow for me on May 31st, Jamie attenberg, thousand Words of Summer. And then, and then moving right into the proposal.

Krisserin:

That's so exciting. I'm so excited for you.

Kelton:

I'm on the wire. I'm on the wire.

Krisserin:

How is your schedule going to change to support these goals

Kelton:

Mm.

Krisserin:

it not change?

Kelton:

The, I don't know yet. I am still, as we spoke about several episodes ago, I am still on the hunt for another client to actually pay my bills. And I'm still doing like a lot of interviewing in that space and have a lot of calls with different people that I'm, I'm hopeful about, but I haven't quite nailed it yet. And because I don't need as much time for work, Ben is still on the job site. And so right now I am only getting. Tuesday, Friday, and then Saturday. And it's like I have to write two newsletters and do like a shitload of existing client work in those frame, in those timeframes. And then of course, after the baby goes to sleep while the baby's napping, you know, there's other times that I get to be working, but for the schedule, it's, it's, I don't know, I have to really talk to him about that. It's funny, like I, I still wanna be like, you have to take the baby Friday mornings. Friday mornings still get to be mine. Get him out of the house. I need quiet, quiet focus time. And I think he'll, he'll be fine with that. But yeah, it's tough.

Krisserin:

Ugh. I'm excited for you.

Kelton:

Thanks.

Krisserin:

helpful

Kelton:

I appreciate it.

Krisserin:

or any reading anything or just continuing to check in and you how your writing's going. I'll

Kelton:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we should have like Friday morning slack conversations at bare minimum.

Krisserin:

minimum. I love that. Well, I'm gonna have kind of a crazy summer. I'm gonna be traveling a lot. We have to go to a wedding for my sister-in-law in Europe and then I'll be visiting my mother for a couple weeks up in Portland, just like working out of her house. We might be taking a trip at the end of the summer, so I'm gonna be moving around a lot, but i'm hopeful that once I get all of my notes back from my Alpha readers, that I will be able to complete a final draft of the novel. I had my call with my alpha reader last Friday, she was like, why are you not sending this out to agents? I was like, because it still needs work. She's like, okay, you get one more revision and then you have to send this out.

Kelton:

I love this person.

Krisserin:

She's fantastic. Um, she's the one who put my book into ai, but we've forgiven her for that. My last couple of books I've paid to have an editor go through the book and help me with revisions of

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

her big thing was like, you should be working on this with an agent. You should find your agent and work through any big story or structural things that need to be fixed with them, which that rushing to send your things out is a mistake.'cause you only really get one opportunity for a first impression and it has to be good. It has to be so good that they can't say no to you. And you also hear about the fact that like when you are querying agents, a good agent, we talked about this last week. A good agent should want to help you make your book better.

Kelton:

Yeah,

Krisserin:

and working on the book before you send it out to pitch. They shouldn't just be like, great, thank you. Let's go spray and pray this to editors. So there's this fine line of how far can you get your book or how before you start sending it out, and should you be investing in spending money on an editor first before you send it out? And I think in the back of my mind, I thought that I would work with an editor. We, I actually reached out to multiple editors and had conversations and, I think that I'm gonna try and do it on my own this time. So

Kelton:

I love that.

Krisserin:

the plan is to, um, I mean, and to be fair, this is like the seventh revision of this novel. know that I say, I'm saying these are like alpha readers and this is the second draft, but the draft that people read was the sixth draft of this book.'cause I had revised it four times prior when I was writing it 10 years ago. So this book has been written for a while. And so it is in not terrible shape. So once I do the, once I do this last revision, which is not a small, like I'm changing things about the story, so it's gonna be different than the version that I sent out last. I'm gonna query, so first thing I'm gonna work on is tightening up the draft. That will not take me too long. I'm hoping that I will have that done, before I go to this wedding in July.

Kelton:

Yeah. Great.

Krisserin:

June, I'm gonna work on that. Because I'm traveling so much in July, I'll be able take that time to do research, write my query letter, identify the agents. And then also one piece of information that I got from the class that I took at Harvard, Leslie Bannatyne, who is a writer that went through that Harvard, master's program and who writes incredible short stories that you would love'cause they're like gothicky horror short stories. She also worked at Harvard in the library and then published her first book of short stories in her seventies or

Kelton:

Ah, I love that.

Krisserin:

But her first book of short stories got published because she submitted it to a contest.

Kelton:

Ooh.

Krisserin:

yeah. So there are a couple of like first novel contests and first chapter contests. And so I wanna submit to something.

Kelton:

Yeah.

Krisserin:

and submit to it. So that's my secondary goal. But the plan is to get ready to query in the fall because from what I've heard, the summer in New York is dead. people in the publishing industry, they're not really working, they're not really checking their inboxes. They're in the Hamptons or in upstate or doing whatever rich people do in the summer on the east coast. Gonna plan on post Labor Day, send out the query. So by the time we record our first episode, I should be querying or have queried. That is the goal. So that when we sit down to record after Labor Day, I can say, I'm sending out my book to agents and Kelton can say, I have a book deals. That's

Kelton:

Oh God, what a dream. Okay. Well I'm so excited for season two, where we are gonna have, people, we're gonna have people come talk to us, people who are more successful than us. Agents, editors, authors, et cetera, the whole shebang. So I'm super jazzed about that. We're gonna learn a lot and hopefully we will also be so much further along in these projects. Yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting. We're working on stuff. It's cool.

Krisserin:

Yeah. it's now it's time to just kinda put our head down and the

Kelton:

Mm-hmm.

Krisserin:

But that doesn't mean we don't wanna stay in touch with all of you lovely listeners, so you know where to email us. It's officialpenpalspod@gmail.com. You can follow us at pen pals pod on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. And I was thinking we have a substack, I'll probably send out sporadic

Kelton:

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Krisserin:

teasers for the next season if you guys wanna subscribe to that. Nothing too intense, but, just so we can let people know when the first episode's coming,

Kelton:

What is the substack called?

Krisserin:

It is penpalspod.substack.com.

Kelton:

Speaking of, yeah, stay in touch with my writing over the summer, shangrilogs.substack.com. You can find me on Instagram at keltonwrites. You know, I'll be, I'll be doing all the stuff I usually do. Well thank you guys so much for listening this whole time. This has been so much fun for us and has obviously been really impactful to our work. It's amazing to have people along for the ride and we can't wait to record season two. I hope everybody has an amazing summer. Happy writing. Happy reading. We're gonna go take a break.

Krisserin:

Yeah, have a great summer. See you in the fall.

Kelton:

Bye.

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Kelton Wright

Co-host
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Krisserin Canary

Co-host