Notes from Deanna’s Desk #3 | When It Rains, It Pours

For anyone who follows me on Substack, you’ll see that I’ve been making an effort to be more diligent about posting there. I’m leaning into it being my professional journal where sometimes I vent, sometimes I talk about pertinent industry issues, and oftentimes I talk about work-related matters including struggles with work-life balance which I never seem to accomplish.

Most recently, I had a rather long note which also turned into a longer-form essay about my personal dumbassery (I really like that word) of not taking care of myself. Or rather, not realising that I was running myself ragged. Not smart, Deanna!

I’m going to cherry pick a few notes (we shall see how rambly I get, I do love a good ramble) to share here for my newsletter peeps cos I know most of you aren’t hanging out on Substack. I could/should share it all to Facebook as well, but y’all, I don’t have the oomph to hit all the socials. There are so many!! So my philosophy is to pick one and (hopefully) do it well. At this point, Substack is my platform of choice for these because Facebook… oof! Nuff said!!

Let’s dive into the recap, shall we?

A Not-So-Quick Recap and Some Random Thoughts

A small updated before I get started-started… and another apology. I started drafting this in early June, but June kinda went to hell with Hubby’s knee surgery complications. I made a small update here. I’ve been trying to get back on track, but the process is slow. As with any health complications, things continue to improve and then get complicated again. I’ve mentioned it with some small updates here and here. I’m trying not to dwell or make excuses, but life has been lifing hard at us, so I’m even slower than usual. I continue to be hopeful things will eventually improve.

29 May 2026

I’ve been enjoying the short notes that Robert Ryan of Author Unleashed has been sharing. We don’t always see eye to eye on all topics, but I find him insightful and sometimes slightly adjacent to my views, so there’s a lot of yes, but… That said, the man is a giant in the indie publishing space, so you need to go check him out. I promise you’ll learn a lot from him. Here are a couple of recent notes he’s shared which I’ve particularly enjoyed:

#1 On Conflict
No conflict = no story.
No literary hook at the opening = no read through.
No emotional engagement with a character = no reader interest.
Start your story with something interesting. And keep building on that until the last page.

#2 On Watership Down (this one inspired me to grab the audiobook since I was never able to get into the actual book itself as a young child. It was one of those books I was told I needed to read, but never quite managed it.)
I’m reading Watership Down. Again. This must be something like my tenth time since the 80s.
You haven’t lived until you’ve discovered rabbit fairy stories like Rowsby Woof and the Fairy Wog Dog.
Just sayin.

27 May 2026

I had a recent situation where a newbie author contributed a review for one of my authors (long story, won’t go there), but from the review and the “feedback to the author” this note resulted.

A small lesson in craft regarding character arc development and agency vs checking off a trope list someone might think is a genre requirement.
    When a heroine goes from hiding from a threat to her life, to displaying intelligence and strength, taking control to help take down a bad guy, and then choosing to go back to her own apartment when the danger is over instead of permanently moving in with the hero while still maintaining a relationship with him—that’s agency and character development = craft.
    Asking that the heroine become a damsel in distress and needing to be kidnapped and rescued, then having the hero immediately propose so they can neatly slam the door on the romance is not understanding genre, plus spending too much time focused ticking of a list of tropes and must have beats is not craft. It’s basically stringing together a checklist with a bunch of words in between.
    Stop thinking that a “strong female character” has to be a badass who instead comes across as a bitch while having a chest beating alpha hero who subverts her strength because she ultimately needs to be rescued. And if she does need to be rescued make it make sense and don’t paint her as useless without the hero while pretending to be strong. Genuine, discerning readers will know.
    Stop writing snarky-bitch plus alpha-hero-secret-cinnamon-roll thinking it’s character development. It’s not. That’s just a bunch of bullet points. Be better than a generic tropified-list-book-knock-off masquerading as craft.
    It doesn’t matter what genre any author writes, they need to understand how that genre informs the writing and the craft. It’s okay to push boundaries or subvert. It is not okay to conflate.

23 May 2026

I’ve started seeing this author called Nigel Code pop up in my feed. I’m not even sure how it started, but I love his rather snarky take on some things and the way he calls out rubbish. He wrote a short note about writing vibration which I wholeheartedly agreed with.

Truly good writing has a rhythm to it. Discerning readers will be able to hear the music, the beat, the tempo, the sound of the words as they vibrate through our senses. Some call it the author’s voice. But call it whatever you want, if the writing doesn’t have it, it will have no heart and no soul, and to your inner ear, it will sound like the tick tick tick monotone of a metronome. It will be one note and boring. Find the music in your writing. Find your rhythm. Find your voice. That’s what will have readers turning pages to read one more chapter, just like Nigel Code, Author did.

