Ep 65 Talking STRONG Female Characters and Kindred’s Curse With Penn Cole! | Author Interview

In this episode we’re chatting with none other than THE Penn Cole! Bestselling fantasy romance author of her debut series The Kindred’s Curse Saga, also known as Spark, Glow, and Heat of the Everflame, with Burn of the Everflame on the way! Today’s episode will be completely spoiler free aside from a potential 5 minute spoiler section at the end we’ll warn you about, so even if you haven’t read these books yet, or you haven’t made it all the way through the series, you can stick around to chit chat with us, find out what you’ll be getting into when you pick this series up, and get to know the author behind the story.

Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who has been writing her whole life but took a career detour as an attorney and small business owner. She’s thrilled to finally be accomplishing her lifelong dream of becoming an author, and when she's not writing she’s meeting and supporting others (especially women and BIPOC/LGBTQ+ authors) and reading fantasy, romcoms, and humorous non-fiction. 

We had the pleasure of meeting Penn at Romantasy Book Con this last February and also got to listen to her speak on several author panels! We were SO inspired by her ideas and input surrounding strong female characters and stories that center women’s experiences that we immediately reached out for this interview. If you’re curious to find out Penn Cole’s take on what romantasy is doing for the book world, if it should be considered fantasy at all, why books that center female experiences and pleasure are often times minimized or infantilized, and why we relate so much to strong, badass heroines… stick around. 

We also discuss her writing process, inspiration, and what’s coming next. This conversation gets deep, and we’re so happy to share it with you! And don’t worry… we have Penn’s fave and fail all about Kindred’s Curse and an on the spot smash or pass. 

Check out Penn Cole | https://www.penncole.com/ and on IG & TikTok @authorpenncole

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Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube of Split or Swallow! Now a Barnes & Noble & Amazon best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk!  https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Besties and the Books Podcast
• 1:51 Introducing Author Penn Cole
• 3:22 Fav and Fails in Writing The Kindred’s Curse Saga
• 8:10 What Should People Expect When Reading The Spark of the Everflame Series
• 11:40 What Inspired You To Write Spark of the Everflame?
• 15:13 Is Romantasy Effected the Book World as a Whole?
• 26:33 How Long Did it Take to Write this Series?
• 31:43 How Was Your Publishing Experience?
• 39:56 What Books Changed Your Brain Chemistry?
• 42:45 Let’s Talk About Diem, Luther, and other Characters
• 1:00:01 Important Themes in the Kindred Curse Saga
• 1:05:10 Let’s Talk BURN OF THE EVERFLAME Progress, Teasers, Release Date
• 1:08:30 Let’s Talk BURN OF THE EVERFLAME Progress, Teasers, Release Date

Transcript

0:00

[Music] hey everyone I'm Ashley and I'm Liz and this is the Besties and the Books podcast welcome welcome welcome we have a very special spoiler-free with possibly a little teaser but we'll warn you ahead of time uh author interview uh episode with you today we are chatting with none other than the one and only Pen Cole hello thank you for having me super excited to be here i'm sure many of you guys who you know obviously are listening here and clicked on this know but she's the bestselling fantasy romance author of her debut series The Kindred's Curse Saga so that's also known as Spark Glow and Heat of the Everflame with Burn of the Everflame on the way so today's episode will be completely spoiler-free like I said aside for a potential maybe a little spoiler that we'll make sure to let you um know about ahead of time um so you can feel free to just stick around if you want to know more about this series if you want to know more about the process behind writing the series some behind the scenes with Pen Cole um but before we get into the actual interview we just wanted to thank you guys all so much for being here yes thank you all so much for being here today and taking your time out of your day and your book and thank you so much for Penn for taking time out of her day too to be here to talk with us make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcasts including YouTube we're all hanging out over there live for you to see and then over on Instagram and Tik Tok we're at Besties in the Books podcast everywhere and while you're over there at Instagram and Tik Tok make sure to follow Pen Cole at author Pen Cole everywhere so that you can hang out and join the fun and get all the like little teasers and alerts for upcoming fun so before we get into the actual interview you know let's just give a little brief introduction for Penn so she is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author who has been writing her whole life but did take a career detour as an attorney and small business owner she's thrilled to finally be accomplishing her lifelong dream of becoming an author when she's not writing she's meeting and supporting other authors especially women and bipok LGBTQ+ authors and reading fantasy romcoms and humorous non-fiction so we had the pleasure of meeting Penn at Romanty BookCon this last February and also got to listen to her speak on several author panels we were so inspired by her ideas and input like you guys don't even know i have my journal here that I was like I was like furiously writing notes like the whole time and like literally I have like quotes that you said that were like really inspiring to us um so we immediately reached out for this interview and we just so excited to have you so welcome Pen Cole i'm so honored to be here yay thank you so much for coming in to join us in this talk just have this conversation finally it like feels so cool to be able to like listen to someone who you admire who has these ideas that we that really resonated with us and then to actually be able to like have this conversation yeah pretty pumped we're going to put you on the spot over on our podcast we like to open up every podcast episode with a fave and fail like a different theme so it's kind of like a best and worst that kind of thing so for you we wanted to throw out there what was your favorite and maybe like least favorite part or a bit of a fail about writing the Kindred's Curse series so best part worst part whatever you want to discuss um I think the best part has been the readers and the relationships that I've built with the readers um getting to know people i started very very small i mean I was self-publishing my debut i had like 200 followers and most of those were from follow trains which is probably not the highest quality followers and like it and nobody really knew who I was it was like me and you know 199 spam accounts or something and so I was really at the beginning getting readers one by one by one by just building connections with them and so many of those early readers have actually become really close friends now that I talk to every day and you know know on a different basis than just author reader and a lot of those I've seen a lot of them start to become friends over my books and and they start chatting about the book and then they start chatting about their lives and they become really close and watching this community grow um both with me and without me has been like the coolest just amazing experience and just all of these amazing people who have been so supportive of me and my books is just it's like so special and so so humbling in like the best possible way uh I think the worst part uh I think the worst part a has been it's um I think any author will tell you it is a real mental health struggle in this industry i mean every author I know talks about this non-stop but I thought I was like a very mentally strong person before i worked in very stressful industries before this um you know I was not somebody who necessarily struggled with depression or uh self-doubt or any of that but man writing will do that to you it'll make you really start start secondguessing yourself and whether you're good enough and um authors more than most other artists are exposed to just so much feedback about their work on a daily basis just