Episode 12

00:13 Theo Brun:Well, hello and welcome to the History Quill Podcast. My name is Theodore Brun, historical fiction writer, and I’m here with my wonderful co-host Julia Kelly. Julia, how are you today?

00:26 Julia Kelly: I am doing very well. I’m in that wonderful place as an author where I’ve got a new project that I’m excited about. I haven’t hit the speed bumps yet. Everything seems to be flowing and I’m really enjoying writing it. So this is the second, I’m sorry, the third, my goodness. This is the third of my Evelyn Redfern mysteries, which has yet to have a title. And I’m just really enjoying this case that I’ve sent Evelyn and David on too. So it’s been really fun and really satisfying to start something new. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve worked on a first draft. How about yourself?

01:03 Theo Brun: That’s really good. Well, it sounds like we’re in quite similar places because I’ve been feeling good about writing in the last couple of weeks. I’ve started something new. It’s not historical fiction, alas, but it is a new novel and I’m doing my best to crank out. You know, when you get in that, okay, I’m actually writing this thing now and you’re trying to crank out word count each day. So that’s the stage that I’m at. So that’s been good. And then I’ve got this other slightly unusual beast of a ghost writing partial manuscript which is basically a third of a novel that’s in the little team of agents and the actual author or the named author coming together. We’re trying to sort of put together a pitch that then is going to go out to a publisher. So I’ve done my bit. I think it’s a great story. It’s a good kind of half a manuscript or third of a manuscript.

We’ll see whether I get the opportunity to write the rest of it as well. But that’s been fun. And yeah, just generally, I don’t know, like the spring is here and feeling positive about life, which is good.

02:09 Julia Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, we’re recording this. We’re recording this on what’s turned out to be a nice spring day, although here, you know, it could rain the next moment and then be brilliantly sunny again. So I think that definitely adds to an air of optimism. Yes. Yes, I’m still adjusting to that. It’s been seven years, but I’ll get there.

02:21 Theo Brun: Yeah, this is England after all.

So this morning we are very lucky to have with us a slightly different guest today because it’s Karen Inglis and she is a very successful children’s author and she does a number of different genres but also historical fiction and particularly time travel fiction for children and she’s also very accomplished what she describes an author publisher, so which the rest of us might call self-publishing, but and I remember another of our guests called independent publishing and as we speak to her you’ll see that it’s really just another way of tackling a very successful career in writing. So without further ado, let’s get Karen into the conversation.

03:30 Julia Kelly: We’re very happy to welcome Karen Inglis today to speak to us on the History Quill podcast. Karen, you have an incredibly extensive backlist of titles. So perhaps you could give us a little overview and then maybe tell us specifically about the Secret Lake series, because I think that will be of particular interest to our listeners.

03:48 Karen Inglis: Okay, all right, well listen, thank you very much for having me by the way. Yes, so I write across a range of age groups, which is quite unusual. I sort of do picture books, chapter books, and also middle grade novels. And that’s actually by accident rather than design. It’s really because stories come to me. All of the stories that I’ve written have come from what I tell children at school visits and my tingly moments, which is when I see or I hear something or a bit of emotion, I get some inspiration.

and it won’t leave me alone and then that turns into a story. And so the very first sort of tingly moment I got was when I saw a beautiful fox trotting past me one November evening in the mist under the lamplight. And he was so beautiful compared with, you know, a lot of the urban foxes we find around London. And I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And I kept thinking, who is he? Where is he going? And I started to make up a name for him, Ferdinand Fox, and he was a kind and wise fox. And then people started telling me about foxes. So I started writing more Ferdinand Fox rhyming stories.

So I wrote six of those and it was sometime during that period and this is going back a long time actually, we’re talking I’m just trying to think, 1990 that sort of time. No, no a little bit later mid 90s, I walked into the gardens the communal gardens of Notting Hill where some friends of mine It just moved to an apartment in one of the lower parts of one of those great big sort of Victorian houses and I saw all the children playing out there and

I just got this tingly moment where I just thought, gosh, isn’t this magical? And I was listening to the sort of crack of woods echoing off the large houses and thinking of the people who’d lived there over 100 years earlier. And I just had this moment where I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the children living here today could meet the children who lived and played here 100 years ago? And that was, again, a moment that wouldn’t go away. I kept thinking about it. And then there was a connection of I saw some children running into a bush. And I thought. I wonder where they’re going.

As a child, I always loved Alice in Wonderland and also, you know, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, those sorts of things. And I suddenly thought, oh, you know, they could go back in time and sort of connected with that in terms of where the story ended up going. We used to take our children and we still go ourselves now to a place in Richmond Park called Isabella Plantation which in this time of year is just coming into bloom.

And within that, it’s a sort of, I think it’s about four acres enclosed garden within Richmond Park, which is absolutely stunning. And within there, there are three ponds, one of which is called Still Pond. And I suddenly sort of had this idea, well, perhaps the children could go down in time. And when they land down in time, they will see this incredible lake. And when they row across the lake, they’ll realise they’ve gone back in time. So that was sort of how that story came to me.

And then the one sort of in between, in between the picture books and the secret lake, a game were influenced by things like, you know, Eek could run away alien. You can see him there behind me there. And my two sons used to play football. And I was, my husband was the manager and I was sort of one of the, he was a coach rather. And I was one of the managers. We had to get the orange pieces ready, you know, the Saturday morning football.

And I got a lot of inspiration for that story just through the scenes of the dads on the sidelines and the kids and what have you. And I wrote it really because my older son wouldn’t read and I thought, well, he loves sport, why don’t I try something to do with sport and aliens and that might get him reading, that sort of thing. So that’s how it is that I’ve written across a range of age groups and it’s all to do with stories coming to me when I see things. I don’t know if that answers it.