17 May 2026

This was a couple weeks ago though I had written it a little while before. I don’t always post stuff I write for notes right away for the simple reason that there are times when I like to let them sit and others, I can crank out a bunch of notes in a short period of time and I don’t want to spam my feed. This one is on showing up and it’s a very important topic for me because I truly believe that showing up is half the battle. And I wanted to celebrate my writing sprint team because they are awesome!

I want to talk about two things that may or may not be long enough for a full length article on the website, maybe—
    It’s the importance of showing up and the fact that I (and likely many others) say, you can’t edit nothing.
    I started my Author Client Community at the beginning of the year. It’s a small dedicated group of only my author clients and one invited author friend. But this is a group of dedicated authors and writers who are serious about their writing and author careers regardless of whether they do it full time or not.
    We sprint twice a week. The midweek writing sprint is optional-ish, but really for anyone who can make it. It’s shorter, usually only three 10-minute sprints and the Saturday one if our main writing sprint session. Most everyone would try to make it. This Saturday past, we had a full house and it always makes me happy. This is a longer sprint session. Two 10-minute sprints and two 15-minute sprints.
    Since we’ve started, most everyone has shown up fairly consistently. Life happens and sometimes we/they might skip a session, or when Hubby had surgery and life was lifing at everyone, we took a week off. Here’s the thing—showing up is half the battle, and I’m so proud of everyone who shows up. Once or twice a week, every week. And the more we show up, the more motivated we become to show up, because showing up is its own motivation and momentum. This week one author had a family sitch, but she showed up for three of the four sprints on Saturday. Another was away for the weekend but she put on her headphones and sprinted while at her thing—we had to ask her to mute her mic because the ambient noise from her event space was bonkers, but I couldn’t be prouder. Of everyone. For showing up. Because words are being written, stories, novellas, books are getting finished.
    So my next point. You can’t edit nothing. I’ve started editing a novella that was written entirely during sprints. It needs work, but you know what? There would be nothing to edit if it weren’t for sprints since this author has a full time corporate job during the week. And here he is, with a finished novella. Another author has also completed and submitted a novella. A short story got finished, I’ve written countless articles, two novels are at about the midway point and one is about a third of the way in. I think I might have left out a short story or two in there. All this since the beginning of the year. And some authors only have time to write during sprints, so showing up and writing has become their writing “me” time. Did I mention I couldn’t be prouder?
    So if you have a community around you, join it. If not, start one. Mine is virtual. We are located in different parts of Australia, plus in the US and Canada. We use Google meetings, but really any virtual meeting app will work. The point is to show up and write. That’s what’s important. You get to grow as a community, as writers, as authors, and at the end of it, you get to see the fruits of your labour.
    One final note. This is a long game. None of this happened overnight. We’ve been at it for five months. Showing up week after week, and writing.

16 May 2026

I read a fabulous line from a Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz and Amanda Quick) book I’d been reading. She’s a favorite author and lately I’ve been digging into her backlist for good books to read (that’s a whole other topic). This is from Orchid (St. Helens Book 3).

Why did you highlight this one very strange line of dialogue, Deanna? Because in that one line you see how the focus on their entire relationship has changed. You see how a mundane and often hygiene-focused action that’s very private becomes something he’s willing to share. It shows you exactly where he stands in within his view of their relationship without him spelling it out for you the reader, by telling you that his feelings had shifted and the space she held in his life was no longer a separate thing.
    Some writers will argue that showing is overrated. I’d say that when used properly with the right balance between showing and telling, an impactful moment can become visceral for the reader—that’s what will stay with them long after they’ve read the last word and put the book down.
    When the moment is right, give your reader words they will feel in their bones.
    The line in question is this: "You can use my toothbrush anytime you want," he said very seriously.

On the same day, I also shared that one of my authors joined Substack. Actually, she’d been on it for a while, but we finally got our ducks lined up and consolidated her branding so it all looks shiny and pretty. Do head over to any of her platforms and say hi. Facebook. Instagram. Substack.

Very excited to share that Patrizia Smrekar has joined the shenanigans here on Substack. Please give her a warm welcome and check her out. Her debut is launching soon and we’re getting all her ducks lined up in a row. Go say hi to Patrizia and tell her I sent you.

15 May 2026

Orna Ross shared a quote from Rachel Morton which I wholeheartedly agree with. Both what she said and what Rachel Morton said. I will let their words speak for themselves.

