The Publishing Performance Show

Dawn Greenfield Ireland - The Power of Critique Groups in Author Development

• Teddy Smith • Episode 45

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Dawn Greenfield Ireland is an award-winning author of 20 novels, including five series spanning cozy mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, billionaire shapeshifters, and dystopian genres. With certificates from UCLA's Professional Program in Screenwriting and ScreenwritingU, she has written 15 screenplays (two optioned) and seven award-winning nonfiction books. A former technical writer turned full-time author and publisher, Dawn now runs Artistic Origins publishing services while continuing to write across multiple genres.

In this episode:

  • Journey from technical to creative writing
  • Evolution of first novel over 30 years
  • Importance of critique groups
  • Building a publishing company
  • Writing across multiple genres
  • Publishing services for authors
  • Marketing strategies and challenges


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[00:00:00] Hi everyone, welcome to the Publishing Informant show. I'm here with Dawn Greenfield who is the writer of five book series, seven nonfiction books, 15 screenplays and 52 themed notebooks. So she's got quite a lot going on. Thank you for joining us, Dawn. Thanks. It's great to be here. Well, thank you. So tell me, did you always want to be a writer?

[00:00:27] Well, it didn't come about until like the late seventies. And basically it, it just. It was one of those things where a story popped into my head while I was driving to work, which was a very long commute. So, it just it grew from there. Can you remember what your first series was, your first story was, sorry?

[00:00:47] It was a a science fiction fantasy story. Back then it was called Second Chance, and it took me from 79 until 1984 to get the first draft finished, because I literally Didn't know what I was doing. And then from there, it went through 30 years of rewrites. And I mean, it was, it was very painful, but I, like I said, I didn't know what I was doing and in the eighties.

[00:01:19] I found a fabulous critique group, and they, they really helped me along quite a bit. And that's something that I, I always tell writers, you know, when you're starting off, or even if you've written, you know, some books, find a really good critique. Because a lot of times they'll have a A really hardcore editor in that group, and it'll save you a whole heck of a lot of headaches.

[00:01:44] So, so that story is now called Prophecy of Thal. It went through like three, three title changes, but that's what it's called now. And that book is now, that's now out. So you released it in, when did you release it? Oh gosh, let's see, Prophecy of Thal. Uh, 2017. Okay, so yeah, literally 28 years from. Yeah.

[00:02:10] That's amazing. So with what the, with the critique group that you had, what did they, what did you get out of that? Oh, gosh. So back in the 80s this was when you know, this is really before cell phones and everything else. I mean, so everybody brought 10 pages to the group and you read them out loud and then people, you know, gave you notes.

[00:02:33] So to me, that's the worst way to go about, you know, you want to bring copies for everybody so they can write, you know, they can read it and write it down and then you get everybody's notes. So they, they catch, you know, a lot of things, you know, a lot of gaps that you're missing editorial, grammar, you know, the whole bit.

[00:02:54] And you know, your, your story needs, you know, better plotting or you need you know, your character development. I mean, a critique group is worth its white and gold. It really is. So can you remember any of the sort of experiences you had that Led you to wanting to be a writer. I've always, you know, even as a small child, I grew up on a farm and I've always had a very wild imagination.

[00:03:19] And the difference between me and a lot of other people is I wrote things down, you know, and I allowed myself to daydream and I allowed myself to, you know, let my imagination grow, you know, and. Some people just, you know, they just think, Oh, I'll never tell anybody about that, you know, but if you do tell somebody about that, it could really turn into a fabulous story, you know?

[00:03:47] Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So your first, the series that we were talking about just now, the fold series. So tell me a bit about that series. Like what inspired you to write that series? Give us a bit of background of what it's about. Well, that was the, the first book that I wrote. And like I said, I had a very long commute to work and it was over this well, let's see in Houston over Attucks Dam, which was all forested on both sides of the street back then.

[00:04:15] You know, it's no longer like that, but so I don't know. It's just really kind of strange how it started. I just had this one daydream pop into my head and then I built on it every day. And then it came to the point where I started writing to work with a yellow line tablet on the passenger seat with a pen.

[00:04:38] And anytime I stopped, I would jot down notes. And it grew, you know, it grew into 400 and some odd pages. You never considered doing like dictation or anything like that? Back then, no, no, you know, back in the early 80s well, actually I started in 79. So back, back then there wasn't really a lot of things to think about, you know, other than writing it down.