07:32 Theo Brun: That answers, well, it goes a long way to answering a lot of what you’ve done. I think you had the, there’s one more, isn’t there, that I thought was interesting, the telltale tree or Tell Me Tree. That was it. And that is that the most recent one as well. Do you want to just add that one onto your list as it were?

07:41 Karen Inglis: Oh, The Tell Me Tree. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that. Yes, yes, it is. Yes, yes, I mean, the very most recent one is obviously Beyond the Secret Lake. It’s just come out the third in that series. No, but The Tell Me Tree. Astonishingly, I live in Barnes and there are plane trees all around the pond there. And one evening, I was walking back with my husband from somewhere and in the dark and the way one of these particular trees was lit up and if you go on my website you’ll see a photo of it, it looked like a sort of hair and this incredible face and again a wise face and I kept thinking oh my goodness, got my tingly moment, couldn’t really think, I kept thinking what can I do with this story and it literally went around in my head for about two years, I couldn’t think of what the story would be to do with this tree.

And then one day I was on, I’m in a lot of writers groups on Facebook, or I dip into writers groups, children’s writing groups, and there was one particularly large one in America. And I saw a conversation, a Facebook conversation going on between some authors. I didn’t know them, I don’t know if they knew each other, perhaps they half did. And one of them was saying, oh, you know, my daughter came home from school today and she drew a picture that made us realise that she’s really unhappy at school.

And in that moment, I just thought, oh my goodness, that kind of, it really kind of made me feel, I could feel how she must’ve felt. And then I just suddenly thought of the tree and I thought this is going to be the tell me tree, what the tell me tree will be a safe place where children can gather and talk about their feelings, whether they’re happy, sad, or anywhere in between. And I was driving to the gym literally the next morning or later that day. And as I was driving, I started saying, hello, I am the tell me tree. Why don’t you come and sit by me? Tell me your troubles. Tell me your your cares, scare, tell me your cares, share your best dreams or your scary nightmares.

You know, and literally it was coming out and that has never happened before. And I got to the car park and parked and had to say it into my phone because I thought I’m going to forget this. So I know and that has got on to, you know, it has been used a lot in schools and I have an incredible, I do occasionally run Facebook or very, very rarely in fact run Facebook ads on children’s books but the only one that’s ever worked is that one and the feedback on it’s been absolutely incredible. Particularly in England actually funny enough in the states not so much and I wonder whether that’s to do with the drawings whether they like to have a more Disney type drawing whereas I have much more traditional sort of pen and ink type drawings in that but yeah. I do tell children when I go to schools that look all around you there’s always magic you know it’s a Roald Dahl quote if you know.

Those who don’t look for magic will never find it, but if you look around there’s stories all around you.

10:38 Theo Brun: That’s fantastic. Thank you for describing all these different genres. I think just for the purposes of our listeners, if we can kind of zero in on the more the historical fiction element, although it’s quite, you can’t really kind of narrow it down onto this one genre because as you’ve just described so well for the for children, you sort of have this crossover between something a little bit historical, something a little bit fantastical with the time travel, but at the same time also the contemporary sort of timeline as well. Do you think that’s, or maybe you could just unpack a little bit more, like if you’re thinking about historical fiction for children, do you think that there’s a sort of expectation from that age of readership in order to kind of be bring that relatability in, that you need a contemporary character who’s sort of looking at the past through contemporary eyes and that helps the narrative.

11:41 Karen Inglis: The answer to that is I don’t know. I think there’s probably plenty of children’s historical fiction set in that time that ought to do as good a job. I probably haven’t read enough of them to be able to tell you, but I mean certainly things like Emma Carroll, Hilary McKay, they have historical fiction set in that time without the magical time travel bit. So I think the answer is probably you don’t need to.

And people do very well without doing that. It’s possible, I suppose, that because I have contemporary children going into the past, that it might draw in some readers that otherwise might not be attracted to the story, because they can perhaps identify with the modern characters and they think they wouldn’t be able to if it was just set in the past, although if they did get around to reading those books they’d realise that that isn’t the case.

So, does that answer the question? I think both can work. But I might, yeah,

12:39 Theo Brun: I think it just adds a lot of layers to it, doesn’t it?

12:41 Karen Inglis: It does. And I think it might mean there is a wider audience for my books. I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, I suppose, and also there’s probably a category of child reader that loves the idea of time travel in and of itself, whether that’s to historical or to…you know, the future or whatever that might be. So, so, you know, by accident, it may be that that’s helped my book.

13:07 Theo Brun: Well it’s very successfully but you know it’s done extremely well hasn’t it? The Secret Lake. I was looking at still number one in the time travel children’s fiction thing on Amazon I noticed this morning even this morning.

13:19 Karen Inglis: Yeah and in fact that that’s good because it hasn’t had an orange badge for a while You know, they changed how all the categories go so it goes up and down but it has tended to stay in the top Thousand or so and and it’s also sells hugely in America as well. In fact, 70% of my sales are over there So it’s it is fantastic. And in fact, I don’t know I thought I should have got it out here Oh, hold on a moment or have I oh, yes so it’s just come out in Italian.

13:51 Julia Kelly: Oh, wonderful. You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned that 70% of your sales for this particular, this book or this series of books are in the United States. Obviously I have the American accent. I have always loved those stories where somebody goes tumbling through time, tumbling through a wardrobe, tumbling through something and develop, you know, comes into this land that they’ve never discovered before. I was wondering if you could time slip or time travel as a narrative device and what some of the challenges or some of the benefits of writing for children are when approaching something like that. Because I think you might be the first person that we’ve spoken to who has done this on our podcast. So I think this will be some new insight for people.