hundreds of voices expressing their opinion and that no matter how who you are can be it can be really uh it can affect you you know in a really deep way and so I I think I came into this a little overconfident thinking like that's not going to bother me i can handle it i have thick skin uh and I've come to realize I'm not immune no one is immune uh it's for sure been a big adjustment process of like how do I hold on to my love of writing and my love of engaging with readers on social media and being present and responding to people who reach out to me while also like putting the barriers in place I need to protect my mental health i think that's a journey I'm still on for sure and still figuring out um but it it's been the biggest struggle of of publishing and I think that's true of many many other authors as well yeah definitely something that people aren't always talking about so I think that's great to be able to discuss that you know we talk about it a lot in author circles you know in author communities a constant topic of discussion but I think authors are so afraid of looking ungrateful to their readers or you know we want to present a really positive outlook and we want you know the the happy shiny brand of course and so we don't always want to show the the downsides to it um and so I think a lot of people keep it really quiet and keep it hidden uh but it's it's I think we're seeing it come out more in your in a lot of authors that are cancelling releases delaying releases taking hiatuses from publishing uh because they're you know they worked themselves so hard for years in a row and get burned out and are really having to like reset i know a lot of authors going through that right now I definitely have noticed that too and I think that sharing that like on social media as well because just the pressure to be on social media constantly I'm sure is one of the huge contributors to that so I think just being transparent almost makes me like appreciate an author more because I'm like yeah you're a human being you're a person and so I like when they're just open and honest about that kind of stuff definitely so I guess we're just going to like kick off the interview questions here and just kind of go down the list um so let's see here what should people expect if they're thinking about reading your book series so like if you were to just give like a little bit of a you know summarize the plot maybe a few of the tropes that you think you know without giving any spoilers away how would you like just tell a random person this is what you should expect from the um from Spark of the Everflame in my series sure so uh Spark of the Everflame it's the first book in the Kindred's Curse Saga which is a four book from fantasy series so it's um very much a fantasy epic journey with magic and dragons and all of that stuff that we love from fantasy um but also with a very slow slow slow burn romance that you will uh definitely will torture you but I hope will also reward you in the end uh it follows a healer named Dembellator who lives in a small mortal village uh she has a pretty small but happy life as a healer um but her life is kind of full of secrets and full of um things she doesn't she really kind of shuts herself off to the world around her because she likes to stay in her little bubble and when we first meet DM that bubble is popped when her mother goes missing unexpectedly and in the search for answers as to where her mother went and why she disappeared DM is thrust into the middle of a war between the mortals that she was raised with and the descended who are this race of demigods who have magic and power and wealth and they rule over all of the realms and of course they're all incredibly hot naturally and uh DM gets really put in the middle of this conflict that's brewing between these two groups and she's got to figure out her place in this growing war find her mother and find the answers to the mysteries surrounding her life there's a lot of humor there's a lot of banter there is a slow so slowburn angsty high tension romance um there's a really great in my opinion found family that is full of really interesting characters it's a very diverse world and I think it's a book where you're going to have a lot of fun you're going to laugh a lot cry a lot like be on the edge of your seat but I hope it's also a series that makes you think and challenges you um with a lot of really important themes that are echoed out in the real world like you know the effects of colonization and injustice discrimination income inequality gender disparity all of these things that we're facing out in the real world are also reflected in DM's world and as she sort of figures out her opinion on these things and and what she can do with her one self to try and fight them I hope that it also challenges readers to ask themselves the same question yeah yeah that was perfect i feel like I feel like I'm listening to you like give this summary and I'm like "Oh yeah that sounds so amazing." I'm like "What am I talking about obviously I know that already but it's like you're it's like you're convincing me again to like get hyped to read it no yeah we have been just eating obviously we've eaten up the series with Liz and I and our little virtual book club that we host so everybody's been obsessed and we all want to know not not no pun intended but did anything spark the idea for you to write Spark of the Ever Flame like anything in particular inspire you yeah I had a couple of different inspirations i don't want to one of them is a spoiler so I won't give it away but I will say what happens at the very end of Spark is was like the first scene that appeared in my mind and I started to think okay what is the world in which this happens what are the consequences of this um that was kind of what everything grew around um but I won't I won't say what it is so you'll just have to read to find out uh but the other thing that really inspired me is that I u you know in science fiction we see a lot of these stories of like aliens coming to earth and taking over the earth and how humans respond to that you know they they have wars to try and chase them away or you battle them or whatever and this is a very common thing we see in science fiction but we don't really see that as much in fantasy and so I kind of wanted to explore that in more of a fantasy setting and so in this world generations ago you had these essentially aliens but they're gods and goddesses who came to this mortal world because their own was under attack and so they came and sought refuge in in this mortal world and they kind of took it over and their offspring started to you know their very powerful offspring eventually became rulers of this mortal world and I think in in when you really think about if that actually happened what would humans do i think some of them would fight and try and chase them off some of them would maybe try and befriend them and try and get in their good graces and like ally with them i think a lot of people would just keep their head down and try and you know stay out of it and just keep living their life and hope it doesn't affect their life and I try to reflect all of these different perspectives in the book you know you have people who feel all kinds of different ways about the kindred and the descended and you know their presence in this world and the the mortals as it as with many oppressed people are not a monolith they all have very very different opinions and perspectives on their discrimination and the descendants's presence so I really was interested in the sociological impacts of that especially many generations down the line where this is something people have lived with with for hundreds of years and how the consequences of that original decision of the kindred to come here are still impacting people to this day yeah definitely i feel like that's a like fascinating way to look at it because it's like we're you know we're presented all this information about you know how we got to this place and I never really thought about it in that way like in that kind of sci-fi like aliens colonizing this other planet kind of way for some reason and so like thinking about it in that way makes it even more like layered yeah i think it's because normally we see the aliens arrive right and so we see the shock of like oh my gosh this new creature is here and they want