[Music] welcome to the wish i'd known then podcast where we focus on how authors found success looking at strategies that have taken them to the top of the bestseller charts as well as what they've learned from their mistakes because being an indie author is more than knowing the latest marketing trend it's about being innovative and creative and learning from your mistakes welcome to wisconsin podcast i'm sarah rosette and i'm jamie albright and this week on the show we have theodora taylor yes we do y'all it's so fun we laughed so much and it was a great interview yes we talked about her book she has a new book out about universal fantasy yeah and it's we we delved in like her writing and you know how she became a writer and she had some really good tips um she has like she talks about the number one piece of advice she gives new authors if they ask her you know what she would advise them to do and then we um talked about three well actually four movies because we talked about beauty and the beast and then um notting hill knives out and crazy rich asians crazy there's lots of spoilers so if you haven't watched any of those don't listen to this episode until after you have watched them but then we dig into some of the universal fantasy elements that and that's like things that pull readers to you that kind of make it make your work more um make it more appealing across a genre across genres would you agree with that yeah because we all have these fantasies that we don't necessarily even really talk about but they're just things we just love and she talks about them being better you know they're the good stuff that you fold into a story and um and they're not necessarily just for romance i mean knobs out is not a romance and she had some great ones for that yeah um but it was it was such a great interview and theodora has been on lots of podcasts because her book seven-figure author how to use universal fantasies to sell your books is very popular right now but so we wanted to ask for some questions that were a little bit different and i think i think you're just going to love it so what's been going on with you sarah uh this week i've been doing some writing and working on the translations still working on getting all the things done the small details right um yeah just you know knit noise stuff and we've also done it's the week before thanksgiving in the u.s and so i've been to like three grocery stores and we started our christmas shopping because of all the delays and shipping and stuff we better get on that so i've been doing a lot of like real life stuff and uh i should not have to go to the grocery store next week but i'm sure i will yeah i know i know so what about you uh well we're kind of the same thing um we're having our kids and all our grandkids and just our family it's 13 people at our thanksgiving table so um we're getting gearing up for that my husband's doing the cooking my husband my daughter and my son i will stay out of the kitchen because those three alphas i do not want to be in the kitchen with them um and my daughter may she my daughter edits this she'll probably say well i don't want to be in there either but but she's going to be in there huh yeah she's going to be in there um and then i had a little procedure done on my foot and i've had plantar fasciitis really badly for about eight months and it's just gotten worse and worse and worse and so i had this thing done yesterday the day before i can't remember and so i'm kind of off my foot for right now just for a few days and um anyway yeah that's what's been going on i'm just i it's taken me i'm older i can tell i'm older from go or just not used to going to conferences because it's taken me several days to recover from being at 20 bucks um i think we got a double whammy with the time change yeah here just like daylight savings time and then we go to vegas where the time change is different and then i came back and then you've got the like pent up like yeah energy of not seeing people for not going to an actual conference for so long that i'm sure that was a little yeah it was great so i mean i know i talked about it but yeah it was just so great i loved it i loved every minute of it and it's it's just super i mean i just love being around people so so when's the next conference huh yeah exactly not until march i don't think but um yeah anyway so yeah i'm just yeah so i have an entertainment recommendation oh please okay so it's on netflix it's called red notice have you seen that oh i have yeah and i loved it and there were some people that didn't like it but i thought it was so fun yeah i thought it was very funny and light and yeah you know just something good to take your mind off things yes i do think like for me the only drawback to it was like i kept watching it going i thought it was good but maybe just a little bit derivative do you know what i mean like a lot of the scenes reminded me of other movies yeah yeah yeah you know yeah but for what it was for a good escapist entertainment yeah sign me up for that every day yes especially story i'm always over a heist i've watched a few things and that's been good but um i'm rewatching the matrix right now because i don't know if y'all know but in december there's a new matrix coming out with keanu reeves and the woman that was in the first one yeah the first one in the first three yeah yeah so i don't know her name but i'm i'm kind of excited about that and uh yeah so that's that's what's going on here uh do we need a question of the week we do and i think it should be about universal stuff i do too what are your favorites let's do that yeah it doesn't have to be like in your books just like that what what when you see a description that includes a certain universal you just go i'm in like for me it'll be heist like red notice it's a heist i'm in i want it yeah yeah i'm going to watch it yeah yeah yeah that's that's i love those too so yeah yeah what butter's your bread that's what we want to know all right all right well let's get on with the interview all right today we're so excited to have theodora taylor with us hi theodora how are you we are so glad you're here yeah we're super happy you're here so let me read your bio and we'll jump right into the questions great all right after logging time as a music journalist playwright and radio writer theodore taylor fell in love with pinning hot books with heart theodore's 50 loving states series which features alternative heroes and smart feisty heroines has become a one clips one click stop for thousands of readers and she is an amazon top 10 best-selling author when not reading writing or daydreaming she enjoys spending time with her amazing family going on date nights with her wonderful husband learning german and watching all the shonda rhyme shows ever and attending parties thrown by others that's right i don't want to throw the party i just want to go yes that's how i am i'm always willing to come to your heart just don't ask me to throw it so tell us how you got into writing theodore well i always say like i just was a writer like um it's interesting um when i was in second grade i got i went to a religious lutheran high school and we were given this assignment to do a um story about a picture we received and i received a mr potato head and a mrs potato head and so i wrote a story about mrs potato head leaving mr potato