14:38 Karen Inglis: I think sort of on a sort of technical level as a writer what one always has to do whether or not it’s writing historical fiction is You don’t want to preach to children You don’t want to be appear to be teaching them anything and I would say you know And I’m sure this is the case for grown-up historical fiction as well You don’t want to be trying to show off what you know about history So, you know you want to show don’t tell but don’t show off and tell, and I’d say with children, with children in particular, I was very conscious of wanting to weave in the historical context as they’ve gone back in time, as the children meet them, but without trying to give them a history lesson, if you see what I mean. And I think that that is a challenge. It’s something that I found and it may be, and I was thinking a little bit about this earlier, about it’s worked well for me possibly because I’m not a historian. I don’t have a, I was forced to get, I’m that old that I did O level history and I had to give it up because I had to do chemistry. You know, you couldn’t, you had to make certain choices at certain ages and you know, I think chemistry was the only O level I ever failed. I had no idea what was going on. I would much rather have done history. And as a result, whereas my husband knows everything about history, I’m pretty useless to be honest. But as I’m doing the research, you know, if I’m sort of steeping myself in that period doing the research.

It was as fascinating to me as it probably is to a child who doesn’t particularly know that era. It maybe made it easier somehow for me to just weave in things that I felt I was thrilled to discover in the same way that a child might, but without sort of labouring the point. It was just a passing thing. For example, in Beyond the Secret Lake, the one that’s just come out, I discovered that when you went to the beach, there were these things called, and now I’m trying to remember what they were called, they were called bathing stations.

And they were sort of like, they were like a sort of horse and cart on the beach. And you would go and get changed and get into your swimming costume in them. And then the horse would actually draw this out to water. And then you would go down the steps, go in the water, and the horse would go back onto the beach. And then when you were ready to come, the horse would come and drag you back out again. And that’s a sort of passing bit in one of the scenes in Beyond the Secret Lake when they take a trip out. I don’t make a big thing of it, but kids kind of, you know, one of them has written, because I have a few advanced readers, and I love learning about the bathing machines, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, so the fascination of me discovering these things, I wasn’t just sort of history buff and knew all about it before I wrote about it.

That was great, it was a benefit for me because I learnt a lot going along the way. Another example, which I don’t talk about in the book, but was fascinating and it was good to be able to include it, was when I was doing the research for Return to the Secret Lake, I ended up doing all sorts of things, including reading some Hansards from 1911. And somewhere in there I discovered there was an exchange, or rather I’d done some other research and I…

I found a piece talking about roller skating. So in the Edwardian period, the rich people, there was a big phase sort of between, I think it was about 1908 up to about 1911 where indoor roller skating became a real fashion. But the wealthy people could afford it, but the poorer families couldn’t. And so the younger kids used to get some roller skates, presumably inferior ones and just skate around on the streets. And I was listening to this.

talk about it was a lecture I think it was online and the professor talking about it was talking about it then one day a young boy hit an old lady went smacking at an old lady who fell over and died she was in the 90s and so they tried in parliament to get it banned and I can’t remember how but I ended up looking at the hand-slapping about this and so Winston Churchill was a young MP at the time and there was a lot of pressure to say we’re going to have to ban outdoor roller skating for young kids.

And he interjected and said, no way. He said, you know, these kids need exercise. It’s a way of them getting exercise. We’re not going to put a blanket ban on it. This anyway, I was so fascinated by this. I didn’t talk about that in the book, but there is a scene where there is a roller skating incident and it has quite, it’s sort of relevant to the plot. And the young boy ends up knocking over, not killing, knocking over an elderly lady.

So I’ve probably gone slightly off tangent from your question, but doing it enables you to give children an authentic view of writing, you know, in this way of what history was like without lecturing them, I suppose. And for yourself, you find all this interesting stuff out along the way.

19:38 Theo Brun: I’m sure you do. And it sounds I mean, it sounds like you’re very immersed in the Edwardian period, obviously, for the secret lake series. Is there other other periods that sort of appeal to you that you would like to explore? I mean, you say you’re not your history is not your absolute specialty. But do you do you have sort of other ideas brewing for the same kind of thing of a time travel thing, but a different period maybe?

20:04 Karen Inglis: I don’t necessarily for a different thing. It may be that I explore a little later in the period and a little bit before the period, what happened before the secret lake, because there’s always Jack’s father, Jacob, who saw the magical moles to start with when the building started. So there might be a story in there. There’s certainly a story to be told for a bit later, for the ending. I mean, anybody who reads the end of book three,

that there’s a reason I won’t say why because it sort of would act as a spoiler, but there’s a reason to visit later in the period. It’s interesting actually talking being American. I’ve just been listening to and I bought the box set because they just look so beautiful. In fact, I must do a screenshot. I’ve just been listening to Anne of Green Gables, which I’d never read. I don’t know whether you’ve read it or you know it.

20:52 Julia Kelly: Yes. I grew up reading those, yeah.

20:54 Karen Inglis: Oh, did you see? I absolutely adore that. It’s so sugary and wonderful, but I just absolutely love it.

And of course, they’re kind of moving in a parallel timeline, roughly, to where I was. And now it’s going older, sort of towards the, it’ll be going towards 1918 and what have you. And that is an obvious period that I may or may not be looking at for the secret lake. But there’s nothing specific, I would say, history-wise. I just love the Victorian period. So Charles Dickens, all that lot. So a little bit before the time of my book. But no, in answer to your question, not specifically, and it’s what that might come down to the fact that I haven’t had my tingly moment that would lead me to another historical period yet.

21:46 Julia Kelly: I love that as a sort of basis to weigh ideas and, you know, see if that inspiration is strong enough to really grow into something. And I know you mentioned that with the Tell Me Tree, it took a couple of years to figure out what that sensation and that moment would actually lead to, but it’s such a wonderful reminder, I think, to people who are writing that, you know, sometimes you do need to wait for that idea that’s really that thing that you can latch onto and just explore.

