307. Worldbuilding, Why You Should Do it, and How, with D.J. Williams

Author and producer D.J. Williams discusses worldbuilding, how he has implemented it into his books, and why you should put it in yours, as well as some additional tips for writers in this extended episode of Writing and Editing.

▬

Visit D.J.'s Website:
https://www.djwilliamsbooks.com/

Find copies of D.J.'s newest book, Battle of Lion Rock, here:
https://www.tyndale.com/p/beacon-hill-3-battle-of-lion-rock/9781496462763

Check out his socials:
https://www.instagram.com/djwilliamsbooks/
https://x.com/djwilliamsbooks

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. World building and setting a scene are crucial parts of any story. But what does that look like when we're writing for a teen audience? Author D.J. Williams created an immersive fictional world for teens in his Beacon Hill series, and his books have placed at number one in Amazon Hot New Releases and received high praise from Kirkus Reviews, so I'm extremely excited to have him here and to have him share that with us.

Jennia: Well, first, welcome to the show!

D.J. Williams: Well, thanks for having me on. I'm glad to be here!

Jennia: I'm glad you're here. I want to talk a little bit about your own personal history because it's extremely fascinating and honestly reads like something you'd see in a movie or read in a book (both laugh). And then just into how that maybe influenced what you write and how you write.

D.J. Williams: Oh, sure. All right, now I have to live up to that (Jennia laughs). I have to live up to the hero, I guess.

Jennia: I can always blur over that and give it a mediocre introduction.

D.J. Williams: Yeah, no, that's good! That's perfect! (laughs) Let's set the expectations. Can we set the expectations for everybody? (Jennia laughs). You know, I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I lived there till I was 15. My parents were there for about 20 years. And from the time I can remember, four, five years old, I think that was the first flight I took. And we would fly all over Asia, different countries. So from a early age, I was exposed to a lot of different cultures and different places. And, you know, growing up, I thought that was normal. I thought everybody lived that kind of a life. And we moved back to the States when I was 15 and I moved from one concrete jungle to another concrete jungle (Jennia laughs) in Los Angeles. And my parents didn't realize this, I don't think, but my first day of high school, they had enrolled me in one of the roughest schools in Los Angeles.

Jennia: Oh no.

D.J. Williams: (laughs) And so I went from, you know, an American school in Hong Kong where we would travel all over, do all kinds of fun stuff. Then my first day at school, I saw like three fights, different gangs. I mean, I was like, "This is a whole different world." And everyone that would ask, they'd be like, "Did you have culture shock when you came back?"

Jennia: Yeah.

D.J. Williams: —You know, my culture shock wasn't living in LA, it was going to the school. (laughs) Like, that was my culture—

Jennia: Oh my Gosh.

D.J. Williams: —shock, you know. But after high school, through a chain of events, I ended up running a record company in the gospel music genre and ended up running two record companies before I was done with the music side. And the funny thing about that is when Apple came along with iTunes, all of us in the music business had to go find new careers (laughs)—

Jennia: Oh really?

D.J. Williams: —because we weren't—you weren't making records in studios, you're making records in your house. You know, you weren't putting out full records, you were doing, like, singles. So I ended up transitioning out of the music business and became a general manager of an entertainment company here in LA—which was just a general market company—and helped them get the company up and running. They had a music label, we had a show on MTV for a while, and then different aspects of the business. But I realized running the entertainment company, I wanted to be more creative than just on the business side.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: So I started a production company. And that production company, I think we've had the company almost 18, 19 years now and we've done almost 600 episodes of broadcast television.

Jennia: Oh wow!

D.J. Williams: Producing, directing, all post-production. So the production company has a diverse group of projects that run through here. So it can be anything from working with a producer to develop their project to pitch it to the studios, cutting trailers, you know, all kinds of stuff. That was more my skill set. But years ago we were filming a documentary in Africa and at the end of three weeks of filming, a friend of mine said, "Hey, you want to go to the Zambezi River?" And I'm, like, a city boy. So I'm thinking, “Yeah, let's go. It's like a tourist attraction. You know, let's go see what it's like." And so the next morning I meet him at the airport and we get on a little four-seater Cessna plane and we are flying into the heart of Africa. Where you look out the window, there's giraffes, there's zebra, there's impala just running everywhere, you know. And I'm like, "So where are we going to land?" Like, I'm picturing an airport in the middle of all this (laughs).