to take over our earth this is like okay that happened you know a thousand years ago now we've been living with them here for generations upon generations what does life look like then once they've sort of integrated into society and and what does that new world look like so actually you know I feel like this is a really great sw segue because you're talking about how you know you're working all these really important themes um into you know a romance fantasy story so do you think that romantic and the romance genre as a whole is changing the book world and world in general and if so why and how 100% 100% i could talk about this for hours um so number one I want to say a lot of people think romanty is new it's definitely not new it has been around for a very long time i have been reading romantic for like 20 plus years the first one I ever read was Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Kerry i literally read it 20 years ago and it for me that was like the mother you know the the OG romantic i'm sure there were some before that but that was for me the the first really big mainstream one that I saw on the shelves of my bookstore and that got really popular um and that's what made me fall in love with the genre and read it my entire life uh but it's certainly having its like moment right now in the sun a lot of that started I think during CO uh I think there's many factors to why it it came up during CO i think a lot of people wanted escapism so fantasy really saw a comeback uh we saw people didn't necessarily want to read about people in the real world living real lives especially not going to their offices every day or you know the kind of stuff you would often see in like contemporary romance or um thrillers stuff like that they wanted to they were stuck at home because of co and they wanted to get out into this big world so I think that's a huge part of why fantasy exploded at the moment that it did um I also think that uh you know at the time we were coming off a at least in the US a political administration that was very many would say restrictive very authoritarian and a lot of people really were struggling with that and were wanting to sort of metaphorically see the good guys win and see the little people rise up against what they saw as you know this authoritarian regime and since we weren't necessarily seeing it out in the real world you know we turned to our books and we lived vicariously through the characters there as they fought oppression and discrimination and bigotry um and and ideally succeeded you know in the pages of their books um I think Tik Tok obviously played a huge role in that it was you know right at the time that book talk was exploding and so it really helped launch this um you know not just romanty but a love of reading generally i talked to so many people who fell out of love with reading for many years and in that kind of time frame they fell back in love with reading and and usually through one of these like gateway books like Acatar or something like that they really got back into reading and got back into and even discover new genres like romantic and realized oh this is something I actually really love spending my time doing reading isn't just for school anymore you know something boring it can be really fun uh so I think it's kind of a perfect storm of factors and I I do think it's here to stay for a really long time for all of those reasons especially because of what's going on in the world now i think it's only going to get bigger um and yeah I'm really excited about that yeah i feel like I mean that's what happened with Ashley i kept on trying to convince her to read Acatar and she finally did and it was the gateway for sure yeah exactly so to kind of build off of that a little bit um why do you think romanty as a genre is important and do you think it should just be considered fantasy like clumped together with fantasy or should it stay its own separate category oh this is the eternal debate i I in in author communities and in uh you know social media communities like on threads I just feel like every week it's this discourse about what is romanty is it fantasy is it romance for me personally just my opinion I think romanty is best when it it can truly stand alone with both right like if you take the fantasy out of it the romance is still really compelling and you still really want to read that romance and if you take the romance out of it the fantasy story is still really powerful and compelling and you want to follow that and if you can find a way to make both of those aspects of the story um deep and nuanced and interesting and have the reader care about them equally that for me is really the recipe for a a book that gets really successful when I look at a lot of the books that are super successful I think that can be said about many if not all of them um so I don't I don't think you can slot it into just fantasy or just romance i think it truly is well most of them truly are both there are certainly books that lean more one way or the other uh but the ones that I see really strike accord with readers and and catch fire are the ones that I think are really strong on both of those aspects uh I think it it's really important because fantasy is romance for me is hope right it it's the it's like that dopamine hit of like something a happily ever after the belief that at the end of this we'll be okay and things will be good and the problems will be solved and I think the guarantee of the happily ever after in romance is incredibly powerful and fantasy is so often about conflict and so often about these big themes like oppression and justice you know these war and um all of these really kind of dark hard difficult themes to work through and so when you combine those two things I think it's really powerful um and really inspiring for people to to really see characters that they care about fight the big baddy and fight these um really difficult themes and social conflicts and know that they're going to come out of it on the other side and that there is going to be a hopeful future i think we need that now more than we ever have really uh and I I think people are going to keep turning to it again and again to both inspire them to keep fighting and to not give up um and also just to give them hope for the future yeah definitely i feel that for sure yeah same sometimes we like to have especially you know I we keep going back to the panel that we heard but someone brought up comfort tropes and it's kind of like you know you want to know like everything's going to be okay because this world is so stressful and crazy as it is with that said why do you think that books that center female pleasure and the experiences they have in general are often times devalued criticized infantilized i.e m male- centered stories are for everyone but for some reason female centered stories are just for women i think that's true with literally everything you know it's with sports with entertainment with you know media with art it everything we see um you know if we see little girls playing with toys that you would traditionally associate with boys like Legos or you know action figures or whatever it's fine it's okay that's fine but if we see a little boy playing with Barbies well then people have an issue with it you know and it it seems to be this way with everything where stuff designed with men in mind is acceptable but stuff for women is supposed to just stay with women uh that was a big part of why I got into romanty is because I was reading so much fantasy but it was all so male ccentric and it was written by men and the characters were mostly men and you know everything was really geared towards the male reader it's like yeah sure women can also like this and many women do but it clearly was not written to target or even necessarily with the female audience member in mind and then romantic came along and it completely flipped the script and it said not only are we going to write stories about women we're going to write them for women by women and this is going to be unapologetically targeted at a female fantasyloving audience and there were so many women that wanted that but it just wasn't really super available um or at least it was like a niche thing and it doesn't surprise me at all that when it really got more widespread like it exploded so quickly because I think there was a huge