head for a biker named biff and then after discovering that biff wasn't that great she went back to mr potato head and asked him to forgive her because it had to have like some religious like so there had to be forgiveness as a theme and asked her to forgive her forgive her and he did and my parents also got a call and so that was like my first like you know parent teacher conference unscheduled um quickly scheduled parent-teacher conference to talk about my two big imaginations so um but my parents afterwards were like that was a good little story they were really impressed with my second grade effort so from that time on i was just like i want to be a writer i thought you know it's interesting i did a bunch of other things in my um early 20s then i came back to like including like teaching abroad in asia and i came back to america and i became a music journalist and then i went and got a degree in dramatic writing and became a playwright i always joked because i just wasn't poor enough yeah i um got my first job as a radio writer which you know was my first job making a living then i became um women's fiction author under my real name and then um that really that kind of didn't pan out and i became a romance writer so i always just say i was a writer since second grade like romance being a romance writer that's the career that stuff but i knew kind of that would be some kind of writer that's awesome i love that story that's great i love that it started with mr miss potato head i think that's awesome and they're marital issues i'm sorry the scene was there what is your definition of success um you know the great thing about success at least for me and i i'm sure for you is that it keeps on changing so you know when i was a starving playwright obviously i was just kind of like man wouldn't it be nice to be able to pay my bills and to pay off these student loans and stuff and so um after i started making a living and um i had to leave radio writing because it was just a ton any radio right every every mom who used to be a radio writer has the exact same story i got pregnant i didn't realize i couldn't work those radio writer hours anymore and um i left and so my original um intention especially with writing indie romance was just to replace my um radio writing um income and so it was just like oh that will make me a success and then when you did that i did that i was like oh six figures i just really want to become a six figure author that will make me a success and then after i started making six figures it was like oh man i'd really like to onboard my husband to the business like some people call it retiring but you know they work so hard i call it onboarding onboarding your husband and so um that became my big big goal and i was able to do that in 2020 so now it's like um i love to become a seven figure a year author and i'm very very interested to see what my definition of success will be after after that yeah so that's awesome yeah sarah and i have talked about how lucky uh authors are that on board their husbands into their business and stuff however we know that we would not be two of those authors we we love our husbands we don't want to work with you go girl you're doing great but you know don't don't ask me to run your ads basically well it's funny the last time i talked to skye i was like you have got to do like an onboarding i'm sorry skye warren who is this really amazing author um and she runs this amazing conference called romance author mastermind and i was just kind of like you know for all of us who have onboarded our husbands without a plan i would love to see a workshop on that or even a panel you know but then um like i will say with onboarding your husband sometimes um like the mystery kind of disappears from the the relationship like yeah they always know what you're doing like every and so we had to make a rule like no business talk during lunch no business talk after eight we just like spend time with each other we're two human beings who aren't working together that's awesome yeah that's great and that's a good rule because we you know just owning your own business you could talk about this for 24 hours you know 24 7. so um i think that's really wise so what do you wish you'd known about writing in craft um i wish beforehand i was really like oh man you know i just want to be a good writer i want to be a good writer for a while because you know you're in um grad school and you're like paying a lot of money so it's just like you're a good writer and stuff like that and i wish craft wise that i could have understood it would have saved me a lot of um anxiety if i real if i had realized from the start you're never a good writer you're just becoming a better writer until the day you die so when you look at it that way it's it it saves on anxiety like that feeling like oh i'm not good enough i'm not good enough i'm not good enough i wish i had known from the start that this is a long game a long marathon of becoming better and better right i think it takes the pressure off too yes yeah yeah yeah it is like a lot like i look back at my first books and i'm not super excited about them some of the stuff i think oh but if you look at it as a continuum like you have to write those first books yes to get through that yeah like you have to be super grateful to that person because it's like man thank you for taking the chance and not knowing you didn't know what you didn't know yeah exactly like i if i wrote like that now i would be very upset right when i went to my first critique group where they kicked my behind for six months it was horrible um but good but horrible because it was embarrassing but there was another girl who started kind of at the same time as me and she i remember her saying you know you just don't know what you don't know yes you know finding it out we both had started a little later in life writing and we were both like man how did we not know this stuff i mean it was just like really eye-opening but you don't know what you don't know and i'm still fighting that out it's interesting because i think women really are kind of like well it's hard to have a growth mindset sometimes like it's like either smart or i'm not smart correct i'm a good writer i'm not a good writer and so when women especially um women writers when we find out that theme that we didn't know it makes us feel like well maybe there's something wrong with us or maybe we're not as good of a writer as we thought we are whereas this is really like you said the process like yes your baby writer no matter what age you are and then you become more and more adult writer you know exactly yes yes but i think the mindset of just being better is so much is so healthy because also i think people who say i just you know i got to get it's got to be perfect or i need to be a great writer it keeps them from publishing sometimes and um when really publishing a book that's just okay is part of the learning process and that's how you get better you know you gotta fail like you know it's funny if any toward the first part of my career because my first book i was very fortunate it just earned me like it was funny because now i don't necessarily think it's that much money but it earned me like four figures and i thought that was amazing yeah you know sure i would be like a little upset if it was a new release it was uh four