I love this because I see this happening over and over and over, and it does so much harm and hurts so many people. The number of times I’ve seen “suspicions” posted in groups I admin to “out” and author is shocking. And it is detrimental. Suspicion is not fact. Inviting the internet to weigh in and turning suspicions into witch hunts is just vicious human behavior. Too many people in their self-righteousness take too much glee in this. Let them do whatever they do, and you do you.
    Orna Ross: This! Plus: if another writer has used AI to assist them in writing their book(s), you can notice that, and choose to pass on and not do that yourself. You and your friends don’t have to review-bomb them with one-star ratings, troll them with personal hate-comments, or tell other authors to boycott them. @Rachel Morton takes on the self-appointed ‘author police’. Thanks Rachel.
    If you think ARCs shouldn’t be part of a paid tier, you can think that. You can not subscribe. You don’t have to publicly shame the author for making a different choice to you.
    If you discover an author’s pen name doesn’t match their gender, you can process that information privately. You absolutely do not get to share their real identity with the world.
    Because at the end of the day, nobody made you the gatekeeper. Nobody elected you. Nobody gave you the authority to decide what another author can and can’t do with their own work, their own business, their own identity. And wrapping it up in moral outrage doesn’t change that.

One final note on this topic in case anyone wants to ask where I stand on this issue. I have a background of over 20 years in IT as a systems implementation project manager, and a technology and management consultant. I’ve provided advisory services to large corporate organizations on their technology strategy starting with a very large Australian bank’s entire desktop strategy back when I was a baby-IT-chickie. That was back in 1996. So technology and I are friends. But as a result of that, I view any technology and all technology as tools. Because they are tools, they are no different than a car or a kitchen knife, so it all depends on the person who wields it whether the car takes them places or causes a fatal collision. I am very neutral about tools and as an extension technology. Some I like more than others, some I use, some I don’t. Bottom line, I am neutral on this particular topic. It’s a tool, and I’m very GIGO about it. Garbage-in-Garbage-out. If you don’t have writing craft skills, you do not understand your genre or your target reader, or you do not understand good design, then yes, as unpopular as this may sound, it’s pretty much GIGO. But if you come at me and imply anything about my authors or my work, I will be rather offended because I see all the human effort and soul that goes into their work—OUR work. And I will protect and defend them.

I think I’m going to stop here otherwise, this set of notes is going to get outrageously long. Of course, I started on these notes a couple of weeks ago and then played catch up as I’ve taken to writing my articles and posts for the website during weekly sprints. It’s been wonderful, since quite a few of my latest articles were drafted during sprints, including the latest on publishing for free, life as romance tropes—this one I had started previously, but finished during sprints, similarly with this other one—how moments in your life can be a story.

But before I go, if you’ve made it this far, I have a small milestone to celebrate too, so let’s fast forward into the present-ish again…

28 May 2026

I may have mentioned it here and there, but since we are under a gag order as it’s a legal situation, I can’t talk about it in detail. However, I can say that I was approached by an author (perhaps there will be a lessons learned article one day when it’s not so fresh) via a rather roundabout way, where her story was published without her consent by someone else. It was six months of legal stuff and for her, it was emotional and difficult. And as with all things legal, it dragged on and on. And it was fraught. I was emotionally burnt out from it, she was emotionally burnt out and stressed from it, and it’s been a difficult and expensive time. Y’all, anything that involves lawyers is very exxy. Oof! So since it got wrapped up, I did a little happy dance and gave myself a small reward.

I wrapped up a very tough IP theft publishing case this week and as a reward to myself, I’m treating me to this cool coat since we’re getting into winter here. Shhh… don’t tell Hubby. He’ll say I already have too many coats, but I love a good coat and this one is hella fun. Ah heck, he’ll find out soon enough anyway. We should always reward ourselves for a job well done, and this coat is mine cos this case has been one heck of a rough, tough ride.

And you can check out the note and the gorgeous coat that’s on its way here. Updated on the coat: Alas, I had to return it. It didn't fit around the arms. Ugh!

29 March 2026

Not my first hot take, probably not my last.

Hot take: I’m not going to teach my authors to hustle. I’m going to teach them to build a sustainable career at a pace that won’t burn them out. I built my publishing partner career to what it is today over a decade and a half. If something is going to last, it won’t happen overnight.

That’s all I’ve got for you now. I’m literally sitting here on session #3 of our Saturday sprints with the Deanna’s World Author Client Community. But Hubby and I are also away at a little sneaky getaway at a gorgeous beach house (where it’s been raining non-stop since we’ve arrived) for a short break before he’s into his second knee surgery in five days’ time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this (not so) little update. If you want to connect or chat, you know where you can find me in all the places—Substack (I hang out there most these days), through my newsletter, via email, or on Facebook.

I might be a bit MIA in June what with Hubby’s surgery and all, with me playing nurse again, but I’ll try not to be too absent. From previous experience, the first week after surgery was brutal for the both of us. Send energy drinks and chocolate!

xoxo, Deanna.

PS. I was MIA on the website for quite a bit actually, but in case you missed it, I’ve also managed to get my May 2026 What Deanna Read posted, wrote and published my Deanna’s World publishing partner business model white paper, and collaborated with an author friend about tips for publishing for free—I did manage to send this one out as a newsletter, so if you’ve read it, thank you.

PPS. Send kittens and chocolate.

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