audience looking for that it was like craving it and just not finding it um now I love that we're seeing more men get into romant my husband I make him read all the classic like all of the big you know fantas romanty books i make him read he loves all of them he tells his guy friends like "You got to read these books they're so good." I love that we're seeing like the the the guys book clubs a lot of times on TikTok who are like reading you know the big romanty books i think it's incredible and amazing there's no reason why like these books are for everyone and maybe they're written for a female audience in mind but they're also open and inclusive to non-binary people to men like everybody can enjoy these they're not just for any one person um but it yeah it doesn't surprise me that there is so much push back and stigma and judgment because anything geared towards women gets that no matter what it is unfortunately so but I'm I'm very much of the mindset of like laughing my way to the bank like you can hate on romanty all you want we're going to sell our millions of books we're going to be hyper successful we're going to have our big cons and our balls and like we are going to be thriving over here and if you want to judge us for it like I don't care go ahead we're having fun and we are dominating the market romance and romanty is absolutely crushing the book market right now um every publisher is just eating up as much of it as they can get so you know let them hate from outside the club we're having a blast they're the ones missing out quite frankly exactly exactly so true so how long did it take you to write Spark of the Everflame well um I laugh because I didn't write Spark first i actually wrote Glow first um I wrote about half of Glow first cuz as I mentioned um what happened at the end of Spark was the initial sort of scene that I that everything grew from and for those who have not read the series to talk about it in very vague terms there's something that happens at the end of the book that forces DM to leave the bubble of her small little world and go into this bigger really like open her eyes and see this bigger world interact with people she hasn't interacted with before um you know just be thrown into a situation that's very unfamiliar and um and find her way in a in a totally new world and that's a very common trope in fantasy where you have this fish out of water moment where somebody is for whatever reason they have to leave or they're taken from their small little village and they go into the big magical world you know or or something like that you see it over and over again and so I think that because that was something I'd seen very often as like a story archetype that's what I gravitated towards and so I started writing it that way where she you see her in her little village for you know a few pages and then something happens and then her world totally shifts and I wrote like 50,000 words about half a book um and I stopped and I said "This just doesn't feel right something about this feels wrong." And I think it was because we I kept saying this world that she comes from you know the people she grew up with and the mortals that she's fighting to to liberate it's so important to her and it's her motivation for every single thing she does but I'm just telling you it's important without you seeing that it's important and I really think you need to go back and see her life in the village and meet the people she grew up with meet Mora and Henry and her family and understand this life that made her the person that she is before we can truly follow her on the journey for the next steps you know and I said "Okay we got to go back we gotta essentially write a prequel and we need to go see DM in the past and I I set aside what I had written and I said let's start earlier and that's when I started writing Spark and so at the time that I started writing Spark a lot of the world building a lot of the character development I'd already kind of unpacked quite a bit because I'd been working on it in Glow uh and so I wrote Spark in like three or four weeks uh and I don't think it would have been that quick had I not had that sort of first first bit uh but yeah it flooded out of me it was so fast it came out uh I think I was so excited about the world in the story at that point that I just could not write fast enough to get it all on paper and then Glow I had to completely rewrite it because I changed the story quite a bit uh and Glow took I think about two months and then heat took significantly longer and burn is still ongoing that's so cool like I love this is why we love interviewing you authors because we get to like hear so many different perspectives and how you can go about things and it just opens up our minds and our worlds like that's so Yeah like you started building it and you're like wait let's let's give them more i love that so thank you for giving us more we love it and seriously and take your time with burn like you know because I have I know there's a lot of pressure I think in in writing to like bust them out but I I mean I'm on the camp of take all the time you need you know we'll be here to read it when you're ready when you feel like it's ready as the artist cuz you are an artist to present it to us you know what I mean yeah I I've struggled a lot with it because I I want to get it to market i want people to read it i mean nobody wants it out there more than I do i promise but at the same time I've put so much work and time into these characters in this world i want to make sure that I give them an ending that they deserve and that I feel really good about and I think ultimately that's what serves the readers most in the end is giving them a book that I feel like I took the time I needed on so I I'm confident that the most 99% of readers will um be understanding about it good things come to those that wait that's my perspective art cannot be forced that I have learned the hard way you cannot force art to come it comes when it comes and that's just how it goes so can you tell us a little bit how like the actual publishing experience went because you're indie and traditionally published right like you're both yeah I have a super untraditional path to publishing um I started off self-published i always knew I wanted to self-publish i researched both paths but I ultimately knew pretty quickly that I wanted to um self-publish and not go through like a big publisher but the reason for that is that I um so I've owned my own businesses in the past i was a small business owner and a a business coach actually for many years and so the side of publishing that's really business focused like marketing and um legal and finance and all of that stuff none of that really intimidated me i I dealt with it in other industries so I was prepared to to deal with it here too um and I also kind of enjoy it like I really enjoy the marketing side i like getting on social media and talking about my books and meeting readers and going to events all that stuff is um it like refills my well and that's not true for every author so I understand why a lot of them outsource a lot of that but for me I love it um so I said well okay if I'm going to be doing all of the work and I'm going to be spending hundreds of hours you know marketing my books and doing all of that stuff I should keep the upside too and I should have the you know I should keep my own royalties and not be giving them to a publisher so that was really why I decided to focus on self-publishing um and so I self-published i pre-wrote the first three books so I wrote Spark Glow and Heat before I ever published anything and then um I published the first book in June of 2023 the second book in July of 2023 and then the third book in September of 2023 the plan was to rapid release all four by the end of the year um that didn't happen um but you know it's fine so uh I I got the first three books out and they took off very quickly um within the first I mean really once Heat came out is when things kind of exploded book three and it got very big very quickly um and I within I mean pretty much immediately after he came out I started getting interest from foreign publishers in like Italy and Germany and France asking to do translations um I got some very good advice from some experienced authors to go get an agent not try and do those myself so I did that i went and I