figures but you know back then i was really really excited because it was my first book and then two months later like four figures landed in my bank account i was just really happy about that and i've lost the trail of my thought darn it about being the perfect uh putting out a okay book to learn yes yes yes and that was one of the things like that was one and so toward the first part of my career i was really concerned like is this the book that's going to flop is this the book that's going to flop and then finally a book flopped and it was almost a relief because it was just like oh hey that's why this flop you know um i can move on for that i'm never going to do that again you know i've learned my lesson and that's kind of that's that's the big thing about being a writer it's not like you you're always learning you're always learning so all those books that flop all those books that aren't as good as you want them to be you kind of just have to say i say this to my editor all the time because she'll be like not as much as i used to but she'll say something and i'll have like two weeks to turn it in and she'll say like this guy's motivation i just don't understand why it's happening and they'll be like well it's happening because i really want it to happen but i really think hard about motivation the next big step yeah this one you're just gonna have to go along with that the next book oh my gosh yes i'm going to nail it next time i know next i'm going to nail it thank you for that note right i am not going to be able to take it for this book for the next one i'm on it there's progress so we're making progress what about marketing what do you wish you'd known about marketing oh gosh oh my god everybody said this is the number one thing like if people ask me for advice i'm always just kind of like number one thing man i wish i had set up my back list to win from the front from the store like so you know i i talk about in the book i'm a genre hopper which is you know not the wisest thing to do usually and um it's what it is but not writing in series from the start that's something i could have done and so i wish i had learned that lesson just earlier on because it would have it would have saved the readers a lot of upset it would have saved me a lot of upset and i wouldn't have gotten so many angry emails about how long it was taking me to complete a series but if i had it all over to do again i would write in series for sure yeah i think that's just so important but it's hard to because you know you want to write what you want to write yeah i mean i'm fortunate that what i want to write is in a series but uh it's still it's still hard for a lot of authors and i get that yeah yeah i think we all feel that pull you know like oh new shiny let me go check out this genre over here this sub genre that will treat me better that is putting me through the ringer that book will treat me better yeah in that other series i know that series will be much nicer to me but yeah yeah well do you have any suggestions you said that about setting up your back list for to help your front list do you have anything that you do like isn't specifically to guide people into your newer books so now i would say that i really really think about the first in the series beforehand even with series i would say uh like you know a i didn't do series but i wouldn't really think about the first book in the series like it was more like if a book did really well it would become a series which is not a bad way to do it but then when i started thinking series i would be like oh this is a series and then in the third book this really great story happens and so then when i went to market it you'd have a first in series that was just okay but like the second book or the third book got all these great reviews and like you know i had that problem where like the third book of my series would always have just way more reviews than the series starter so one of the things that i would super duper suggest to anyone who is really wanting to set up their backlist so that it keeps on earning the money like an annuity um hopefully i'm pronouncing that right um i'm not i'm a huge reader so i'm always concerned yeah i don't hear a lot it sounds good to us yeah like so that it's set up like an annuity yeah it's just very very easy like nowadays you know and it's sad because i'm only in my 40s but i think like if i'm setting up a series how can i make if someone else had to take this over from me um like all they have to do is um keep on advertising that first in series so that people will have the read through just make it just super simple to earn money yeah you don't want like you know i have i finally did this thing with an orphan series i had all these orphan stand alone so i made them into a series and you know i frankensteined it and it was fine but you know it would be it would have been better if i hadn't had the orphans and that i just kind of if i thought everything through as a series and that back list would just kind of earn yeah based on me advertising all of the first in series like that's that's a good business plan to go buy if you can for an author right put them in a family instead of made them orphans yes exactly they'll just have this random idea like it's like how can i connect this random idea to somebody now it's like you know and that's that's that's the business in the author like you know it's just kind of like oh my gosh i'm on the toilet i'm taking a poop and this great idea came out this great idea and you know you're just like i gotta write this and now it's like i have that great toilet epiphany but then i'm just like how can i connect this to a series how can i like make this idea so good this great idea is so good that you know it just keeps on selling in that there's three other books minimum few two or three other books connected to it yeah that sounds great and it's it simplifies um marketing as well because if you know you're focusing on your first books whereas instead of trying to promote you know however many you have in your backlist then it helps kind of simplify things and we need some simplified you know that's one of the weird things because when when you talk about things i didn't know as a baby writer it's just kind of like you kind of think of writers it's just like oh you know you sit around and you when inspiration hits you just go and you write that draft and you like send it off to new york yeah and send it off to new york and they're just like yeah you've written such a great thing and now we're going to present it to the people and they'll just throw money at you and it's just like that is really not the life of an indie writer it's more like oh you know you get inspiration you still get the inspiration and you still have ideas that you need to work on but you're always just insanely busy i just i i've never it never would have occurred to me when i innocently said i'm going to write a romance novel i'm going to see how it does indie wise that i was setting myself up to be busier than yeah so anything you can do like if you succeed at this there's no such thing as someone who's very successful at indie writing who's just like i'm not that busy sure yeah it's not passive income right no it's not pessimistic no i can do that yeah no biggie there's not there's no so if you are going to be a successful writer