22:18 Karen Inglis: Yeah, no, absolutely. And actually something similar happened with The Christmas Tree Wish, which is another of my picture books. And I’ve never sort of told the story in any great depth at school visits until this round of World Book Day visits. And everyone was, they were all, even the older children, you know, I mean, I can quickly tell it to you now if you’d like, or you can cut it out. Would you like me to tell you?

22:39 Julia Kelly: Yeah, love to.

22:41 Karen Inglis: We were driving past, it was one of those December nights as it is in England. You know, in all the films in America, it’s snowing and beautiful and white, and here it’s raining and cold and grey and horrible just before Christmas. And we were driving past a garden centre, and I think it was actually sort of almost next to a petrol station. It was very unromantic. And there were the last few Christmas trees sitting there looking very bedraggled, including this tiny baby tree with broken branches. And I looked out the car window in the dark.

I felt really sorry for that tree, no one’s going to buy it. And it wouldn’t go away, I kept thinking. And literally that again, for two years, three years, even four years, I kept thinking, what’s the story going to be? I cannot think. And I kept on thinking about all sorts of things, a tree being brought over from Norway. And the thing that kept bugging me was that the story would end up with the tree, A, it’s been chopped down, B, it’s going to die. How do I sort of deal with all that side of things? And then just suddenly, and I’m trying to remember.

I think one day I sat down because I got a moment, a bit like when I did the sequel to The Secret Lake after 10 years, where I just thought, I’ve got to figure this out, I’ve got to write a story. And I forced myself to think it through. And then I ended up with this little tree whose, you know, it’s smirks, lovely, it’s snowing and all, and he’s fast asleep dreaming of Christmas Day and his three friends Penelope Pine, Cedric Cypress, and Douglas Fir, they’re all snowing and then the last ones left and they’re saying, right, we have to, then the snow stops, the sun’s coming up and they’re saying, wake up, Bruce Bruce, we’ve got to all get ready, today’s the last day to be chosen for Christmas day. And they’re all getting really excited and dusting the snow off and putting out their lovely green needles for everyone to say, little Bruce is snoring away, dreaming, you see this dream bubble of him with all the children around him. And they’re saying, wake up, wake up, he eventually wakes up. And he’s all excited. And he’s trying to blow the snow off his branches, but he’s too weak, because it’s snowed a lot. So they all help him. And then they blow it off and then they all take a look at him. They go, Oh, no. And it’s like, Oh, no, says separate site. Oh, says Penelope Pine. Oh, dear. And it is like, what? And he looks down and he’s got these broke two broken branches and his little faces and he’s saying, Oh, no, nobody’s going to want me. Who’s going to want to treat the broken branches? And then they then then this is where this sort of story comes in. Then they say then it’s all about friendship and caring. And so Penelope Pine says

Oh, don’t worry, nobody’s perfect. And she opens up her branches and says, just look at this bump in the middle of my trunk, you know. And then Cedric, then Douglas first says, yes, yeah, look at my silly bendy top. And I said, you know, we’ve all had those trees, you know, where the top goes like this. And then Cedric Cypress says, he says, look, and look, if I turn round, my bottom sticks out. And you know, again, we’ve all had that tree, you get it home and then you turn it round and it’s not even. And they said, look, don’t worry, you are perfect. Someone will find you. And then the day goes on. Families are all coming, they’re all taking the trees away and they’re waving to Frederick saying, don’t worry, you’ll be fine, I’ll put it in my branches. And of course, we get to the end of the story, and he’s the only one left. And he’s all alone. And there’s the little squirrel and the robin who’ve been there looking very sad at him. And he thinks that no one’s going to buy him. And so he closes his eyes and decides to have his dream, sort of to imagine his daydream from the beginning of the book. And the sooner he does this, he suddenly hears a little boy saying he’s beautiful and you know this little family standing around him and the little boy says oh he’s just like me and there’s a little boy with a broken arm and he’s got his hand and they think and they just say oh he’s so beautiful and they take him home and of course he gets all decorated and the end of the story is him all happily sort of actually in real life living his dream. That was all I said to the children that was just from seeing a tree out of my car window and it but it took several years to come up with the story.

You can’t rush these things.

26:36 Julia Kelly: No, no, and it’s a wonderful reminder that, as you say, sometimes it just needs time.

26:41 Karen Inglis: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So.

26:46 Theo Brun: That’s brilliant. I mean, it’s like Jackanory all over again, listening to you tell the story. Julia, I don’t know if you know what that means. That’s an English program when I was a kid and we’d sit there and we kind of it was on TV and you’d have like a little five minute story. Very sweet.

Well, actually talking of time, I know time is pushing on, we haven’t got you for forever, but I wanted to maybe pivot a little bit towards the fact that you are a self-publisher, I think you describe it an author-publisher, and obviously you’ve had tremendous success with the books that I’ve seen anyway on Amazon, you’ve got multiple languages, you’re doing your own marketing basically, and I think on your website, you also published in a sense, the story of how you did that. Do you want just for our listeners tuned in now, just to kind of give some of the key markers along that journey as well of how you’ve led to create a career for yourself, basically out of nothing?