got an agent and she's amazing i love her so much and she negotiated a ton of foreign deals for me so I think by the end of that first year we already had like nine foreign deals or something by the end of 2023 and then in early 2024 uh I was approached by Atria which is an imprint of Simon and Schustster and they were interested in picking up the series um I initially was not I was not super certain that that's the path that I wanted to go because I really enjoyed staying indie um but they Atria is a really forwardthinking publisher they have a lot of indies they have um structured their deals very differently than most publishers do they understand that a lot of indies want to hold on to some of their rights and they're willing to work with that and do more creative uh structuring of stuff and so when I told them that I wanted to hold on to my digital rights they were like "Okay let's keep talking." And most other publishers that we had talked to were not willing to even consider like keep talking after I said "I'm going to hold on to my digital rights." So we started negotiations and um they they convinced me and they made a really good pitch for how we could become really good business partners together and so I sold my print rights to them in uh mid 2024 i think we signed the contracts in like June and um they so now they I'm with Simon and Schustster for or Atria um for print and I still maintain my own digital rights so I'm a bit of a hybrid author um within the same series actually which is pretty unusual but starting to become more common which I'm really happy to see good for you for like you know Yeah asking for what you want and getting it i'm so passionate about this i think because I I had a past as a small business owner that really gave me the confidence to to walk away from deals which is a really scary thing to do there's a lot of FOMO you know this feeling of like if I need to if anybody shows interest I need to take it because nobody else might show interest or every book series is getting picked up right now like I need to get picked up too or I'm going to get left behind i think a lot of authors struggle with that feeling and I certainly felt it too and I'm was really lucky to have um some other authors in my life that were like that were more experienced than me they were like slow down is this really the best thing for you because your book is selling well on its own do you need a publisher are they actually bringing value to you um and if if so great if not it's okay to walk away like that doesn't make you more legitimate or like more serious of an author to have a publisher behind you it just makes you have a smaller cut of your money um so don't do it unless you really feel like it's a smart business move um and I'm really grateful to them who like really were grounding for me in looking at that from a business perspective and not an emotional perspective you spoke Yeah about being a small business owner how and you've been a writer for your whole life is it something that you've always gravitated to oh yeah i always wanted to be an author i mean from the very very earliest days it's like my earliest memories of are of me reading books and then finishing the book and saying I want to write a book just like this and then you know pulling up in my notebooks and like starting to write a story i've just I've always loved reading so much and I've loved writing and I knew all throughout elementary junior high high school that I wanted to be an author that's what I went to college for i have multiple degrees in creative writing um it's what I thought I was going to do you know from my earliest earliest times and then after I graduated college I just was not financially in a situation where I could like take the leap and and write without also having another job so I had to pursue other work to pay my bills and um of course like that took over my life and it was always something like I'm going to do this i'm going to write a book and it was just on the back burner for so many years and I you know I talked to so many people where that's the case they have this dream but it it's sort of hovering in the background for years and years and years and they think well maybe next year I'll get to it maybe next year I'll have time but it doesn't happen unless you make time you know unless you sort of force its way into your schedule and uh co did that for me when I lost my job and really forced me to say okay what am I gonna do with my life and finally I took the chance and started writing yeah well we're glad you did me too so do you have any other like like secret works like other um you know books that you've written that we don't know about like No I don't have secret pen names or anything this is truly truly my my debut series uh I certainly have like stories that I've written on my own that have never seen the light of day for anybody but me um but yeah this is truly the first thing I've ever published that's so cool that's so exciting so who are your favorite authors in and books like what books changed your brain chemistry and imprinted on your soul which that's a quote from you at Romance Sea so which books did that for you the the number one book that that really was like foundational for me was Jacqueline Car's Kushiel's Dart in that that trilogy um and that whole world there's other trilogies that she wrote in that same world that was the first one the first romanty I remember reading and it was it was like a you know a switch flipped in my head of like oh my gosh this is a this is a thing like fantasy for women actually can exist and can be successful and like why isn't there more of this and I just I must have read that book over and over and over again so many times through the years uh cuz for many years there wasn't much else like it out there um of course there's like Annne Bishop and Nolini Singh and there were other authors who were doing the same thing but um that was the one that for me was like I want this i want to see more of this in the world and uh I I think when you connect with a book that early on in your life at a young age it hits you in a way that like just becomes a part of you and like bonds with your soul and so that was for sure the book for me that I don't know that any other book will ever like beat it out at that special place um now of course I have so many amazing colleagues whose work is incredible and I I am some authors try not to read in their genre i am the opposite i try and read everything in my genre i if a book is successful in my genre I want to know why and I want to study it and see like what they did and be so impressed by my peers so I mean if you if there's a popular book in romantic I guarantee you I've read it probably several times i love that yeah after um because you had mentioned Kushil's Dart at BookCon I went and picked it up so I haven't read it yet but I do have it sitting right over there waiting for me i'm excited it's great it's very sexy um she's like the main character is like a cortisan who um she gets pleasure from pain so it's very very spicy very sexy uh but also has a really great like forbidden romance aspect to it a lot of politics and the pros is beautiful it's very poetic in you know how it describes things and I just I love it so much another one to add to our list always never ending TBR keep it coming baby this is a fun little silly question would you have fallen for Luther if you were in DM's position i is there anyone who could say no to that like honestly come on you're like"No it's terrible." Uh you know it's so funny uh us authors and romanty authors talk about this all the time that like the the men that we write are so gruff and like grumpy and dark and brooding and we're all married to golden retrievers who are just like the happiest nicest guys ever uh so I mean in the real world would I probably go for a guy like Luther i don't know i think I'd be too scared i think I would be intimidated and like I don't know about you but uh in the book world hell yeah absolutely totally my type in the books yeah did and did he inspire did something in particular or someone inspire you to write Luther's character well I so my husband I think is a mix of Taran and Luther taran is for those who haven't read you meet him in book he's Luther's cousin and friend and he's I mean he's the best he's like golden retriever himbo sort of like