you're going to be very busy so you might as well make it easier for future you by setting things up so that you can advertise it easily yeah very good that's very smart very smart great advice by the way these questions are great i had no idea that i had all these thoughts all these things she's like wow i have a lot of thoughts about this i had no idea so thank you so tell us what assumptions you uh had at the beginning of the your writing career and did they turn out right or wrong um at the beginning i had i assumed and i think a lot of people who um grow up with the idea of a writer um from a young age also you know you always have to keep in mind that indie writing is so young like we don't think about it because in our industry i'll say something like oh my gosh my book is like six years old it's just ancient i was that was back in wow 2014 right wow you know or something like that but when you really think about it the way we've been doing writing is just super new super new like you know being able to get to the people like this without so much so many middle people coming through getting rid of gatekeepers you know the market being like really really deciding who gets to make a living and stuff right so many writers making a living on writing alone as opposed to supplementing it with teaching and stuff like that so when i was a baby writer when i was looking into this i was just like oh you know what you do is you write one book that really sells and then you're set for life and the like and one of the things that was really interesting to me um having done a traditional deal beforehand is like you meet so many people and they have like these big books they're all teaching like you know the supplement most of them are teaching to supplement their income like even people got in movie deals like tony morrison like you know and so i thought but you know like growing up it's just like wow i just want to write like a big alice walker is my huge huge hero she wrote the color purple i just want to write a big book like color purple be set like alice walker and kind of you know you don't realize that it's not one book it's a career and that's the assumption i made that oh if i wrote a good enough book it would just sell big and um and that it would and then you'll just be set right yeah just be set and that you know i think in a on an emotional level i kind of thought that being a successful writer would solve something and it does solve money i'm not going to lie about that but it doesn't so but everything you are right now that you feel would be fixed by success you're probably going to have to deal with in therapy so yeah set that money aside make a little big fun yeah [Laughter] the good therapists don't accept your insurance and they're like three figures an hour worth of their time so set that money aside right now i would say that success actually makes you more neurotic and you need you probably need more therapy if you're yes yes like it's it's funny because like the nice thing about success is like if you run into a wall with your mental stuff or your emotional stuff it's just kind of like wow this is getting in the way of my money so i gotta go solve this whereas beforehand when i was a playwright it would just be like i'd have like this like i remember saying to a friend um when i was first dating my husband um yeah it's going really well sometimes i'm i just think maybe i should let it go because don't you ever want to just burn something to the ground just to see it burn and she's like no that's not healthy so all of that you're going to have to eventually deal with therapy so yeah get successful so you can afford that yes exactly that's a really great therapist who specializes in creatives specialized in creatives and she was expensive and she was really worth it and i was just like but that idea that being successful or becoming a big writer or becoming a successful writer will solve anything it solves nothing on a real emotional and psychological level yeah if you've got a hole before you're going to have a hole after yes and the hope gets bigger it's just going to hurt yeah there's not enough money to throw into it or enough success to throw into it you gotta fit you got to fix that hole yeah yeah it's like the like the pyramid you know like when you're just trying to survive you're just making enough money to survive you focus on that but then once you meet that need then you're like oh yeah i've got some stuff to work on so yeah it's like you can't focus on that until you're sure you can you know pay your bills and eat so right absolutely absolutely yeah absolutely well have you ever made a mistake that turned out to be a good thing this is kind of a fun question yeah i'm so see so now i'm really curious about other people answers but i say genre hopping like as far as like finding new i i kind of think i i i have now kind of returned it as my portfolio diversified interest my diversified income streams and a lot yes yes oh i honestly think that genre hopping is the best thing i could have done um you know this goes towards kind of a practical burnout situation so um i've been lucky that i d i haven't so i'm knocking on wood i'm not gonna wait but so far like i haven't like had to deal with any major burnout and i think that's because like you know i'll do a contemporary romance and then it's like oh it's time to do the shifter series or it's time to do an alien romance collab or it's time to do like something completely new and even though i would make way more money if i just like stuck to like billionaires also the nice thing about genre hopping is you just take a lot more chances and so it's just kind of like well maybe people would like this in um i used my latest series which was my best-selling series as an example so i had a situation where i'd written um an asian american i write interracial romance i written like an asian-american black woman series for um called like the nakam the ruthless nakamuras and it did really well it did parentally well like people were always looking for this and i'd done a mafia a couple mafia um stories and they had done well and so i was like oh if i did an asian mafia story i haven't seen it do like super super duper well but if i did a series that would probably do um pretty well and so if i didn't genre hop if i didn't like yeah oh i only do um black woman white men or i only do um mafia you know italian mafia or whatever or russian i if i didn't if i hadn't combined those two i wouldn't have found the success that i did with that series which was my best-selling series of all time yeah if i didn't genre hop and if i hadn't like you know tried a lot of different things so i really i really love genre hopping although it is in the business kind of considered a mistake yeah it is considered a mistake and that's very interesting that you said you consider it diversifying your portfolio and i think that you can really look at it that way because a lot of times people advise writers to write fiction and non-fiction so that you have you know a mix but you if you only stay in one genre you would never know how you would do in other genres or if you were able to combine certain subgenres so i think that's really interesting in a good way a healthy way to look at it healthy way to look at it yeah yeah yeah mine was um i heard chris fox who i will