Jennia: Yeah! Just, like, a landing strip right there, right between the giraffes and the (laughs).

D.J. Williams: That is what it was. It was a dirt road. He's like, "We're landing right there." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh!" So we land, we get out of the plane and we take this Land Rover down to the Zambezi River and we're staying in, like, tents along the river. And the first night I'm in my tent by myself. There's no power, there's no wifi, there's no cell service. I mean, you were cut off from the world. And about 2:00 in the morning, I'm hearing these animals walking through the place we're staying and I have my little lantern on (Jennia laughs), you know, and I'm looking around—

Jennia: Yeah, that will protect you.

D.J. Williams: —Yeah! And I'm thinking, "This tent is not going to protect me. And neither is the lantern," you know what I'm saying? (Jennia laughs). So, long story short, next day we go out, we're filming, we've come across this elephant and the guide, he's driving us around, you know, and I'm rolling on the camera and he's like, "I can get us closer." I'm like, "No, no, it's good, man, I'm good. I got a zoom on the camera." So he gets us close. He actually gets us too close. Next thing we know, the elephant is charging the Land Rover.

Jennia: Oh no.

D.J. Williams: And we are flying backwards. And I'm still rolling on the camera (Jennia laughs) because I'm like, "If I'm gonna die, then everyone's going to know how this went down, right?"

Jennia: Were you narrating it as you went along? (laughs)

D.J. Williams: Let's say the audio portion had to be taken out of the video for a few of us (laughs). The Land Rover's flying backwards. All of a sudden the guy hits the brakes, he stands up and I'm thinking, "This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. We should just keep going," you know? He stands up and he waves at the elephant and this elephant stops about five feet from us and there's dust everywhere. I'm still rolling on the camera. And we sat there for, like, five minutes. Five minutes. No one moves. Elephant doesn't move. We don't move. And about five minutes later, elephant goes back behind a tree. We go back to camp and the locals there, when we showed them the footage—You ever have that instance where you're telling someone a story and that nervous laughter hits for like, "Yep, you almost died"?

Jennia: Oh, yes (both laugh). There's, like, that undertone of, "Just how stupid are you?"

D.J. Williams: Yeah, exactly! Totally! That was us. That was us. And so that night, the sun is setting on the Zambezi River. I'm looking out on this and I'm seeing, like, hippos in the water. I mean, it's just like National Geographic kind of stuff. And as I'm standing there—the three weeks leading up to that, we have been filming at some of the roughest and poorest parts of Zambia.

Jennia: Mmm.

D.J. Williams: And as I stood there, I was like, "You know what? One day I'm gonna write about this place."

Jennia: Awww.

D.J. Williams: I had never written a novel ever. You know, my whole job is on production. Came home, life kind of took over. Took a few years later. So I wrote my first novel, The Disillusion

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: And I gave it to a friend of mine. She—at the time, she was the co-executive producer on Law and Order: SVU. And I told her, I said, "If this is bad, the only people ever going to know about it is you and me." (both laugh) So she read it. She got back to me in, like, three or four days. Of course, with any producer, any writer, she had a bunch of notes, you know. So I'm like, "Well, she knows what she's talking about. So I'm gonna make those edits, I'm going to go through all that." And we ended up getting the book out and through nothing that we did, just through another chain of events, Barnes and Noble found out about it and I end up doing a fifteen-city tour with them for the first book.

Jennia: Oh, very nice!

D.J. Williams: Yeah, just out of the gate. Then I was hooked. I love writing books. I love writing. I love the process. I love the editing side, which I've grown to love that, you know, more and more. And I just love the fact that you can take a spark of an idea—

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: —and then when you're done, it's 300 pages or however many pages it ends up being. And that world is now on paper, you know.

Jennia: Yeah.

D.J. Williams: So that's a long answer to your question, but that's what kind of got me moving towards kind of the book writing world. And then, you know, Beacon Hill was a series I've wanted to write for years. And so that was . . . Fortunately, I had a few books under my belt before that one happened (laughs).

Jennia: I did want to talk a little bit about Beacon Hill and how you came up with the school, but also why you think it's important to show a school as one of the settings.