27:51 Karen Inglis: Yeah, so basically I like everybody way way back in the day when I first wrote The Secret Lake and some of my other books I sent them out to publishers and got the usual rejection letters And that was a long long time ago in the day when we didn’t have internet that they came in a brown envelope Six weeks later, and then I went back to my day job. I was a consultant to government I have a professional business writing background

I just thought, oh, what a shame. I used to look at the box in my office and think, oh, what a pity. No one’s ever going to read that story about the secret lake. And then I had a sabbatical in 2010, which I decided to take a year out, as did a colleague of mine I’ve been working with. And I thought, I’m going to pull out those stories, have a look at them. And when I did and started rereading the secret lake, I thought, no, this is good. It needs a little bit of tweaking here and there. And I started to look for online for the writers and artists yearbook, because, of course, we were online by then, and discovered all this stuff about self-publishing. Now, nobody was self-publishing children’s books at the time, and most of the self-publishing was happening in the States. But because I had that background, I’d just been working on web transformation with the government. I wasn’t scared of, I thought, oh, I might have a go-go at this rather than what have you. And so I did my edits and Bridget, my colleague, who was a first in English, incredibly well-read, acted as my editor, and she had previously worked as an editor in another life.

And I just decided to go for it. And in those days, it was much harder. These days, you’ve got many more tools that can help you with, you know, creating artwork, not creating artwork that you would do yourself, but briefing a designer. It’s a lot easier these days than it used to be. For formatting the books, it is a lot easier for what have you. And I just decided to go for it. And I remember when I went into Waterstones in Notting Hill, which is after I got my first delivery of my Secret Lake. And I remember her looking at it and saying to me, gosh, this doesn’t look self-published. And that’s the point. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it professionally, professional editors, professional artists. And I think everybody knows that now, but back in the day, a lot of people thought it was a quick win, as it were. And so I, but in terms of my growth from that, and I’ll tell you a story in them about traditional publishing in a second.

I virtually hand sold my first 7,000 copies of The Secret Lake, not realising actually that was a very good number to have sold. Because I couldn’t, it was on Amazon, but people didn’t know it was there because they didn’t know who I was, because you couldn’t advertise. If you were an independent author, you could not advertise on Amazon. So I did school visits and Waterstones signings and word of mouth and even Waterstones rang me to it from Ely once saying, will you come and sign? Or other branches have said how successful you’d be. So it was that sort of thing.

And when I did the signings, I didn’t have people queuing out the door, but when they came in and I talked to them, they obviously liked the book enough to buy it, you know, and so on. And then what happened was in 2018, Amazon finally decided that anybody, any author could advertise, could place those spots called sponsored product ads on Amazon. So when you probably know when you go on to buy a book, it’ll say people who like this book also like this book. And then under that, it will say sponsored products related to this item.

And those sponsored products are what are called keyword ads, which you can set up and you can say, I’ll spend five pounds a day or I’ll put 10 pounds a day. You can say what you want. So, you know, it’s a bidding auction. And so at the moment, the moment I was able to do that, the sales took off as I thought they would. It took time and it was gradual and then gradually eventually the states picked up on it because as you say, I think the states do love historical, they do love a historical children’s book.

I call it sort of Downton Abbey for kids with a bit of time travel thrown in actually. That’s how I would say it in a few lines.

31:44 Julia Kelly: There’s a lot of enchantment with English children’s literature as well, I think. There’s a great tradition there in the United States.

31:48 Karen Inglis: Yes, yes, yeah, exactly. Well, and so that’s what led to that growth of it. But one thing I would say is, and I am in a closed Facebook group with a few kind of very well-selling children’s authors, most of them actually in America and Canada, and one of them made quite an astute comment, because I think one of them said, oh, Karen, how do you manage to do so well? I said, well, I don’t know, I’m not doing anything particularly special.

And then one of them said, I think it’s the story. And I really do. I honestly think it’s the story. I’ve never ever made, like there’s, you know, a lot of people have ebooks, we have ebooks of all of my books, but The Secret Lake has never been free. I’ve never, it was too hard work to write that book. It’s never been free. And I just think that it’s word of mouth, actually, with the advertising, which has made it work so well. And that has translated into children around the world enjoying it as well. So it is a story. So again, I always say to people if you’re going to self-publish, don’t think of it as a quick win. It’s hard work, but you do need to have the good story first. And I have written a book called How to Self-Publish and Market a Children’s Book. Remember, I have a business writing background and I never advertise that book. I ought to. It gets very good reviews because of, you know, it is very well put together and it’s very evergreen, even though I have probably.

I’ll probably update it next year, but the only thing that’s really changed is TikTok and direct selling, you know, and children’s books don’t really sell on TikTok, it’s for older anyway. But so, you know, that it’s hard work. And I did actually, I was offered sort of, I’ve had offered three traditional publishing deals in the last few years, including from one of the major publishers a couple of years ago. And I was, I was really flattered.

But by then it’s almost like I’ve gone too far now, you know, and I’m used to having control, creative control. I mean, the great thing about self-publishing is that you can put your book out when it’s ready. Whereas if you’re traditionally published, you know, you might get the deal, but the book might not come out for a couple of years. And I didn’t want to be under the pressure of writing. They wanted me to write more books in The Secret Lake series, because at that time only the first one was there. But funnily enough, exactly the time they contacted me was when I had…

I’d suddenly finished with the big non-fiction book and I thought, gosh, people keep asking, are you going to do a sequel to The Secret Lake? Now’s the time. And I said to them, well, funny enough, you’ve contacted me at a time when I’m about to start looking at that, and I’ll definitely keep in touch with you, but I’m not actively looking. And they did subsequently send me a two-book offer. But in the end, I said very kindly, thank you, but no thank you. Not just, not only for monetary reasons, although that could have been negotiated, but really for the control. You do have a lot of control over what you’re doing, but hard work and the marketing is, you know, it is hard work because you’re not selling directly to your reader. So if you’re a lot of successful millionaire type self-published authors, you know, they can put an ebook on Amazon and people will buy on impulse.

That doesn’t happen with children’s books. You know, they have to have a child nagging them to buy it, or teachers need to have read it and find it’s good to use in schools. But you know, if you can make it work, if you’ve got a great story, it can be great, you know. But there’s no wrong or right way is what I would say. Yeah.