[00:05:01] So what's that series about? So that is about a a 17 year old girl who is at the shopping mall with her, her father and her two brothers and a cloud of fog comes down and when it moves back, she's gone. So she is taken into a parallel world and it's a very exotic parallel world with creatures and creature people.

[00:05:30] And to back up a little bit, so, when she was 12, she was in a terrible car crash that claimed her mother's life and she was in a delaying, my main character was in a coma for eight months. And when she came out of that coma, she was screaming, and then she had nightmares for months afterwards about these four individuals.

[00:05:55] One was a a dark haired young man about her age. The other one was a this huge alligator type monster, bipedal, and a black robot that was very menacing, and then the last was a white furred creature that was Let's say benevolent. And so when she goes into that fog, that's where she lands up, and, you know, she discovers the, well, the white creatures discover her, and then the, the, the alligator guy he's a plodal, he's a commander in the plodal army he attacks them, and, uh, So, I mean, everything was laid out, you know, she already knew about these things and now she's living these things, so, it's done quite well in competitions and, this, this is the book that I had taken.

[00:06:54] Just part of the first chapter and adapted it into a TV series and it's it's one like five different awards. I just got the latest award on on Friday and I'm hoping that that moves up the list. Yeah. So when you say you've adapted it for TV series, you've written a script, but it hasn't gone like being filmed or anything like that yet.

[00:07:19] No, I've had two of my scripts option, but they were never filmed, you know, I mean, it's just one of those things. There's, you know, it's hard for producers to line up money and if they don't, then poof, you know, there goes your hope. Was it always, it sounds like your book is kind of, a cross between sci fi and fantasy together.

[00:07:40] Was it, was it Was that always a genre that you wanted to write in? Yeah. I mean, because that goes along with my, my wild imagination, you know, It worked real well, uh, but I'll, I'll tell you the first The first draft of that thing, my character cried through 85 percent of it, you know, and I came across my critique group.

[00:08:03] It's like, I didn't realize how stupid that was, you know, because when you don't know how to write, then you're, you know, just, you just have all these things that you have to learn. Yeah, and one of those things is don't have your character crying and the entire time. Yeah, I give her, you know, give her some backbone.

[00:08:21] Yeah, it took, you know, like I said, 28 years to 30 years to, you know, get that straightened out. Yeah. And those first books, have they been self published or did you get a publisher? No, I have my own company Artistic Origins, which used to be my technical writing company for 34 years. And then when I left the technical writing world you know, writing manuals for oil and gas and computers and all that So then I transition artistic origins into my publishing company.

[00:08:53] And, you know, just like, you know, I tried getting a, an editor and I tried getting a publisher back in the eighties and I gave myself, you know, X amount of time to accomplish that. And when that didn't happen, that's when I decided, you know, I just need to form my own company and, you know, I learned a lot of that the publishing industry from my first technical writing job at Compact Computer.

[00:09:23] So it was, you know, one of those step by step things. And I've published a lot of books by now, you know, not just mine, but I publish other people's. Books as well, right now we'll come on. So I want to speak to you about the your artistic origins. But just had a few more questions about your books first.

[00:09:42] Cause you've you've, so you've wrote them all obviously yourself, but you've, you've self published through your own sort of company. Now, what approach did you take to marketing those books? Cause I know they're on Amazon and that's one step, but what did you actually do to try and get those first few sales?

[00:09:59] It's really difficult, you know, marketing is not my forte. So it's like I stumbled through it. Like a lot of other authors I do A lot of different campaigns through different companies. Some of them are free. Some of them are paid for, you know, it's like a story origin. You can build up your mailing list, you know, that's very invaluable.

[00:10:20] And then there are other companies that I use you have to Look at every option or every, every, you know, offer that you get, you know, to help you get the books out there because some of them are big rip offs. And, you know, if you're paying someone, if you're paying a company to help you get the word out, you want to make sure that they've got a great mailing list and that, you know, somebody is actually going to see it, you know, I've spent.

[00:10:52] Several years, just, you know, wandering around in the dark, not knowing what I was doing and, and putting my trust and money into the, the wrong hands. So have you, have you used any of the book promotion tools, you know, free books or anything like that? Say that one more time. Have you used any of the free book promotion tools, like free booksy or any of those?

[00:11:18] Yes. Yes. Yes. Very good. They are very good. They really do. They get the word out. I interviewed Mike from free booksy a couple of weeks ago, so, that shows actually live, but it's a, yeah, it's a really good tool to use because if you can get the first sale, especially if you've got a series like you do, then the following sales can often come on because people want to hear what happens with the characters and, uh, right.