D.J. Williams: You know, the real Beacon Hill was my elementary school in Hong Kong. And many of the characters in the Beacon Hill series are loosely based off of my friends that I grew up with over there. Of course, they're all trying to guess who's who and I never admit which one is which.

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: There are some obvious ones to them, but most of them I just kind of play like, "Well, it's a mix of everybody." You know, they're like, "No, no, that sounds like this person." But I knew I wanted to base it in Hong Kong. I wanted the school to be there. I wanted it to be that age range, kind of the 16-, 17-year-old students, you know. Because at that point, they're making, like, life decisions. They're worried about what the future might be. They all come from different cultures and different family circles, you know. And the other piece that played into that—I'm a big Harry Potter fan, so I love the world building. And I wanted to write a series that was modern day, took the characters into other realms—

Jennia: Mmm.

D.J. Williams: —but instead of the magic element, I wanted to be supernatural.

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: So it's more of the gifts versus kind of the magic wand kind of stuff. But yeah, that's kind of how it started. And I knew—you know how this is when you're pitching it around to the publishers. You have to put your proposal together. You got to do all that. I put a treatment in and, through another chain of events—My whole life has not been planned. It's just like a chain of events (Jennia laughs). I just chase the next thing. So a friend of mine called me up, said, "Hey, I started a new literary agency. Can I take Beacon Hill out just as a one-off?" And I said, "Sure. I've been sitting on it for, like, 10 years." Not, that I had done—

Jennia: Really, that long?

D.J. Williams: —I had just let it sit. And I thought, "One day it'll happen. It'll have to be the right time." And it ended up being better because now I had 10 years of writing under my belt. So then—

Jennia: Ahh, yeah.

D.J. Williams: —You know, I think if I had to write it 10 years earlier, I don't know if I could have done it. So he took it out and we sold the series in, like, a couple of months. Which is like lightning speed in the publishing world (laughs).

Jennia: Yes, it is (laughs).

D.J. Williams: But the funny part about it was they read the treatment—I think we pitched four books, then we narrowed it down to three. But when I wrote book one, the publisher came back and said, "Can you write another 20 chapters or so to build out the world even more?" So I said, "Yep, sure." But once I did that, almost everything in the original treatment was in book one.

Jennia: Mmm.

D.J. Williams: And so each book after that, not even the publisher knew what I was going to give them when the manuscript was done until I handed it over (both laugh). And so with Battle of Lion Rock, which is the third one, which is coming out in January (if you look up the title, you'll see that it's available . . . just saying). When I finished that one, I texted the main person over at Wander, she was a friend of mine. I text him, I said, "Okay, Battle of Lion Rock is finished. I can't believe how it ends." (Jennia laughs) And that's all I text. So she, like, texted me back. She's like, "You're such a jerk." You know, I'm just like, "Oh yeah, I know. That's why—"

Jennia: Yes! And I will say, as an editor, that is so, so hard because then we find out and we can't tell anybody (both laugh). So we're going to, you know, talk to our author for the next hour and a half. Yes, help me process what you've just done to me.

D.J. Williams: You know, I am guilty. I am guilty of that 100 percent.

Jennia: I see that! I see that from the text message (laughs).

D.J. Williams: You know, and so the editor over at Wander, who's become a good friend too—her name's Danika.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: She balanced kind of what I wanted to do in the series with what she knew the expectations were. And somehow I never felt like anyone put their foot down and was like, "You can't do this. You know, you can't do that." So she did a great job, you know, and that process was a lot of fun. I've learned to love the editing. It's the truth. When you work with a team of people, you know, whether it's the editors or whether it's—even on the marketing side, when you're working with a team of people, it makes everything better.

Jennia: Yeah. Well, so when you were writing this, you have a bunch of different perspectives, different characters that have chapters that we see through their viewpoint. So how did that alter how you depicted the setting or even what parts of the settings that you depicted?

D.J. Williams: Because of my TV background, I write every book as if it's a season in a series.

Jennia: Mmm.

D.J. Williams: And so if you've ever watched, say, Lord of the Rings. Well—or Rings of Power, let's use that as an example. If you watch that series, you're getting it from different points of view because in episodic content, you've got to keep the viewer kind of moving around and not just stuck with one point of view the whole time. So that probably inspired that a lot. And I just felt like if you could get a different point of view in a certain situation, it can amplify the story without making it obvious. You know, so Jack, who's our main character, if you saw everything through his point of view, it could become predictable. Like, okay, he's going to find this, he's going to do this, he's going to do that. When you throw in the other points of view, now you're getting things that he may not know, you know, or a different point of view on the character that you're like, "Whoa, I didn't realize, you know, this character was gonna be this way."

