Jeff & Will wish everyone celebrating this week a very Happy Thanksgiving! They also share a statement they made this past week about Dreamspinner Press.
The EastSiders season 4 trailer is shared and Will talks about the new Flowers in the Attic Blu-Ray edition. Books reviewed this week include American Love Story by Adriana Herrera, A Christmas Wedding by A.E. Ryecart and the first two books in Charlie Cochet’s North Pole City Tales series.
Charlie Cochet also talks about the re-release of North Pole City Tales and the THIRDS series as well as a new installment of the Paranormal Princes series that is coming soon. Charlie is a Featured Author at the 2020 Coastal Magic Convention and she discusses what she loves about attending that con.
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Show Notes
Here are the things we talk about in this episode. Please note, these links includes affiliate links for which we may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase.
- JeffAdamsWrites.com
- WillKnauss.com
- Big Gay Fiction Podcast Announcement Regarding Dreamspinner Press on website
- Authors’ Concern Grows Over Late Royalty Payments at Dreamspinner Press on Writer Beware
- EastSiders Season 4 trailer on YouTube
- EastSiders on Netflix
- Flowers in the Attic Blu-Ray on Amazon
- American Love Story by Adriana Herrera on Amazon
- A Christmas Wedding by A.E. Ryecart on Amazon
- Mending Noel (North Pole City Tales #1) by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- The Heart of Frost (North Pole City Tales #2) by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- Charlie Cochet Interview
Charlie Cochet: website | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Twitter | Amazon- North Pole City Tales series by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- THIRDS series by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- Hell & High Water (THIRDS #1) by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- The Prince and His Bedeviled Bodyguard (Paranormal Princes #1) by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- Kept in the Dark (Locke and Keys Agency #1) by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- Four Kings Security series by Charlie Cochet on Amazon
- Coastal Magic Convention website
- Big Gay Fiction Podcast on Patreon.com
- Big Gay Fiction Podcast patrons on BGFP website
- Frolic Podcast Network website
Interview Transcript – Charlie Cochet
This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.
Jeff: Charlie, welcome back to the podcast. It’s so good to have you here.
Charlie: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. It’s always enjoyable.
Jeff: You’ve got so much stuff going on. And I want to start with the holiday season. This is coming out the week of Thanksgiving, and you’re in the midst of rereleasing your Christmas series. Tell us all about that.
Charlie: Yes. So, the “North Pole City Tales” series is going into K U. and we’re calling them Merry Mondays cause they’re coming out every Monday between today, and the 23rd of December. There’s six novellas and they’re just very, they’re the kind of stories you look for in the holiday. So they’re very sweet. They’re fun, they’re low angst and they’re sort of fantasy that takes place in the North Pole. And you have these Christmas elves.
It was a lot of fun to write cause I got to be creative with cursing. Because you’d have, you know, these sweet elves in the North Pole, they’re not gonna swear like some of my other guys do. I had to come up with some really creative Christmas-y curses. So you’re gonna find, things like, you know, “holy holly,” and “for Kringle’s sake,” in the books.
So that was super fun, coming up with those. You have these, like Jack Frost and his relationship with Rudy, who’s the captain of the reindeer squadron. And the Christmas elves are elf pilots and they’re the ones who deliver presents on Christmas Eve.
It’s all the shenanigans and adventures and trouble they get themselves into. So each book is a different couple. And it sort of has an overall story arc, but it’s just a lot of fun and it’s very festive. Lots of hot cocoa and falling snow when everything you want it to be cozy.
Even here in Florida, we’re having a wee bit of a cold front. It’s in the 50s now, so we’re just…
Jeff: That’s break out the sweater weather for Florida.
Charlie: I busted out the winter coats, it’s a whole 55 degrees.
So yeah, it’s just a fun little thing. Those are releasing every Monday now and they’re all in KU. So, you know, if you want to binge read, if you’re a KU reader and want to binge read, those, are there
Jeff: Perfect time of year for the binge reading the holiday stories?
Charlie: Yes, yes.
Jeff: And you’re rereleasing a lot right now, and you’ve got a lot of work going into KU for the first time for those readers, tell us how the re-releases are going and what folks have to look forward to besides the “North Pole” series in the coming weeks.