pretty much do anything chris fox tells me to do but i heard him on a podcast saying that he would lock he would launch a book at 99 um do a pre-order for 99 cents launch the book at 99 cents you know to get a lot of visibility and stuff and i it was my second book the first book i had launched at 299 but i was like i'm gonna do what chris fox says so i did the pre-order thing and i got tons of pre-orders at 99 cents and it was like about to release and i emailed him and said hey just wanted to let you know i heard you on the podcast i'm doing it it's working out great and you know for my second book and he emailed back and i still remember where i was when i got the email and he said i would never do that he was talking about using it for a first book in a series not the second but it turned out well because it got a lot of eyes on that second book because i love that but when i got that email i was like oh my gosh i've just ruined my career and it's barely started um but it worked out but it was like it worked it worked but wow it was like i totally misunderstood what he said or or i came in late i don't know what happened but yeah so that was that's mine i would say i'm very woo-woo so i would say the universe just told you what you needed to hear yes exactly exactly you got from that what you did exactly well tell us uh have you had an opposite experience where you thought this is a great idea and then it just didn't really do what you wanted it to do no i never think my ideas are that good i don't have that kind of self-esteem you it was just like i was racking my mind over this i was just like did i ever think that would be a brilliant idea it's like oh no all of them seem quite risky including becoming a romance yes exactly exactly well that's good to know dude it is it is kind of a out of the box choice just to be a writer in general yeah it is and especially an indie author yeah yeah yes so we're going do you like rejection yes exactly on a daily basis yeah do you like voices that well oh do you like that feeling that you get when you have a homework assignment due but for like all of your hours all of your waking hours do you like that become a writer yeah i always say it being a writer is like assigning yourself homework for the rest of your life yes that is exactly what and i hated homework so i hated homework you did it do you hate it when you're going to the bathroom and you get it it is like even now it's very hard for me to be like to my kids like you got to do this homework because a i didn't do it that much when i was a kid i got in trouble for this all the time and b is pointless right right a lot of it is it really is some of it is not pointless no it's not all of it yeah but a lot of it's pointless oh i agree when my daughter and i were coloring her 27 pages of stuff that had to be turned in before you know christmas break i was like this is the dumbest thing ever we are coloring so i agree i feel like it's there like i being a parent is so weird because you're just kind of like they're complaining about things and then you you kind of have to privately like you can't agree with them absolutely right 12 year old yeah yeah but when they say things like i don't think i'm ever going to use this kind of math and it's just like you are absolutely not going to use this but never not once you learned to keep a really straight face internalize all that yeah yeah well we wanted to talk to you about um the your your new book in universal fantasy so um can you kind of tell us a little bit kind of give us the difference between universal what is universal fantasy and then how is that different from tropes so universal fantasy it's funny with the whole trope theme because it's just kind of like trope really is great because it helps me define universal fantasy so it's hard to define without trope without trope i would just say universal fantasy it's the reason your audience enjoys your books or your stories or there's a reason audience enjoys stories and um as far as universal fantasy versus tropes it makes it a little easier to break universal fantasy down if you think of like tropes are what the book is so if you think of something like my favorite trope of all time beauty and the beast like you know for when you say the trope beauty and the beast all these things come to mind as to why you love this trope why you're down for a beauty and the beast retelling in romance or whatever and um those reasons all those reasons that big list of reasons each one of them is a universal fantasy okay so trope is what is it button b's fantasy um in the in the universal fantasy is why that trope is good are the reasons that people enjoy that trope right yeah so let me real quick give the name of your book since i didn't know i was gonna say yeah it's seven figure fiction how to use universal fantasy to sell your books to anyone so and it's excellent i highly recommend it yep um so like let's take beauty and the beast we were gonna do some kind of examples and kind of talk through some pop culture stuff that examples you know help me figure things out so like in beauty and the beast there's like in your book you talk about beauty and the beast you kind of break down some of the tropes i mean some of the universal fantasies from that so could you hit just a couple of those to kind of give examples of what those would be um from beauty and the beast yes so for beauty and the beast it's just great because it's just kind of like um so many good ones it's like i could go a lot about being the beast in fact i had to like stop at that list because i was like i could go on i could name some more especially um disney's version of beauty and the beast which is a seminal moment of my childhood i can still remember like um watching there used to be this show called um at the movies with um cisco and yeah yes yes roger ebert gave this like fan girl review for beauty and the beast and i remember watching it at home on like broadcast television and being like oh i should go see this movie i like really want to go see this movie and and he said oh everyone gave it a standing ovation at the end of the movie and it was like in can or something like that like it was pretty and he was just like i just loved it i just loved it he gushed over it and i went to see it and it was just like one of the few times that a critic has been like i've been like in agreement with yeah it was just like and i remember our whole movie theater and it was interesting because i went to i um lived in a 99.9 black neighborhood went to 99.9 percent black um school and we like stood up for this movie and we just really loved it so it was a very seminal moment in my life to like go and see this i remember i can still see my little sister sitting next to me and that's like saying that was just so good afterwards and being really affected by it but the original question was what makes this yeah what made everyone from roger ebert to like a little black girl in missouri be like this this movie is great and you know my number one thing is the provincial life what i call the provincial life poll which is like when you're pulled from your boring life or your ill-fitting life into another life that is like nothing you've ever known that's full of discovery sometimes adventure like that that fuels a lot of movies let's just say a nice a nice provincial life pull