it's a good thing you're cute cuz you're not very smart kind of guy um we adore him i would say my husband is is like Taran and that he's very fun and very happy and like always here to have a good time you know and just like fun to be around but he's also very much like Luther and being very devoted and would do like literally anything for me and to see me reach my goals um so I think for me I have like the best of both worlds and having a little bit of each of them and in my husband I Luther was inspired um by a specific character if you've ever read the Shatter Me series by Tahara MafI which is like one of my favorites it's a a YA kind of dystopian i'm obsessed with it i love it so much i love everything she writes um it the the one of the love interests in Shatter Me his name's Aaron Warner he is the epitome of the I hate everyone but her trope like this man truly genuinely hates every single person on planet Earth except for the girl and he doesn't he's not afraid to show it like he's so just such a missing throat um and I love that like I eat that up so much i love that trope and I always joke that I Luther is like Aaron Warner if he grew up and went to therapy um because he's like much more mature than Aaron and a little bit more well adjusted but still very much like he's he really only cares about like you know a couple of people and everybody else can like f off we're going to have to have an episode of like books that Pen Cole told us to read definitely what qualities did you intentionally give to Luther to make him so dreamy but then also to have him be a good supporting character to DM is there anything in particular there's It changes a lot from book to book luther's journey for me is is pretty deep and just as important as DMs but very different from DMs um book one Luther i always say that like Luther is the character I knew the least when I started uh I had a pretty good feel for who everybody else was why they were doing the things they were doing and what they cared about and you know I could sort of predict what's this character going to do next or in any given situation and Luther was always the one I had to be like who is this man what would he do i'm not entirely sure and sometimes I would have to write him and be like no I don't think that's right and then write him a different way and and write like a few different choices that he would make before I really figured out okay I think this is him um and I think that's because he knew himself the least at the beginning of the series like he he is very much defined by duty and obligation um something happened in his life that we don't find out about for quite a while but but something happened in his life that made him believe he has a certain path and that he really only exists for a specific reason and his entire life is about preparing himself for that reason and that path um and he but he keeps it a secret you know nobody else really knows what he thinks about that path or or even that that's where he wants to go and so he has made everything else in his life secondary to obligation that he believes that he has um what he wants you know his desires his preferences you know who he wants to be around who he doesn't he has to put all of those things aside to focus on obligation and duty and um in book one that's very much the Luther that we see is this man who is single track mind focused on his role and his duty and when DM you know comes into his world she of course blows everything up and she turns everything on its head and she doesn't care about his obligation or his duty in fact she criticizes him for it and she um challenges his omn she doesn't want him to do that and that is very like shocking for him you know because everybody else in his life is really like yes you are duty and obligation um so I think that she forces him to take a step back and re-evaluate just life generally and his purpose um but then later as we get deeper into the series he really asks himself like "Who am I and what do I want and if I wasn't if I could choose my own life what would I choose for myself?" Um and he it takes him a few books to figure that out um I think he's I mean I think he's going to be figuring that out right up until the very end really uh and I have been really excited to watch his journey so often we get these men who feel very secure in who they are and what they want and their role in the world in romanticies and I don't think Luther is that i think he is as much trying to figure himself out as DM is trying to figure herself out and I've really enjoyed watching him grow as a character and open up and and really start to develop more in his personality as we watch him sort of go through that that journey yeah yeah I agree i love that too i know sometimes like the very slow slow burn can be a little bit like frustrating for people but I feel like when it's written the way that you write where we're so invested in those characters figuring out who they are separately before it's like they can really figure out who they are together it makes it it's going to make like the payoff so much better right i don't know i I enjoy it i think people I think sometimes people think they want something and actually want another cuz like I get it right if I'm reading a book or watching a TV show and I want these two characters to be together I just want them to be together you know like come on like this exactly and so like I totally get it but once they do once they're together it usually gets so boring and it's like takes all the fun out of watching it once that tension is gone so I I think as much as people say like "Come on get together." It's that period leading up to it or the will they won't they that's the really fun part to be in and and to stay in for as long as you possibly can so what about DM do you relate to her character and if so why and how in some ways yes in some ways no i She is one thing I love about her she's very self-aware like no one can criticize Dia more than she criticizes herself for sure and even though she projects a lot of confidence and sort of boldness inside she's definitely a hot mess um and I relate to that 1,000% um I I try and project confidence but I'm definitely just you know little duck feet swimming in the water uh in my head and so I think she's relatable for a lot of women and certainly for me in that way of like trying to seem strong and competent and put together and like I can handle this while internally just not being sure at all that you can handle it and and sometimes being really broken and and really um weighed down by guilt or doubt or um obligation all of that so she reminds me so much of so many women I've known in my life my friends and the struggles they've gone through she's not necessarily inspired by any specific person but certainly there are aspects of her personality and her struggles that are very much things I have seen in all of my like friends um growing up and and everything that we all have sort of dealt with privately yeah I feel like she is a very relatable character for sure because of the fact that it's like she's she's really figuring things out and she is I feel like a confident strong character but also realistically so like inside we know that she doesn't just innately like inherently know how to do everything she isn't great at everything and I love that about her yeah she's I tried to make her as realistic as I could i mean she doesn't just learn from her first mistake she doesn't get things right the first time and sometimes not even the second or third time you know sometimes it takes her a bit and can take a lot of big consequences for her to realize like oh maybe I shouldn't do that you know um but at the same time so often we expect characters to show growth by changing and there are certainly ways in which DM changes quite a bit but I think sometimes strength can also be um not changing and holding on to parts of ourselves uh even though the world might want us to change so for example like DM's a very compassionate person she's you know a healer at heart she really wants to uh help people she believes people can even if they've done bad things in their past they can be better they can change and she believes in forgiveness and mercy and the world does not like that both in and out of the book people want her to be savage and violent and vicious and hateful um they want