35:12 Julia Kelly: What do you think personality wise, you, how, let me see if how, how am I, how am I phrasing this very bungled question? Um, personality wise, what do you think it is that self published authors usually have that makes them particularly well suited to self publishing? I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

35:30 Karen Inglis: Right, yes, you have to have determination. There are probably a lot of them a bit like me, a kind of control freaks, the idea of being in charge of wanting to be able to see your figures, know what’s going on with your sales. Yeah, you know, I’d say that determination, six skin up to a point, determination, I’d say hard work and determination is what we all have in common and a lot of us talk about the fact that we’re slight control freaks. Some work a good working in a big team. I’m not very good at that time. I’m better at just doing a lot of my own things and I quite like the variety from spending time doing the writing to doing the marketing to even doing I have an accountant, but I do keep track of it. I do sort of the sort of basic bookkeeping side of it at the moment. Now that is getting to a point now I’ve got so many foreign things that I’m keeping track of. I might.

I might have to get someone to help, but my slight fear is having to then you get somebody, you train them up and then the next minute they’re leaving and then you go back to square one. So I think, you know, my husband’s retiring next year, so perhaps I’ll get him to do that instead. But yeah,

36:40 Theo Brun: He comes ready ready trained

36:42 Karen Inglis: Yeah, I mean, not exactly. He’s really good with Excel. He’s an engineer, he’s an engineer, you know, and he’s very well read as well, actually. So that’s all very useful.

One other thing I was going to say, we’re talking about the success abroad, which is interesting, is that we’re in the self-publishing world. That most of my overseas deals are traditional deals. In other words, a traditional publisher has approached me from abroad. I have an advance, they pay royalties, all that sort of thing. That’s most of them. But a couple of them, the German and now the Italian, I have project managed that myself, as in I have hired highly, highly skilled, whatever, qualified, traditionally published children’s book translators. I haven’t used, you know, there are sort of agencies that do this, but I wouldn’t trust it. I need to know. This is the control freak in me. I need to know that the person writing the language is experienced in children’s book writing. So I reverse engineer, go onto Amazon, found who’d written what, kind of reverse engineer to contact the author. In the case of the German one.

And then the Italian one, I was incredibly lucky. I was contacted in October by somebody who’d read the secret later. She said, look, I’ve written for, I’ve translated for the traditional publishing world, but I’m segueing into doing, I’m looking to do some work with some independent authors, particularly because I’ve got, she’s got a condition that means she can’t write incredibly fast. And she was getting sort of, she doesn’t want to be under so much pressure. So she said,

I probably couldn’t do anything. It would take me until next October, until February. And I said, that’s fine. And, you know, I checked her credentials and she’s absolutely brilliant. And I said, and of course, when you do this, you then have to have an editor and a proofreader, which I have for both. And they usually come with that. And so the only bit that I do is the upload, is the formatting once it’s all ready to go to be uploaded. So you can self-publish also that way. So a bit of a mix going on there. But yeah, do it professionally and be ready for hard work. And the marketing is really quite difficult. One last parting shot. I will say it that might always do say for self-published children’s authors is start local. Don’t try and go big. Establish your brand locally, which is what I did. And I’d say that every single time and I would say it for all of my new books now, you know, talk to your local press, your local magazines, your local bookshop, visit your local schools, because you can slowly get the word out and build up your confidence and your brand that way and have a website, you know, yeah.

39:29 Julia Kelly: Karen, this has just been wonderful. And I feel like we could talk to you for hours and hours, but we should let you go and get back to your writing and your marketing and your whole world of children’s literature. Before we do go though, I wanna make sure that people know where they can find you and where they can find your books online.

39:47 Karen Inglis: Okay, yes. So for my fiction, it’s Karen Inglis, spelt, oh, I say it’s pronounced, we had the conversation before we started. My surname is Scottish and it’s pronounced Ingles, but it is written as Inglis, I-N-G-L for Lima, I for India, S for Sierra, Inglis. And my website is kareninglisauthor.com and you can find out all of my fiction there. If you are thinking you’re interested in self-publishing,

I have a website called selfpublishingadventures.com. I don’t keep that very much up to date, but if you go there, you will be able to link to my nonfiction book, How to Self Publish and Market a Children’s Book on Amazon. And as I said earlier, that is very evergreen. I mean, the thing that won’t be evergreen is how many books I’ve sold, because I think I’m now up to about three quarters of a million. And in that, it might be two hundred and fifty thousand. I can’t remember. But the actual principles of the way of self-publishing are all covered in that.

40:53 Theo Brun: That’s great. Well, it does all sound like an adventure, doesn’t it? Right. You don’t know quite quite where it’s going to lead, but it seems to have taken you to some pretty amazing places. So thank you so much, Karen. You know, thanks for everything that you’ve shared. And we wish you the best of luck in the near future and the years to come.

41:12 Karen Inglis: Yeah, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

41:21 Theo Brun: Very different, I think, or the content anyway, quite different to what we’ve seen before, but so many great points from Karen Inglis to dissect here.

41:31 Julia Kelly: Absolutely. Before we start chatting though, I wanted to let you, our listeners, know about a special bonus episode of the podcast available exclusively to our email subscribers. The episode is about how to succeed in historical fiction and we’re joined by two very accomplished historical fiction authors, Gill Paul and David Penny, who share with us the ingredients of their success and how you can succeed in the genre as well. That is difficult to say. My apologies. To get the bonus episode, go to thehistoryquill.com/bonus. Follow the link in the description or enter it into your browser.