and um the other is there's so many in this movie but um fixing somebody with your love like one of my favorite favorite um things from beauty and the beast like she's literally if he can get her to love her if she can um get him to the point fix him up to the point where he is lovable and deserving of love then he will become a human again like the stakes are so high um and i'll do a third one just yes and oh i'm trying to it's hard to cherry pick would be um it's hard to pick like the favorite ones but you know it's funny because the one that i think people are most surprised about in the book that i put in in the book is servants who love to serve because i think we don't really talk about that but like one of the best servants who love to serve right um examples in history i mean there's like annie you know and then there's like this where they're like literally doing a song and dance before dinner it's what makes all-inclusive resorts really great jamaica in hawaii yes did a little dance beforehand and it's just like oh we're not just we're not just happy to serve you we're entertaining you we're just so happy to be here and i think there's like a real human fantasy um about that like oh people are actually happy to serve yeah that's great i remember in your ram talk last year you were talking about the fixer-upper and you thought you were doing the fixer-upper with your husband and you realized that you were the fixer-upper that was a fixer-upper am i still i need a lot of maintenance i might stop well when you said the servant thing that even reminded me like batman you know alex yes i mean that's his entire goal in life i mean that's his only role is to serve batman and so it doesn't necessarily have to be in romance or anything no it's all it's all over it's all over trump yeah and that is that's one of the points of your book is that it's not just in romance that these are things that you that any genre you can use them to yes like increase the appeal of your book so what it brought to mind to me was um downton abbey not all of them downton abbey are like that but there are some that like the butler i'm having mental block i can't think of his name but he just wants to he wants to help lady mary you know and help her navigate life and stuff so it's just you can find him in every everything genre which which brings us to the next point which we wanted you to tell us in knives out what are the knives out yeah okay so that's not a romance that's that's a mystery and hilarious um so yeah i will say that i cried a lot during this movie because it was i didn't see it until after chris plummer died and then it was just oh yeah that's sad oh man yeah she's gonna play but what a great i don't know if it's his last movie but it was the last movie back yeah i think it's this last movie so it's the last movie that i saw him and he had such a storied career and so you know first of all chris palmer that's not a universal fantasy um just a personal one that's it yeah know having a great last movie like but i did think that or toward the end i was like what a like you know i i after it rolled i was just like what an amazing legacy this actor has had was just amazing that's just a great movie to end on um in any and it's like you know the last movie in many of our minds so it's just kind of like sound of music to this it's like yes exactly you lived good job i think a lot of us want that a lot of us creators are just like man good you know good career like legacy things you'll remember forever knives out this huge this huge franchise now yes really really great so but that being said here are the three i came up with for um knives out um rich kids get their comeuppance so i hope this isn't insulting you jamie or sarah i don't know how you grew up but i think we all have seen these situations where some rich kid who gets something that they don't really deserve because their parent is rich in the life so this movie was slatted with the butter because it's just like all these horrible rich kids that's what's going to happen they ain't getting a dime you know exactly going to be like and there are so many horrible rich kids we watch them on our reality shows all the time and it's just kind of like well i think some of us do kind of have um that fantasy like what would happen and this is what made shit's creek such an amazing television yes what would happen if these horrible kids just you know didn't get the riches that they for whatever reason felt they were due just by on the circumstances of their birth um and on the flip side of that is virtuosity wins like or servant who is you know kind of innocent and poor and always is just trying to do her best and kind of deserves the money this person gets it and um you know my grandma was a maid um both my grandmas were maids and um this almost never happened usually the horrible rich kids just get together yeah and even in a movie i was just like i don't know that she's going to be able to keep that like just just like the little i know of inheritance law like they would sue her into the ground yeah she's not going to get all that money like they were going to keep her in court for the rest of her life but for the course of the movie we can believe that the virtuous person won wins yeah really great universal fantasy and um the last but not least for those of us as we get older is grandma isn't useless the old person who's being dismissed and ignored turns out to oh guys we should have said spoiler alert yeah yeah we'll do spoiler alerts when we do the introduction yeah yeah yeah or spoiler alert spoiler alert so grandma turns out to be essential to the case a huge lynchpin in the case and um i really love that because that's one of the things that was really interesting about that universal fantasy is she's what we all fear we all fear like being shoved into a corner while we're like dying in a wheelchair and stooped over we all fear that especially moms because it's like you know i i've warned my kids not to do this but who knows what they'll do when you're out and just sort of being patted on the head yes hi grandma like i don't understand any i'm just patronizing you but then when he sits down with her it's like i think you're useful and he turns out to be right i love that i love him yeah yeah me too so i was going to say that i think that with the second point about the virtuous person winning it mirrors like what's happening in mystery that like there's injustice in the world and you want to see that write it and so you get like the double whammy you get the oh they get to win in the story and then you know you get the the theme of that as well so i think i very cool but that works out that way you know that's interesting that you should say that because this film is just slathered with justice slapping justice it's like oh you know we do find the truth in the end like you have that detective um that daniel craig just really you know as somebody who adores actors really loved the choices he made in that role just doggedly it's just kind of like ah i'm about to solve this case like i'm going to solve this yes yeah that's great yeah well um another one if we have time we wanted to hit on a couple more so do you want to talk about notting hill oh my very favorite movie [Laughter] is that a big big fat uh big fat fastball to you to knock out of the park with this