We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bethany Meyer a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bethany, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

Launching myself into becoming an author was not a quick or overnight process–as a matter of fact, it took almost a decade. In grade school, I hated creative writing assignments with a passion. No story-writing prompt could be over with quick enough for me. All of it felt dry and uninteresting; painfully so.

On one random day in fifth grade, my older sister (who had been passionately writing her own stories for years) let me read a short page of her work in progress. I couldn’t tell you what happened after that. It was like a switch flipped, and the lights came on. I wanted to write my own story, NOW. And then another one after that. And another after that. I wanted to keep writing, and keep sharing what I wrote, until the day I died.

Of course, I wanted to publish something right away, but I was eleven years old, unskilled, and uninformed. I didn’t have a clue how to get ahold of a publishing house, and even if I had, the material I had to offer wouldn’t have impressed them.

I wrote nearly every day for eight more years. The ideas never seemed to stop coming, and the hunger to share my work remained strong. I wrote around three dozen pieces, from short fiction to novella length, across a half dozen genres. I shared what I wrote with everyone I could, and received feedback from friends and family that helped me improve my skill. Most importantly, over that time I learned about publishing–the hard way.

By 2021, I had learned about something that was now making quite a splash: self-publishing. The freedom of it spoke to me. Between the ages of 15 and 18, I published three books: one children’s book and two young adult. I had the passion, but little else. I knew nothing about professional editors, or hiring cover artists, or even how to build my own audience. The results were exactly what you might expect: I sold roughly ten copies, mainly to supportive family members. Later, as I learned more about the craft, I realized what was wrong with those books and pulled them from the online marketplaces, just in time to write my biggest project yet.

In November of 2019, I drafted Robbing Centaurs and Other Bad Ideas, the first of a trilogy. By this time, I had begun slowly building an audience online, and I knew this idea was too good to flop. I learned everything I could about professional book formatting and hiring a good editor, and online I built up anticipation by sharing snippets and memes (yes, a good portion of my successes have been because of memes). Come launch day, I had a beautiful little corner of the internet into which I could launch the funny(and hard-hitting) book that my audience wanted to read.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Bethany, and I’m an independent author and publisher. I’ve been writing for fifteen years and “officially” publishing for five, with two novels so far and a third releasing in April. I write stories to encourage, challenge, inspire, and make people laugh. I want to create high-quality fiction that delivers good and beautiful truth without taking away from the engaging or even comedic nature of the story. It brings me joy to tell stories with comedy appeal, and for that, I take inspiration from writers like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Jonathan Stroud.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I’ve always wanted to change people’s lives, but if I can’t do that, I’ll settle for changing their minds. Fiction is a beautiful tool for framing truth; it’s truly one of the most wonderful things about the craft.

James Baldwin said it best: “You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that [t]he world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it.”

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I’ve got two to mention, actually! David Gaughran is a fellow indie publisher, and he has a vast library of free digital materials. He’s an excellent teacher when it comes to the business of selling books. He encourages you to stop stressing about trendy marketing strategies and gives you the information you need to build a strong platform that lasts. I’ve greatly benefitted from his materials and recommended resources in the past year.

I also think that anyone who wants to write well should take Michigan University’s course “The Syntax of Sports”, which is also available online. The course puts a heavy focus on crafting good sentences and word choice, and it really changed the way I line-edit my work. I can’t recommend it enough.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mebethanydanni.wixsite.com/bethanymeyer
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/scribbledfiction
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064100172243
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@scribbledfiction
• Other: Buy Robbing Centaurs and Other Bad Ideas on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Robbing-Centaurs-Other-Ideas-Scorch/dp/173759840X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=robbing+centaurs+and+other+bad+ideas&qid=1658752989&sprefix=robbing+cen%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1