Charlie: Obviously cause they’re Christmas stories that are coming out for the holiday season, but I’m also releasing on Thursdays my “THIRDS” books, the whole series is going into KU for the first time. Previously, I think book one was in KU for a little bit, to kind of try it out, but now it’s the entire series. They’re releasing about every two weeks, on a Thursday. Right now books one through three are out and four will be coming out this Thursday. It’s one of those things, it’s in KU for the first time.
It was kind of daunting previously cause it’s a long series. It’s a 10 book series. So I think it’s perfect for KU cause if you do love to binge read and you enjoy a long series or you enjoy binge reading series, that whole series for the first time is in KU. So, it’s really exciting.
They’re all getting new covers. Since I’m rereleasing about 35 titles, all those books have to be recovered and re-released, but it can’t be done all at once.
I’m really excited that they’re all going into KU for the first time. Because I was a wide-released author and I started of self publishing last year, I kinda ended up with two audiences. So I have my wide release audience and then I picked up my KU readers, who primarily read in KU.
And so for them, all these books are new to them and they get to read them for the first time. And I’m really excited that if they couldn’t pick up any of these books before – they couldn’t pick up this long series before they have the chance now, to do that. So, I had to of course prioritize what I released when, so the “THIRDS” series is my biggest series, so that’s releasing first at Christmas for the holidays.
And then, the “THIRDS” finish releasing end of February. So after that will be, the “Beyond the Books” and “Love and Pain,” which is a spinoff “THIRDS” universe title. Then the Soldati and then some of my other books, other releases. So it’s exciting. It’s a lot of stuff going on.
Plus, I’ll be releasing new stuff in between.
Jeff: What’s it like revisiting these books? Are they just getting re-proofed or are you adding anything into them as they come out for their second editions?
Charlie: That was something I thought about a lot because, you know, as authors, we’re always growing and, you know, “Hell and High Water” came out in 2014. I wrote it in 2012.
There’s always that kind of a temptation to go in and go through it. I know that if I went through it and read it, I’d want to rewrite stuff cause we learned from our mistakes and we grow. But the thing is there’s so many readers who fell in love with the “THIRDS” as it is.
So I didn’t want to go in there and make any big changes because then it’s a new book. The moment you start making changes to the story. Suddenly, it’s not the book that you wrote originally. So I decided I was just going to proof it for anything that got missed in edits the first time. Because, as many authors know, no matter how many times a book is read, something always gets missed, a dropped word, something is spelled wrong. So I put it through the proofing process again for all those little, all those little things might have gotten missed the first time. I think for “Catch a Tiger,” I just added a scene, but it was a scene that was in “Beyond the Books.”
It was sort of a continuation of a chapter, that several, one of my best friends and several readers felt very strongly it should have been in there to begin with, which is how she became my beta reader. I decided to put that into the book, but generally that it.
It’s just kind of been rehashing. But I always, I’m on my Facebook reader group quite often, if there’s any actual content changes, I always, I make sure to let my readers know, because I also, for my readers who do own the books, that way they’re not wondering – do I need to buy the book again?
Because there’s all these changes. So if they already bought the book, there isn’t a need for them to rebuy it. So yeah, it just keeping them up to date, but no big changes so far
Jeff: As a fan of “THIRDS”, I will say that they may almost be worth that rebuy for those amazing new Reese Dante covers.
Charlie: Aren’t they? I mean, you know, I’m not going to get into Sloane, but I mean, Sloane and Ash, I’d have to say like, Sloane looks amazing. I mean, I love Dex, but Sloane looks amazing. But then she gave me Ash and I’m like, oh… Sloane has some competition.
Jeff: For people who weren’t at GRL to appreciate the life size version of the banner you had there. Wow.
Charlie: There were quite a few offers of people who were very happy to take him home if I didn’t feel like lugging it all the way back home.
Jeff: I don’t doubt it. You mentioned earlier that you’d done some self-publishing before you got into all this re-release. How’s it feel now to have really made that transition from a more traditionally published author for the majority of your work to now owning the whole process end to end for everything.