yeah that's just a ton of them too yeah so many so many okay so anytime you have a divorced character it's just kind of like and they get um and this is funny because this is one of those fantasies if you get divorced and the next person is just tons better than the ex yes i'm sorry i'm doing i'm doing a thumbs up yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm doing a thumbs up for those of you who can't see at home sorry about that so i'm doing a thumbs up that is amazing i love like you know i call it opposite x it's kind of like an opposite of x fantasy but this is even better because it's better than x it's like the opposite of x am better than x like you know the person that my next wife or my next boyfriend or my next whoever my next love my big love is not only the one true love but they are so much better than you they're like ten times better than you like you're going to like look at this and you're going to be like oh my god this person married julia roberts like oh my god i'm glad that's never happened to me but i think that's a fantasy that a lot of yes yes i think so too yeah um this was really interesting because the chosen he gets the chosen fantasy and yes it's one of the few um movies that does it with a male protagonist where because there i talk about it a lot the um kind of the fantasy of being chosen by the most popular by the richest like whoever um person and person in your sphere or your community and being chosen by that person it's a super old fantasy kind of going back to um you know whatever kind of makeup cavemen tribes like almost every society has that situation where the most powerful warrior in the tribe pitch you you know and that's like this huge fantasy so in this case it's kind of a reverse where um this huge movie star at least for the first third of the movie picks him yes he's like i picked you yeah yeah and this is always good again there's some misunderstanding now i've come back and i picked you again there's another misunderstanding and and then i pick you the third time so three picks yes the view from this um huge star so i really love that something that um another fantasy that we don't really talk about that much is bringing somebody to a party who really impresses your friends yes the good party guest yes yes yes yes so it's just kind of like you know walking in with a movie star can you imagine i mean can you imagine i've seen nottingham hills i can kind of imagine but like going to a dinner party and like our birthday party i can't remember if it was a dinner it was his birthday yeah yeah the english no offense their parties all kind of seem like dinner parties even if it's like a raucous birthday party it's just like this this has this has the vibe this is of a dinner party right anyway bringing this person to your dinner party so like that really impressive friend thing yes it was so i still i love that scene and i in fact i just thought about it the other day i went to the bathroom and i was buttoning up my pants and i remembered her saying i i saw her when she unbuttoned her pants and there was definitely cellulite or something like that you know when she follows her into the bathroom and i love that move but it's just so like it's just yeah the dinner party is one of my favorite scenes in that movie because everybody is just so freaked out but they're trying to be cool they're trying to be so cool yeah that's great yeah and then the next movie is the cr is crazy rich asians oh my gosh was you so great i understand how much i love this movie yeah it's a great oh my gosh you do not understand i love this movie so much and i read the book beforehand i think it's one of the few movies where they were just kind of like you know what this book is completely over the top luxury let's let's put some more butter on it yeah i feel there's still not enough butter it's like the julia child production yes i always felt like julia chow was putting like i was just like i think you could get away with one stick of butter for this recipe you know let's put four let's go for the big four there's a little ball with the butter yeah all right um one but um i really so i just really love the the luxury like they really caught that like you know just being able to see how really rich people live and kind of experience that magazine like it's the reason we buy architectural digest or in my case flip through it in an airport you know without buying it but you know it's why we watched that mtv show cribs like it's just like just to see how these other people lived it took us universal fantasy going like i love um fantasies where you get to see how rich people live from another culture that you've not seen before so to go to singapore yeah and to um get this kind of whoa like okay so this is how single like this is how the rich of singapore live it's really great like you know this is one of those ideas that it's just kind of like oh we could have gone to um doneness in um south africa or ghana or like any place where there's a really rich community and we get to see how this rich community as americans at least from another culture lives i always and this is one of the same things i loved about um shanghai um which was the latest mar not the latest i guess he turned out yeah yeah one before that um big uh marvel pick and it's finding out that your boyfriend has a secret like you know whoever you're dating whoever you're although in shanxi she he wasn't the boyfriend he was her best friend but whatever but like you know in shanghai it turns out that this dude not only can fight like the dickens but he has like a six-pack ab can you imagine yeah yeah your best male friend it's just like oh my god like you're you're this kick-ass martial artist you'll do anything to protect me and you have a six-pack right like i love surprises like that so i love um with this idea like oh the guy you're dating isn't the guy you think he has a secret he's a prince like you know this is really throughout time yeah the guy you like has a secret or has is richer than you think is a prince is something my favorite my favorite on a personal level in this room that we might not have thought of is winning over your mother-in-law yes my mother-in-law like kind of tolerated me the idea of not only being right being proven right and having her approval and i'm like that's that's a huge universal fantasy that a lot of us don't talk about that a lot of us have like winning over the mother-in-law and last but not least it at least and this is one of the changes from the book that i just really really approved of in the movie is getting the engagement and propose getting the proposal you deserve like i love that playing bravo proposal i love you you know do this with me and then it leads right into the engagement party you deserve like i was just like he takes her off the plane and then there's this huge again spoiler alerts there's a huge party waiting for her and that's how the movie ends with her getting like the proposal and the engagement party on like although you know the the um la person in me i lived in la at the time was like you could never do a roof top party like that at the major hotel in under a half a day get it all planned yeah yeah yeah yeah just a coordination like they had catered as like who's catering this yes how did you get this production-wise this would not happen but