42:04 Theo Brun: That’s right, Julia. And there’s so much great advice and insight in that bonus episode. So definitely seek it out. And right, so we’ll turning back to Karen, where should we start? I think for me anyway, there’s an obvious place to start which you probably agree with is the tingly moment.

42:22 Julia Kelly: Yes, I love the tingling moment. It was wonderful hearing her tell those stories.

42:27 Theo Brun: Yes, I know. I mean, it’s just another sort of great encapsulation of, you know, something I suppose we’re all familiar with. But she really put that, it’s almost like she wasn’t going to go anywhere that didn’t have that tingly moment.

42:43 Julia Kelly: I think in some ways that really resonated with me because I’ve just gone through the process of pitching two different books, one a mystery, one a sort of the historical fiction I’ve been doing for a while. And I always find that the pitching process is kind of working through ideas of the past, things that have been lingering. And the best situation is when you sit down and you have an idea and you start to sort of write a pitch or expand on that idea and suddenly things just start coming together. And I think for me, that’s the sort of tingly moment. It’s the moment where I know that there’s actually something here because I can kind of, it’s almost like my brain is going faster than my hands when I’m trying to type out what it is that I’m thinking about. And I’ve had that with these two books, which is great because I’ve also had the situation where I’ve written something where I didn’t start with that kind of level of confidence in an idea and sort of engagement with an idea. And it was a much, much harder process to write the book. And so I loved hearing her story, especially about the Christmas tree, that this sort of one image in this one little moment sparked, you know, years later, this whole story that she was, of course, able to turn into a book. And I think that’s a really great lesson in going with your instincts, but also trusting that it may take some time to figure out, you know, if you have the initial spark of inspiration, it may take some time to figure out what it is that that actually means for you as an author. I think that’s that sometimes it’s.

We have an instinct to rush things or we have an instinct to sort of backburner things for a very long time because it’s not quite the full thing. It’s not quite the full idea, but she’s obviously continually, uh, continuously thinking about things and engaging with an idea and figuring out, you know, is there anything there, where can I go with this? How does this potentially, you know, what I’ve learned now and all the other ideas I’ve had, is this potentially something, something that’s more full-fledged. So anyway, I just, I loved the reminder that inspiration is, can be that spark and then also can take some time.

44:51 Theo Brun: Yeah, it’s interesting the way you unpack it there, because there’s elements of sort of proactivity, of like digging and digging. You’ve had the moment of inspiration. Is there anything beyond it? And there’s that sort of passive moment of like, it doesn’t have to happen right this second if it’s not there, if you can’t think of it right yet, it may come to you. And I don’t know, maybe there’s a balance between those two things. I always think of these ideas, maybe it’s my archeological past of kind of stumbling over something as you’re walking along and then sometimes you pick it up and it’s just a pebble. But sometimes if you dig around it, you realise it goes deeper and deeper and deeper and maybe it’s like, you know, I mean, to push the analogy, some sort of piece of a sunken building or actually there’s something of substance below the surface, as it were. And that tends to be my experience, but maybe in a slightly less formal sort of setting that you’ve described of like, right, I’m going to do this pitch. I’m now going to apply myself to kind of expanding the thing and I look, it’s all coming together. It’s more just, yeah, if I tend to get these kind of flash flashes of moments along the plot line, which well, what proves to be the plot line. And when you start having enough of those and you realise, you’ve kind of got something of the beginning, something of the middle, something of where this thing lands.

That’s when I think anyway there’s something here and something’s coming together.

46:25 Julia Kelly: Yeah. Do you, do you keep track of those ideas? Do you have like an ideas file or, you know, is it more just that it’s percolating in the back of your brain?

46:32 Theo Brun: Yes. The notes app on my phone tends to serve that. And sometimes I get quite far down in terms of the development and then often another idea comes along and supersedes it. So I start notebooks, so if I had what I think is a good idea or a substantial idea, then I’ll buy an actual separate notebook because often I’ll have, I mean it’s all a bit analog, but you know,

a section for characters, a section for setting, a section for, you know, what kind of research you’re going to have to dig into in order to flesh out this world, things like that. And those so tends to start at the scribbling level before I would then translate it into, you know, working on a computer and maybe starting to write it. I mean, that’s that’s certainly been my experience.

The thing I’m working on at the moment is a contemporary one. I feel like a bit of a traitor to the cause here

47:33 Julia Kelly: No, no, it’s just bringing in new tools.

47:34 Theo Brun: Because I’m writing like a contemporary… well, I mean, we’ve talked a lot about crime, haven’t we? And murder mysteries and our mutual love of Agatha Christie and those kind of stories. So we’ve got something like that going on. And for that I have just kind of launched into it. And it’s fun because, you know, she described the little Christmas tree or was it not the tell me tree just talking to her in her head I found these voices the voices in my head it’s just very very clear and distinctly not my not me and but just someone and something so so that’s been fun and just kind of going with it and having a lot of fun doing that with with very little research I mean because it’s just a world that I know it’s essentially a world of where I grew up so yeah, there’s different ways of coming to the same point, I think.

48:32 Julia Kelly: Yeah, I think for me, it’s a, I use a program called Notion. It’s like a souped up version of my notes app. And I have a file that’s literally called idea file and it lets me sort of create sub files within that. So I have actually gone into, I’m so proud of myself. I’ve gone into that file and pulled something from like three years ago where I was thinking about it and I just sort of dropped some articles and links. And, um, every time I see something that potentially sparks my interest, you know, in the news or somebody tells me a story about something I jotted in it. So it looks mad in there. It’s just scattered and all over the place. But to me, it sort of makes sense. So I have found that to be really, really useful. And I’ve gone back and thought, you know, well, that idea actually is a good one, but it needs to be married with this other thing that’s in this file. And it was really interesting putting this historical pitch together because it was pulling from a few of those different places, that again, you know, it was an idea from three years ago and then six months ago and kind of things from all over the place. So I actually was surprised by how much I enjoyed that and how useful it’s been.