[00:11:41] Yeah. Yeah, if you've, if you've done your work on that book and you've got a series, they're going to want to see what's next. Yeah. And have you found that once people read the first book, they go on to read the whole series? You know, the bad thing is that you don't know who's buying your books. You hope that people are buying, you know, Once they've read the first one that they're buying, you know, the next one and the next one, but you know with I mean nobody lets you know Yeah, you know who's who's buying the books which is I think I think it's wrong, you know, I guess you can see, you know, if you, if you look at the number of sales for the first book in the series, compared to like the slates are on the series, you can see if those people around.

[00:12:25] So if it stays quite consistent, that's quite a good way of like tracking which sales aware. Yeah, one of my cozy mystery series is is getting really good sales. It's My Cat's His Cat, which is set in a small town and it's very similar to, like, the Cat Who books by Lillian Jackson Braun. Oh, I don't know that one.

[00:12:46] Oh, yeah, she's world famous. She's sold, you know, millions of books. She just passed away a few years ago. She was very old. And her, her books were just really great murder mysteries. All right. I'll check those out. Murder mysteries. What, you said just then cozy mysteries.

[00:13:02] What does that mean? Okay. So cozy mysteries are different from regular mysteries where, you know, you've got the body, you don't see the killing, you know, and there's no bad language in it. Right. It turned, I mean, it took me a while to Iron out all the kinks so I knew how to write a cozy mystery, right?

[00:13:24] Okay, have you read them? Have you read Thursday murder club by Richard Osman? Yes. Yes, that's all thing Yeah, they're really good those books they're quite British I think they're probably quite specific about the UK, but they are they're written so nicely. Yeah, I really really enjoyed those books Oh, I, I love uk, you know, UK books.

[00:13:48] I just, I love them, you know, and I love reading about the little towns and even the big cities and things, you know. Which ones have you been reading to that have sort of inspired you? Oh, gosh. I, I couldn't tell you because, okay, so I, I read between two and six books a week, , you know, so don't, don't ask me, because it, it's all, you know, all, all I can tell you is I, I love British, murder mysteries and cozy mysteries. And yeah, yeah. Oh, well, maybe we'll see if we can come some recommendations later on. Now you've got a couple of books in quite a few different genres, you know, you've got, as you said, mentioned cozy mysteries, you've got the other books, which are sci fi kind of fantasy as well.

[00:14:32] And then you've got some romance. You've even got some books which are in dystopian plus nonfiction. So you've got lots of different genres that you write in. Now, do you ever. struggle to switch between the two different voices that you need for all those different books. And have you got any tips for authors who are maybe struggling to find their voice at first?

[00:14:52] You know, I, I don't ever have any trouble. I can go from science fiction to cozy mystery to, you know, well, the dystopian is that's the last dog series. There's only two books in that. But I don't have any trouble transitioning. Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of books that I read you know, I'm not a big TV watcher and I tell everybody in my newsletter, turn the TV off, get a book in your hand.

[00:15:24] Yeah. I guess that what happened? What about that advice though, for people who want to get into screenwriting? Cause obviously they might need to watch the TV if they want to follow you and get that some of the books written to screenwritings. Yeah screenwriting is a whole totally different genre, I mean different way of writing.

[00:15:43] You know, in a novel, you, you can write, you know, oh, the, the wallpaper and the, you know, the furniture and all this other stuff. In a screenplay, well, think about it, okay adapting like a, a 400 page book down into a screenplay. You have no more than 120 pages and producers would prefer no more than like 95.

[00:16:11] So you have to learn how to condense those things down and how to introduce your characters very succinctly, you know, and it's a challenge, but there's an awful lot of books out there on the subject and there's a lot of courses out there. So people can learn how to do that, you know, but it's, it's very frustrating when you start off and you have to, you know, that's another thing you have to find a specific critique group for that because it's just like, you know, if you're a poet, you don't want to go into a fiction writers group, you know, and if you're a, a screenwriter, you don't want to go into a novel writing group because you'll get Wrong information and it'll, you know, I'm raising my hand, you know, been there, done that, you know, You've talked a lot about critique groups.