fantasy-wise loved it do you know that that uh my realistic streak is how i really justify writing romance because you know so many people say romance is so unrealistic but the fact that i'm so realistic and that i can suspend reality enough to write a romance i feel like that totally justifies the fact if if i'm peddling anything that is that is unrealistic it's it's not really because i know it does take more than a day to create something like that yes so it's funny because um if you ever write military romance like if you do anything wrong man they will ding you so i don't like to get that wrong but every so once in a while someone's just like oh you couldn't possibly get to that place or you couldn't possibly plan that in that amount of time and like to be able to say i know i know but i want you guys to have that fantasy enjoy enjoy yes just suspend your discoloration yeah yeah yeah well it's a mystery it's to be like you have the little town that has like 500 dead people in it because they keep finding the dead bodies that's totally unrealistic yeah and you just have to say as a writer i was like i just have to say that's okay right because my readers want to go there they're willing to suspend their disbelief and that's okay and i i will say because of mysteries i will i refuse to live in a small town after dangerous they're very different well i actually bit myself and i mean like bit myself in the butt with my reality streak because my bright well first of all in this small town all the brides run away like but how is that realistic but we suspend reality enough for that but then when i went to write my next series it had a it was a professional football player and i was like i've got i've got a rock star a millionaire a country music star a child star in this town i cannot add a um professional football player like that's just too much but what i realize now i could have yes totally gone with me and i just was being so realistic that that it would have been better if i'd put them in that small town so yeah well it could it's just a suburb of l.a right you just find all those people into yeah no austin oh my gosh that's so funny well we have loved this and when you say butter what you're saying is that's just the good stuff that goes on top that you just fold into that story and so and then drizzle on top so that's all the stuff that people love and and want more of so exactly yeah yeah is there anything else about universal fantasy that we need to know before we get to the last question um i don't think so i think like you know going over examples hopefully that's um illuminated it and you know yeah there is that thing yeah i was gonna say i didn't get the book yes exactly yes so hopefully if there's still something you don't understand about the universe it'll be in the book yeah feel free to read that book no i think your examples have been great and i think it just helps to have like something that is concrete that like a lot of people have seen probably so i think it'll be really good yeah i agree what's the best thing you've done to set yourself up for success do you think it's it's funny because so much of it seems like such an accident like you know and so much of it i wouldn't do now so i guess um following my instincts when i was young like you know like when i remember right before and maybe like um a few months before i met my husband and right before i in maybe like a year before i got my first radio writing job i was just kind of like well so you went to i went to a really expensive undergrad i then went to an expensive grad program and all these loans i was just like i was i then you know kind of decide to make become a playwright and i was just like you know why did you go to grad school why did you do this why didn't you just you know i had a um offer to go to um university of missouri columbia full ride plus a stipend yeah in the journalism program and it's just kind of like so i got very bitter about the choices i made because i had this instinct i really need to get out of missouri i wanted to go to this all women's college um and i for my undergrad and then you know for my grad school i had written while i was in japan i written like a script in japan and it was just this instinct like this is youthful instinct to do this and i just really followed my instincts one of the things that um and i followed my intuit intuition and i followed my um interest what i was interested in and so i did kind of have this list like after i graduated with an english major i promised my parents that i would like you know pursue law that's what you tell them when you call them and say i'm going to be an english major yeah concerned you're like don't worry i'll go to law school after this yeah you know and i tried i remember like bringing like the lsat the the lsat book to japan with me to study from it i just never got around to it and then it was just kind of like i really thought when i applied to um cmu cmu for grad school carnegie mellon for grad school that this if i took this path that i could be happy and that it would be a career that i would enjoy and i was pretty wrong about the screenwriting half because i studied dramatic writing with a plan to become a screenwriter but it turned out that i really liked playwriting and it turned out that you know i got to la to find out they really liked playwriting so that was a weird move but it's just like by following my interest i kind of ended up where i needed to be because i when i think about the fact this in november i think maybe two days ago it was like my publishing anniversary of my first indie book and i was just like well maybe i could write romance like i really like reading it so maybe i could write it and i put it out there and i followed my interests and i've been here for 10 years now and i just really when i look back at it i'm just happy that i honored myself and i honored my intuition and i didn't necessarily listen to all the adults in my life i love that i love that i love that and and it certainly paid off for you even even your genre hopping has you've made it work for you so i think that's awesome oh thank you thank you yeah yeah this has been so great we've loved having so much fun guys thank you for having me you're welcome please tell everyone where they can find you and your books we would love for them to find you well you know wherever books are sold just absolutely theodore taylor if you're interested in my romance seven-figure fiction um i am after you read the book please join my facebook group center for fiction which is facebook.com groups slash group slash seven figure fiction um you can also um find me um figure fiction dot com and um sign up for my sub sack if you want more um examples of you know universal fantasies all right thank you so much thank you so much this has been great thanks for being here and we'll have so much fun thank you again yeah you're welcome we're glad to have you and we'll have all the links at wishingtonpodcast.com and thanks to alexa larberg for editing and producing the podcast and we'll see y'all next week thanks for listening to the wish i'd known then podcast we hoped this episode inspired you empowered you and made you laugh a little bit too if you loved it tell your friends about it and if you feel so inclined leave us a review we look forward to being with you again next week