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: So I guess that that's kind of how I'm wired to do it.

Jennia: Yeah. Even just the feel of some of the chapters is different depending on whose POV you're in. So, like, Jack versus Natalie, especially Jack very early on in book one where there's a lot of emotional weight to those first chapters with him versus Natalie, it just felt very action-oriented and fast-paced, and "How do we do this?" Yeah, but you can see even then, too, their demeanor at the time, or their emotional state of mind, how that might influence even what they're picking up on versus not picking up on in their surroundings.

D.J. Williams: Mhm. Well, and it's balancing kind of that emotional connection with the action.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: You know? That's the other thing I've noticed is sometimes you'll get into a book, it's all action, all the time.

Jennia: Yeah (laughs).

D.J. Williams: And you don't get a break. And I tend to write that way because, you know, the other series I write is kind of an espionage thriller series. And so there's a lot of action, but you have to have those emotional moments to keep the reader engaged or rooting for the character or mad at another character, like, whatever it is. So I've learned to kind of slow that down a little, even for me, to be like, you've got to have these moments, whether it's Jack and Emma, you know, or they're together talking something through and it''s like you see how they approach things. Which is different. Even though they're in the same hunt for the truth, they definitely have different perspectives on how to do it.

Jennia: Yeah. So you talked about some of the places you've lived and how some of them are seen in the book. Do you think that helped you when it came to describing these settings in a way that's believable?

D.J. Williams: Definitely. Like, in Hong Kong, every description in Hong Kong is somewhere I have been and I have walked those streets. I've walked into the markets, you know, the street markets. That was super fun for me because it was like taking a walk down memory lane. Part of the story, they go to the Philippines. I've been to the Philippines probably over 20 times in my lifetime.

Jennia: Oh wow.

D.J. Williams: Most of the settings that are in the series, I've been there. And so there's a different level of authenticity you can bring to a scene because you're not necessarily bringing out the obvious, like tourist attraction, like, you're finding some cool little corner and you turn that into where things happen. And if there are places I haven't been to, more than ever now, if you have Google Maps and you can research certain places, then that part of the world building is easier than it would have been, you know, years ago. Where if you haven't walked those streets, you're really trying to imagine what it would be like.

Jennia: Right. And I like that you said it goes beyond the tourist attractions, especially if we're thinking of a character who lives there. Because, just as an example, I live not too far from D.C., but I couldn't even tell you the last time I did anything touristy over there. And so then when we take something like the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids or whatever, and we plop it in to help center the reader, it has that feeling of being like, "Okay, it's a little heavy-handed." Because is our Parisian character really just going to casually walk by the Eiffel Tower on their way to work? (both laugh)

D.J. Williams: Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. With Beacon Hill, the other piece of that was the other realms.

Jennia: Ahh, yeah.

D.J. Williams: Originally I thought, "Well, there's going to be a few. I can handle that." And then as I got into the writing process, I'm like, "Well, they have to go to this place. This place that I'm thinking of in—imagining. We have to take them there." So now you've got to build out that whole part of the story, that whole world building. And then each realm can't resemble the other realms. Like, you've got to make them unique. And so that—that was probably the most challenging part. You know, writing the real world settings, that for me was easier because I've been to a lot of the places.

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: The world building in the other realms, that was where I'm like, "Okay, you said you would put this in here. Now you got to pull it off," you know? (both laugh).

Jennia: So what are some of the things, then, that you included or that maybe you had difficulty with when it came to writing about the other realms?

D.J. Williams: For me, I think it was making—because the books are a little bit longer than maybe some of the other YA books that are out there. The challenge with that for me was making each realm unique, having a purpose for them to go to each realm.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: And then each realm had to raise the stakes. And so it wasn't simply, okay, we're going to enter this realm and we're going to find this clue, we're going to find this artifact. That was the challenge I put to myself was every realm they enter into, we have to feel like the stakes are getting even higher. And then in Battle of Lion Rock, the last realm that they enter is the ultimate realm. It is literally like, "Okay, now this is do or die for everybody at this point." And the rest of it was just kind of letting my imagination run wild. And then just pulling it back to make it—you know, make it believable in an unbelievable world. You know what I mean?