[00:17:10] what advice do you have for people for finding one today? Cause it sounds like you found your critique group maybe in the eighties. So have you, have you still got those critique groups that you work with today and how did you find them? Well, the one back in the eighties, it was a very large group and the, the founders were, Elderly people and unfortunately when they passed away, the critique group floundered, somebody tried to take it over and it just, you know, nobody cared, you know, the owners were gone.

[00:17:41] They, they didn't want to stay with the other people. So, I started a critique group shortly after that. I think it was in the early 90s. And at first we met at different people's houses, uh, And then that got to be a pain in the neck because it interrupts dinner and there's kids and dogs and all kinds of stuff, you know, and so what I ended up with my group met at a restaurant the first one was very noisy that didn't work out.

[00:18:13] And so we finally, you know, narrowed it down to a place where we could meet that. had a side room and it was fairly quiet. And I mean, that, that worked out for like almost 25 years. And I, I just retired it not too long ago, but you know, people can find a critique group through either their university, university or a library, or, you know, just all kinds of different places or.

[00:18:44] You can create your own and, you know, be specific about who can join, what you're going to accomplish, and things like that. I don't suggest doing the handing out the pages. I suggest using Zoom or something else where you can upload pages. And even Facebook Messenger, you know, uh, you can do video things there and people can email their pages to each other and give them a specific length of time, you know, you have to have.

[00:19:20] Your comments ready and back, you know, in three weeks or a month or however often you're going to, to meet, you know? So that's, you know, that's one of the best things to do, you know? So it's about just keeping your network updated, like making sure you stay in contact with people and. You know, keep making, you know, help each other out a little bit if you do find these writers that want to get their help.

[00:19:45] Yeah. And you need to be specific about, or you need to really hold their feet to the fire and say, look, you know, you are committing to do this and you need to do this. You know, if you don't like this kind of a story, it doesn't make any difference. You still need to read it because what you're going to do is you're going to look for character development, plotting dialogue things like that.

[00:20:10] So, you know, you, you've got to set down the rules and like I said, hold their feet to the fire. And one of the experiences that I had years ago was had about 15 people in the group. So that was a lot of pages to read, you know, over a month's time. Um, and there was this one guy that came to the group and He only wanted his stuff critiqued.

[00:20:35] He didn't want to do anything else. So after the first time I told him, you know, it's like, uh, if you're going to belong to this group, then you're going to read everybody else's pages and you're going to give them your two cents worth, you know, and it better be good, you know, better be something that someone can actually use, not just your, you know, your opinion.

[00:20:56] Well, I don't like this, you know, that doesn't do anybody any good. and, He didn't come back, you know, he didn't want to work. Yeah, he, he wanted, you know, just to get his, you know, feedback on his pages. But he didn't want to, you know, bother with anybody else's and it's like, Nope, you have to put your foot down.

[00:21:18] Yep. Sometimes you got to. Yeah. Now, alongside writing your books, you've also got your other business, which is Artistic Origins, which is where you offer other services to people in the, in the this is great. If you, if you're doing writing, you've got this experience of writing that you can pass on some of that experience to other people.

[00:21:36] So tell me about some of the services that you do and also tell me a bit about why you started and how that's going. Okay. Well, as I said earlier artistic origins was my technical writing company. And I, I set that up because I was contracting for a company. You know, a different, you know, a lot of different companies.

[00:21:57] And so I would you know, I would write or edit manuals in the industry. And I was very good at it and I had a long career with it. And when I transitioned into creative writing It was just a way to go, you know, I mean, because I, I offer editing services I will format someone's book. So it looks really good.

[00:22:22] I mean, cause there's a lot of books out there that are just jumbled together and, you know, they're, they've got like maybe two spaces for an indent and just, just, you know, horrible. And I create a custom scene breaks that. Goes along with the story or the, or the cover or something. And, if somebody, if someone doesn't have a cover, then I've got a whole slew of people that I, I work with that design covers.

[00:22:52] And so that's editing, formatting, and then I also publish people's books. I'm not like one of those New York or London publishers. I'm one of those that, you know, I charge you for the services. And I will even upload your, your, you know, files to Amazon if you don't know how to do that.

[00:23:14] So I, I try to offer as much as possible to get somebody get their book out there. What's the, you know, you've got with all those services, do you do them for all types of books, like fiction and nonfiction, or do you try and stick to one sort of genre? Yes. No, just fiction and non fiction. I don't do poetry because I know nothing at all about poetry.