49:43 Theo Brun: It’s a very personal thing. Because it reveals your personality, doesn’t it? So much like what if I was to go into your ideas file and go, I know Julia a lot better now after reading, seeing all these mad ideas that she’s come out with, or like off the wall ideas and like what’s going on in her imagination. That would be great.

50:04 Julia Kelly: Oh, but my favourite thing is when like I’ve just left myself somebody’s name, the name of a historical figure, no idea why, no idea what it’s doing in there. But one day, hopefully I will look at it and I’ll go, oh, that was that really great idea I had, and that’s why this name is in this file. So we’ll just see. Sometimes I leave better notes for myself than others.

50:25 Theo Brun: Excellent, excellent. Well, you must confess if that idea does grow into an actual novel. I’d want to know.

50:32 Julia Kelly: I will. I will, definitely.

50:33 Theo Brun: So what else from our conversation with Karen? I mean, there’s things I suppose about the craft and the substance of the books that she’s writing, and then there’s more the kind of industry and the self-publishing aspect of her.

50:50 Julia Kelly: You know, I’ve always been fascinated by timeslip. I read a lot of it as a kid, as I mentioned. I’ve read a lot of it as an adult. I think it’s one of those genres where I sort of, I love the idea of being a contemporary person, being thrown back into one of these worlds that, you know, I’ve studied or I’ve read a lot about, and then of course the actual experience of what that would be like, as opposed to just the academic sort of time in my head reading these histories. So I loved what she had to say about how in some ways, you know, being somebody who is less familiar with history and writing for children who may have even less familiarity, she can sort of present things through their eyes because she’s discovering these subjects in the same way that her readers might be.

51:37 Theo Brun: I think like you, I love all those, you know, the classic novels that I remember from my childhood of, I mean, the one that’s coming to mind is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, that those sort of portal and the magician’s nephew, I think there’s more portals in there, aren’t there? But that’s sort of, and yeah, once you have that in a story, you can go anywhere, can’t you? And that’s the, that’s the fun of children is like, you’re not trying to give a plausibility to this. It’s just there’s magic and it happens. So let’s go with it. But it’s quite different, isn’t it? I wonder if you or I did that, I would be, or someone who is more focused on like, oh, I love this period, I want to get this period in.

You know, there is that balance of if I wonder if we got we got another author in who felt they were much more historical fiction author rather than a children’s writer, whether they would want to go down that contemporary, sort of purely contemporary point of view. I mean I’m thinking what are the classics I read when I was a child? The Silver Sword, did you ever read that?

52:47 Julia Kelly:

I’ve heard of it. I haven’t read it.

52:48 Theo Brun: Yeah it was about I think the children’s crusade and then there was the Henry Treece books which were all Vikings which probably you didn’t read. But they were just like, you know, for kids, but set in history. And it’s a very different beast, isn’t it? I like the slippery nature in a way of the time travel and the contemporary viewpoint, and the relatability of that. And then obviously, the new world is a historical world as opposed to a magical world or whatever. Yeah.

53:23 Julia Kelly: Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. And then of course, I think we can’t, we can’t finish up this conversation without talking about just the sheer determination and hard work and everything that she’s put into building her, um, her self publishing platform. It’s really incredible listening to her talk about, you know, hand selling 7,000 books and, you know, there are authors who never see 7,000 books for, you know, for one of their releases and just the amount of time and effort and work that’s gone into that. But obviously how satisfying she finds it as well and obviously how she’s reaching out to help other authors do that too.

54:05 Theo Brun: Yeah, I think it can be, it’s easy to look at the scope of what she’s achieved and go, wow, how could I ever do that at the starting position? Let’s say from, well, certainly from my perspective, but, but from our listeners as well. But I thought it was interesting that she calls her self publishing website, self publishing adventures.com. And you think, yeah, to sell, as you said, 7,000 hand copies, but there was a time where she’d sold zero and she’s selling her first one. And I suppose with that in mind it seems like the distance is as an author starting out or whatever stage you’ve got to and what she has clearly achieved. And she’s branching out and exploring and nothing is necessarily a given. And as she said, a lot of what she was experimenting with now seems to become, if there is such things industry standard, you know, certainly standard practice in terms of what you might do as a self publishing author.

Yeah, certainly it is impressive, though. I mean, Karen seems like an incredibly organised and determined lady. And I’m very impressed by that. I found her very impressive.

55:42 Julia Kelly: Absolutely. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation and I think she’s given us a lot to think about and maybe bring into our own writing practice and hopefully that of our listeners too.

55:54 Theo Brun: Yeah, 100%. And actually, one thing I’ll just add is, I think, you know, the point she made was that the substance of that story, particularly The Secret Lake, which seems to be her runaway success, it was just a really great story. And that in itself creates its own momentum word of mouth. And, and just people want to read it. If it’s a good story. It may take some time, but hopefully it will find its way into the hands of many, many readers.

56:28 Julia Kelly: It all starts with a great story.

56:30 Theo Brun: Absolutely. And a good note to end our season on that. Things start and maybe end on having a good story. So hopefully that’s something that we can we can all take away from from this season. So that concludes this episode. That concludes season two of the History Quill podcast. Thank you very much for joining us. But before we go, I wanted to remind you to head over to the historyquill.com/bonus to get our bonus episode on how to succeed in historical fiction featuring guest authors Gill Paul and David Penny. It’s essential listening for any historical fiction writer so make sure you check it out. You can find the link in the description or enter it into your browser.

57:13 Julia Kelly: And of course, wherever you’re listening to this podcast, make sure you like, subscribe, and leave us a comment or a review. Thank you so much for listening.