Charlie: It’s really exciting. I think a part of me kind of wishes that I’d started self-pubbing sooner. But then another part of me feels that I started doing it when it was time for me to do it because things made sense, like I understood the production process. Actually, you know, knowing what I had to do was a lot of work, but I understood it. It wasn’t like I needed to be explained about how, about hiring editors or hiring proofers or hiring a cover artist because I already knew how all that worked.
I t wasn’t as steep a learning curve as if I just started fresh, new self pubbing. I had that background to kind of fall on, but it’s exciting cause I got to, I got control of the entire process. And for anyone who knows me, I’m very, I’m a wee bit controlling when it comes to my stuff.
Like I’m very picky about cover art and just the entire production process. So having that control, for everything is just exciting and it’s been amazing. Cause if I need something changed, I can just change it. If I need to re upload a file, I can do it in seconds.
If I need to reformat something, I can do it in a few minutes. I can speak directly with my cover artist. It’s been really educational and I just love learning and I love picking up new information and seeing what I can do with it and taking things to the next level. But it also means I could do more with my worlds, which I’m very excited about. Because for next year I have something really big planed. It’s something that I couldn’t really do before. But now it’s possible. That’s going to be super exciting.
Jeff: You got to answer the question before I could ask, like what does this mean for your readers?
Charlie: Because I have control of all my worlds now, I can essentially do what I want with them. Anything that I want to do, if I want to write a free book for some kind of promotion or something, I can do that. If I want to connect worlds, I can do that.
If I want to do a crossover with another author, I can do that. There’s so many possibilities that as like a big, like book and movie nerd that just sparks all the right places, and it’s just like, Oh, I could do this. Oh, I could do this. I’m excited about that.
And I’m working on something for next year that’s kind of, the “THIRDS” is a really huge world that I could do so much with. So I’m looking at a plan for a similar world, but a romantic suspense one that will connect some of the current worlds that I have now.
Jeff: I envision a Charlie Cochet multiverse.
Charlie: Yes. Yes. I’m so excited. So, yeah, I’m working on that. Any of the readers who enjoyed the “Kings” or the who are enjoying the “Lock and Keys” agency, there’s some really awesome stuff coming.
Jeff: Everybody’s now going to be like, well what is it? Tell me more. Hurry up 2020.
Now, you’re not all about re-releases right now because you’ve got a new installment in the “Paranormal Princes” series coming. What do we have to look forward to there?
Charlie: Well, I’m working on the second and third “Paranormal Princes” book. Originally I had played around with the idea of doing six novellas for this series, but I’m actually just making it a trilogy. A lot of readers are waiting for the King’s book, so the King’s going to be the third and final book. But I’m working on the next two books in the “Paranormal Prince.” I’m hoping to get them done and have them both out sometime early January, depending on how the holidays go. Cause the holidays always, you never know what to expect to get. It gets a little bit hectic. I have a lot of series going, so I’m wrapping that up so that I can, you know, continue onto like my other series.
I’m excited about working on those two and I’m very excited cause Greg is going to be doing, Greg Tremblay, he’s going to be doing the audio books. So I’ve already listened to the first 15 minutes of the “Prince and his Bedeviled Bodyguard” and it’s so good.
Jeff: As I would expect from a Greg Tremblay book.
Charlie: Oh yes. It’s going to be so much fun. I just like his comedic timing is perfect. So I’m really looking forward to that. That should hopefully be out sometime in late December or early January.
Jeff: What’s the series about for those who may not have picked up the first book yet?
Charlie: The “Paranormal Princes” is about these shifter princes and there’s the King of all shifters, and each Prince has to prove that he is worthy of his crown. Each book is about the prince being given his quest to prove his worthiness, but obviously along the way they find love.
By the end of the trilogy, we’ll find out what the quests were really about and it gets, you know, tied up neatly. Our first book we had an Ocelot shifter prince and a wolf bodyguard who also happened to be a prince. So it’s just a, it’s a lot of fun.
There’s a lot of humor, there’s a lot of banter, and I just had fun with it. I just let go with it. They’re just these little novellas that are, these paranormal shifter princes going on adventures and being snarky and sassy.