[00:23:36] I've had people ask, and it's like, you know, you're coming to the wrong person because I don't believe in taking a project that I can't back up, you know, with expertise. All you poets go somewhere else, because I can't do it. So I, you know, what I have people do is send me a chapter or two of what they've written so I can see, you know, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, so I can see what it looks like and how much editing I feel that the book requires.

[00:24:12] And for non fiction books, I always ask, you know, are there tables? Are there charts? Are there images? You know, I need to know all of that so I can give a quote on a project, I've discovered that my fees are so far below other people's fees. I mean, by thousands of dollars. There's that.

[00:24:33] You know, I just want to get people's books out there for them. We're not doing it to, you know, make a fortune. So with your editing and cover design and things like that for your artistic origin business, do you work with nonfiction and fiction businesses, or do you specialize in one of them? I work with both for the nonfiction people.

[00:24:55] I always have a conversation about. You know, what is included in their book? Do they have, uh, images? Do they have tables? Do they have you know, graphs? You know, I need to know that, you know, because a lot of that technical stuff is, is difficult to get through. And if they haven't set it up right, then it's going to be a jumbled mess.

[00:25:19] So, you know, I, I know how to ask all the questions so I can give someone a quote, you know, and I always have, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I want people to send me the first couple of chapters so I can look and see, you know, is there a lot of editing here or, my God, is it beautiful? Every once in a while you get something that, you know.

[00:25:45] You don't even have to change a comma. You know, it's really fabulous. Yeah. Brilliant. And you've actually written a few nonfiction books yourself, mostly around being a writer. So you've, one of the ones that's really stood out to me was the writer's preparation handbook. So it's, that's literally about if you don't know how to write at all, like how can you get started?

[00:26:03] Yeah, that book can set you up so that you know what you're doing. You don't lose files. You keep all your research. You know, in a certain place, you know, uh, because there's a lot of times where people, you know, hunt around, they, they had something, they can't find it, you know, and it's like, well, you know, and yeah, I, I kind of walked them through how to get started.

[00:26:28] And the best ways to go about doing any kind of writing. And that book leads on to a course where you teach quite a similar topic. It's, it's, it's very small, very, you know, the book is tiny. I'm trying to think. Let's see. How many pages is it? Oh, I don't know how many pages. It's under 100 pages, you know, but it's jam packed.

[00:26:53] I don't put a lot of fluff in the books. You know, I don't write 10 pages, you know, expounding on how wonderful things are and all that stuff. I just write the facts. Yeah, that's good. And also saves you printing costs.

[00:27:09] There's another one how to format word docs like a pro where I teach people. How to set up their Microsoft word and how to do the, you know, certain things in there so that their documents look really good. So do you do all your for my same word? You don't use any of the other online tools? No, I do all my writing in word and then I upload the word to a program called vellum.

[00:27:34] That's what I use for my, my publishing and You know, straighten out any, any formatting mess ups that, that comes through with, you know, the uploading. But yeah, it's all pretty easy using vellum. Good, great. Well, thank you so much for giving us your time today. I think you've got quite a lot out of like learning about the backgrounds, your books and the, especially the way you do your writing styles and like working across different, different genres.

[00:28:00] What, what, what are your plans next for your book series? Well, right now I am working on the fifth bonded billionaire shapeshifter book, and I'm hoping to have that thing finished. I don't know. It was supposed to be finished a couple of months ago and then it got bumped. But I'm hoping to have that thing finished, you know, in the middle of October and then you know, get it edited and yes, I have an editor get it edited and then make those changes.

[00:28:29] And then. Have a proofreader look at it, you know, because. I believe that you need both an editor to do the heavy lifting and then the proofreader to go, aha, look at that. You forgot to do that. You know, they're, they're both, you know, fabulous resources. Are you, um, going to be publishing, do self publishing book as well?

[00:28:53] Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Great. Well, I can't wait for that to come out. I have to have a look at it when it comes out. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I think it's been a really a really great call I think loads of people got loads of out of it. So, yeah, if people want to get in touch with you Where's the best place to contact you or follow you?

[00:29:07] Well, i'm on facebook, of course, and then They can find me on my website D e greenfield. com and I should tell people i'm trying to transition away from the last name ireland because I've been divorced from him for decades and then he just passed away a few years ago. So it's like, Oh, okay. I don't need that name anymore.

[00:29:34] So I'm going back to my family name, which is Greenfield, my maiden name. Great. Great. No, it sounds good. Well, thank you for spending some time with me today and we'll chat. All right. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning into the publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring.

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