her to like punish her enemies they want her to destroy anyone that stands in her way and that's just not who she is you know she's going to try and bring people together not tear them apart um and she gets a lot of pressure in the world and I get a lot of pressure outside in the world for to make her be that way and I for one think it's one of her best qualities that she tries really hard to hold on to her heart and her kindness and compassion even though the world wants her to be really hateful and violent instead yeah that's beautifully said absolutely uh with that said was were you inspired by any particular powerful heroins that either from your life or you've read or watched and why do you think we resonate so much with powerful women in stories like yours i don't think that there was any one specific character that really inspired her i think probably the closest one to her would be like Ailen from Throne of Glass but they're I also think they're very very different people um but I did love reading you know a strong confident woman even though you know she had her doubts and her you know weak moments um at the same time she was unapologetically you know fighting for her people and I love that i love the women that really have this important goal that they're fighting for and they are unapologetic and unafraid to say like these this is what I'm here fighting for you know I think that strength takes many forms and it's it's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that strength is um being loud being bold and being the first to run onto the battlefield or being the one to run into a burning building and in many ways that is DM she's sort of the the stereotypical like quote unquote strong woman um but as we see that there's a lot of weakness in her too there's a lot of doubt and a lot of times where she breaks down and sometimes that strength actually can be a flaw and it can really hold her back or cause a lot of consequences for the other people in her life and one thing I tried to do in my book is bring in other women who are strong in very different ways to show that strength can take many forms so you have somebody like Lily who is Luther's little sister and she appears very sweet very meek kind of just this little Disney princess um but as we see particularly in book two she can hold her own and she can stand up for herself and um you know she's very sweet about it but she also can has a lot of inner strength and knows who she is and what she wants um and is willing to make sacrifices for her family and for the people she cares about um you know we have somebody like Eleanor who is you know an incredible people person who is really good at at bringing people together at getting to know them um you just instantly like her but she's more reserved she doesn't like being in the spotlight you know and she has a lot of insecurity about am I good enough you know am I worthy of of this um and seeing her come into her own and really like take control of that uh and say"Yeah I am I can do this and I am worthy of this." Like I think there's a lot of strength in that you know you have Alix and her quiet strength all of these women in the book they are very different and all of them are strong in very very different ways and so I've loved playing with that and having DM learn from that and meet these women who are very different from her and seeing their strength in different ways and learning from that and growing from that as well i think that's an important lesson for all of us women out here in the real world as well yeah that representation that strength can take all different types of forms I think can speak to us on such another level that maybe traditional fantasy didn't bother with all the time you know we saw a lot of cliche damsel in distress type of situations and now that we have so many more stories that we can read and women's stories of all different types of power is a beautiful thing definitely for sure well and I love that that just brings like the found family thing into it too because I know for me I'm like there's it's just we've got such a fun gang coming together you know what I mean i I love all the like different personalities like you're saying they all bring different things to the table and I think that that is one of my favorite parts in a good fantasy story in general is just seeing how all these characters are going to bring all these different personality traits and strengths to whatever that you know kind of big crescendo is going to end up being you know exactly exactly yeah and I I've tried very hard to make my found family each have their own individual journey and their own goals and their own struggles and so even though yes this is DM's story at the end of the day um all of them have things that they want but can't get and they're trying to get and you know in these little bits and moments that we get with them we see those stories develop as well and for me that's what really makes a book special is when I'm reading and I feel like I know all of these characters and they're real people and I'm rooting for the side characters just as much as I am for the main characters and so um that's what I tried to do with mine and that's what happens in all of my favorite books yeah I feel like there's nothing better than like finishing a book series and being like "Okay so when are we going to get so and so's book?" like one of the side characters what What are we gonna find out what happens to this person and this person it's like my favorite thing exactly were there any themes that you put into the book that are extra meaningful for you i mean you've already mentioned a few but if there was any more that you wanted to bring up um one of the ones I haven't mentioned that is like a really important theme I think is the theme of scars and um Luther has a very visible scar that kind of runs across his face and it's um very unique because descended don't have scars they have healing abilities and so they can heal their scars away you know very instantly and Luther has chosen intentionally not to heal his scar um and it's not necessarily because he likes it or thinks it looks hot even though I think it looks hot it's it's really because for him it's a reminder of how he got the scar which is tied to this purpose that he has um and so it's it's something that reminds him every single day of what he's been through and what he has what he still has yet to do um and so it's a lot of mixed feelings for him about his scars then you have DM who she has you know little scars here and there that she picked up growing up and she loves them for her it's like a story book of her life and this is the time I fell off a horse and that's the time I was climbing a tree and it's like these are fun stories for her of of things that you know wild things she did growing up and she is used to seeing them on the people the other mortals around her cuz everyone has them she doesn't even think twice about it they're something for her that's a symbol of what you've um endured to get here and what you survived um they're a symbol of strength and so when when she and Luther start talking about each of their scars it's a really kind of jarring moment for both of them to see how differently they view those things and also how the world around them in particular the descended view those scars and I I have loved playing with that in um Luther's journey his how he feels about and deals with his scars but also how they each deal with their internal scars and the losses that they go through or the traumatic things they've experienced and how maybe they don't you don't see those outwardly but those scars are still there and you feel them every day even if no one sees them so it's it's something that I think about quite a lot when I'm writing and have referenced a lot in the books and it's been having readers come up to me at events and say that that's like a special part to them because of scars that they have is like some of the most meaningful conversations I've had yeah i mean I definitely really liked how you know to DM his scar isn't something that should be erased i that really stood out to me for sure yeah and it's it's kind of the first thing that unlocks her starting to see him not as this monster when she realizes he he had to have gotten this as a child because if he'd gotten it any older it would have