Jeff: Now you teased just a little teeny bit about 2020 and the expansion in the “THIRDS” universe. Anything else you can tell us about what’s coming up next year?
Charlie: Yeah, so next year, we’ve got books two and three in the “Lock and Keys Agency.” so that’s, “Lips are Sealed and “Behind Closed Doors.” I’m very excited about those. This year I ended the “Four King’s Security” series, which is four books.
We’re going to have the spinoff. I know a lot of readers are wondering, well, what about Jack? What about Joker? I’m going to start that series. The first book will be “Stacking the Deck,” which is Jack and Fitz. And then we’ve also got the launch of the “TIN” series.
Originally I had hoped to start publishing it this year, but I didn’t want to put those books out until the “THIRDS” was back out cause some readers were mid series. Some readers wanted to start it before the new series came out. So I made the decision to hold off on “TIN” until the “THIRDS” were back out.
I’m going to be wrapping up some series, like, the Soldati series, with the third novella. I’m looking to wrap up some of the smaller series and launch the bigger, spin off series and do some fun stuff with those.
Jeff: You’ve got a lot on your plate for next year.
Charlie: Yes, yes. I start off with very ambitious goals and then depending on what, you know, the universe throws at me just, kind of get done what I can get done.
But, yeah, I’ve got a plan in place. I don’t have as many conferences next year. This year I had seven, and that kind of, yeah, every conference takes a lot of time away from my writing, the prep work before a conference, during the conference, recovering from the conference.
I’m pulling back to three or four for next year. Two reader conferences and two industry conferences. So try and get my schedule back on track and get out these books that I want to get out.
Jeff: I imagine your readers will be happy to know that you’re going to stay put and write these books and get them out the door. But of course, one of the places that we are going to see you next year will be in February at Coastal Magic.
Charlie: Absolutely.
Jeff: Which of course is practically in your backyard anyway. This won’t be your first time at Coastal. What keeps you coming back to the beach for this weekend?
Charlie: Coastal is just such a great environment. It’s so laid back, everyone’s so friendly. You get to just hang out with readers and hang out with your fellow authors. The panels are fun. It’s a small, tight knit group, so it’s not overwhelming. And, I just love the atmosphere of it. I’ve been going since 2015. So it will be my fifth one, sixth one.
Jeff: What would you say to readers who are considering to make the trip in 2020 to help kind of nudge them to come join us at the beach?
Charlie: f you don’t go to a lot of conferences or maybe you’re uncertain or you feel like you might be overwhelmed by a bigger conference, I mean, Coastal is just such a great place to go because like I said, it’s a small group of people.
Everyone’s very friendly. No one’s ever on their own. You can hang out with other readers who are passionate about the same thing you are, with other authors, where there all the time just to hang out, to, do fun panels. It’s Florida in February, so it’s probably warmer than wherever you are. So it’s just a great experience. I mean. I go back every year. And I always have a lot of fun, so I definitely recommend it.
Jeff: And how can folks keep up with you online and make sure they’re up to date as you’re putting all this material out in 2020?
Charlie: I have a newsletter, which is on my website.
I have a link on my website. I try not to send out more than one or two a month, depending on what big stuff is happening. I’m also have a Facebook reader group. I’m in there quite a lot and I do a lot of updates in there. I do giveaways.
I do all kinds of fun stuff in there. I’m on Facebook quite a bit so that’s probably the best place to find me. But through my newsletter, and I also update my website often so you can find the books that are coming soon or what’s just come out – the books as they’re releasing and everything.
Jeff: The Facebook group’s a good place to be cause those “THIRDS” covers get dropped there first.
Charlie: You get to see them first. And I do a little, I have theme days, so like every Tuesday is Tuesday Treats. So it’s either a giveaway or an excerpt or a sneak peek to the next book. So we have a lot of exclusives in there and fun stuff for readers.
Jeff: Awesome. Well, Charlie, thank you so much for coming and talking to us and look forward to seeing you in Daytona in February.
Charlie: I look forward to seeing you too. Thank you so much for having me.