automatically healed right so he had to have gotten it as a as a young child and then he chose not to heal it away and those are two things you would not ever expect from a a character like Luther who is this powerful intimidating like prince you know and that really I think is the impetus for her to say maybe what I think I know about these people is not the full story and to start to look deeper yeah so why did you decide to write a book so heavily influenced by other themes like female empowerment and uh specifically strength being defined in a multitude of ways that really stood out to me big time for sure i just feel really strongly that for me personally any art I create I want to do some good with it and I want to make people think and hopefully come out on the other side wiser or happier or more thoughtful or more open-minded or something to change for the better in some way for having read the series and for having watched these characters' journeys um it's you know who knows if I accomplish that and I'm sure it's different for every single reader but it's something I at least think I want to try to do with every single thing I write uh it's just it it's art is so powerful for being able to do that and um I I just think it's as an artist I feel like it's something I'm called to do and that is really important for me to do i love that maybe the themes will change from book to book series to series who knows uh but um at least thinking about okay what can I what message can I tell with this story or how can I make readers think and grow for having read this do you know can like and don't feel pressured to tell us anything you can't tell us but we have to ask we have to throw these things in here uhhuh do you know when Burna the Everflame is going to come out approximately and could we get any teasers maybe I um we have an internal date that we are working to hit um there's so many steps that have to happen uh 90% of it is on me more a lot more than that honestly 99% is on me uh I have a lot of people waiting very patiently for me to say like "Okay we're ready." Um but I'm just not going to say that until I feel confident about it uh so we're hoping to get it out this year um we're hoping it will not be too late in the year so not like hopefully not like the tail end um and we're hoping to announce the release date very soon um I don't know when that will be but we are trying really hard to get to a place where we can tell people when it's going to be so that they have time to start doing their rereads and all of that in preparation for the final book coming out how exciting oh my gosh all the more reason to follow Author Pen Cole on Instagram and Tik Tok because I know from you know watching your feed that you're really good about you know announcing those specific dates and little teasers and maybe upcoming book signings that you're doing so definitely make sure to follow her over on Instagram and Tik Tok for sure do you have any other book ideas in the works like Oh yeah okay oh yeah well not in the works because I'm I'm 100% focused on burn i'm not working on anything else until it's like done uh so I I my brain in my subconscious is definitely already plotting the next book and like thinking about it but I am trying not to put any too much effort into anything else except burn right now but I for sure have at least a at least two or three other series that my brain is like let's write this yeah so I am I'm very eager to to finish up Burn put the series to bed and start on the next thing cuz I'm I'm ready i'm excited so before we jump into our little unhinged smasher pass that we usually wrap up our episodes with is there anything else you would like to speak on regarding either yourself as an author or the book series anything else the floor is yours um I have a UK tour coming up i have not yet announced it but I'm going to be announcing in the next few days coming up in July I'll be touring the UK i'm super excited about that awesome um I have some appearances later on in the year in uh Italy and then several in the US as well we've got a fantasy ball that's Kindred's Curse themed coming up in Colorado uh and I'll be at Villains and Vixens in Dallas Texas in September and we're planning some more um a big mega tour across hopefully US and Canada once burn comes out so lots of opportunities to see me still this year and you can find all of those on my website penole.com yay oh my gosh so fun that does sound amazing yep okay so it's time for our unhinged smasher pass now our smasher passes don't have to be literal sometimes it's more like the personality the individual whatever you know so we but we keep it unhinged we don't want it to be obvious like smash or pass Luther okay everybody's a smash um so smash or pass and you have to pick one we have Aean or Ilana uh Aean is a for sure smash i He is I mean I love a misunderstood angry boy like and he is such a misunderstood angry boy uh I love him um we'll pass on there's not a lot of characters in my book that I try not to make anybody fully evil or fully good like everybody I think it's more interesting when people exist in the shades of gray yes but I will say there are a few characters that are like truly awful people and I think she's one of them for sure yeah yeah mhm so and Liz you said Aean as well oh yeah i literally texted you yesterday remember i was like "Yeah it's a smash for me." Even though he can be kind of not so great sometimes but still we see a lot more of him in Burn and that those have been really interesting scenes to write okay i mean I I love to be here's a little tiny spoiler for you guys who have been reading um so warning but I just love how DM is trying to understand Aean you know and give him the benefit of the doubt she's still guarding herself so people but people on the outside are like "Ah be careful he's a snake." You know but she's trying to understand each character on her own terms you know and I love that because I don't think we always see that representation in general of like what people's perceptions of you might be different than who you really are so her just trying to unravel that and navigate that with him as well i think DM really values um people being frank with who they are right yeah and so we see this with Eleanor where where she's like "Are you just using me?" And Elanor's like kind of yeah like nobody nobody values me and if I can help you that raises my status and DM appreciates that frankness and she's like okay I'll help you you know and and we sort of see the same with Aean where she's like you know you're using me to because it makes you look good and he's like I mean yeah that's what we do so he's like upfront about you know the the relationship that he wants to have with her um but also like his motives what he does and doesn't want as well and I think that even though she kind of can sense that this guy is schemy he doesn't try to not be schemy and she appreciates that and then with Luther he's very vague about who he is and what he wants and he has a lot of secrets and he's not very forthcoming and I think that's why it takes her a lot longer to sort of start to trust Luther than it does to trust somebody like Aean because even if Aean is a little snaky he's at least admitting that he's a snake with Luther we have no idea whether he's a snake or not yeah yeah that's a good point what about you Ash you didn't tell us smash or pass oh a Yeah for sure yeah thank you so much to Pen Cole for being a guest today on our podcast here like we said make sure to follow Pen Cole Author Pen Cole on Instagram and Tik Tok and what was your website again penle.com perfect we'll have everything linked down in the description box for you guys to check out and follow that way you can get those dates on your calendars too to go and meet her and get a book signed so fun that's how we were introduced and we're so happy that we had the opportunity so thank you guys so much for watching and tuning in today make sure to follow and like everywhere you likes to listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube and you can check us out on Instagram and Tik Tok as well at Besties and the Books podcast we still have our Fable chats up if you want to join in this book club read because this was part of our virtual book club originally but you guys that's all we have today we'll see you in the next one okay bye[Music]