Jennia: Yeah. I think it was your documentary, you talked about the hardest part of world building was condensing it. So how did you go through and do that? How did you decide, "This should stay, we could probably lose this"?

D.J. Williams: There's the creative side, where [the] first draft, obviously, is much longer. Then there's kind of the reality-author-publishing world, where I'm like, "I have this much time to write this book." (laughs) You know, "I have this deadline that I have to make. This deadline." Everything we do on the production company is all deadline driven anyway. So that was good for me, because it's like, we have a deadline, I can be Mr. Creative for a certain amount of time, and then we got to get down to, like, making it happen.

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: And so there is a trigger in me, which, you know, is different, probably, from some other maybe authors or creatives, where it's all about what they're creating.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: It's a hard step for them to be like, "Okay, I'm done creating, now let's finish it up." That's, like—

Jennia: Ahh, yeah.

D.J. Williams: —a big jump. And for me, there's a trigger in me where I'm like, "Okay, I've put everything I can down. Now I've got to just start condensing everything, get rid of the stuff that doesn't matter." And one trick I do is once I get through a manuscript, I'll put it down for like a month.

Jennia: Mmm, mhm.

D.J. Williams: I won't think about it. And then when I come back to it, I'll read through it as if I'm just reading it. And a lot of times you'll find stuff like, "Oh, this is way too much, I need to pull this back." You know, you have a different perspective, and then kind of move it forward from there.

Jennia: So since you write for adults, too, do you approach worlding differently for the YA audience than you would for an adult audience?

D.J. Williams: I mean, don't think I do because the way that I kind of map out the stories is even with Beacon Hill, Beacon Hill is not—It's not, like, Hunger Games, but it has people die in this series. You know, there is tough life stuff that happens—

Jennia: Oh yeah.

D.J. Williams: —but, you know, I feel like I want to push it to the edge. Not to be edgy, but I want to push it to the edge to draw the reader in, whether they're a teen or whether they're just a YA fan. Because when I look at kind of the bigger picture—the other reason why I wanted to write the series is when you look at the content that's out there right now for the YA group, there's a lot of really dark stuff out there. And I wanted to write a series that, yes, it brings you to the edge of the darkness, but there has to be light. And sometimes that doesn't mean everything wraps up in a perfect bow either—

Jennia: Right.

D.J. Williams: —But there is light amidst the struggle and all that stuff. So I don't think it changes my approach. But, for me, it comes down to the story. I don't outline the books at all. I know where it begins, I know where it's going to end. So I knew how Battle of Lion Rock was going to end when I started. You know, I knew how it begins, how it ends. Everything in between to me, it's like a chase. Like, I'm chasing the characters. And so if they end up in Pakistan, well, that's where the character is taking me. You know, I'm just—I'm chasing after them as opposed to trying to make them do something—

Jennia: Oh I love that way of looking at it. Yeah!

D.J. Williams: —you know, instead of making them—

Jennia: It just feels more exciting!

D.J. Williams: —Yeah. Well, and as a writer, you know, when you're—when you approach it that way, if you get to the end of a chapter and you're like, "Whoa, I didn't see that coming," (Jennia laughs), now your reader is going to capture that kind of intensity, you know? When I get the books done, I'm a reverse outliner. That's my term I've been using. When I get a book done—So, like, Hunt For Eden's Star, which was book one—

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: —I went back before I started writing Secrets of the Highlands. I outlined every chapter in a spreadsheet of Hunt For Eden's Star. So then when I do this kind of freewheeling, let-it-flow in book two, I went back to that spreadsheet to make sure like, "Here's continuity of the storylines, here's continuity of the characters." Like, make sure I'm playing by the rules.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: But I'm not having to follow an outline as I write the next book. It works for me. It may not work for anybody else, but that's how I've done it.

Jennia: No, I can see the flexibility that comes with it. Because we do hear that sometimes with authors about, "Well, I need this to happen in the next chapter," or, "I had planned this." And then you become so stuck in that way of thinking that it's almost like you've written yourself into a plot hole that you can't get out of just because you're unable to see that there are other possibilities. You know, you're just looking around at these walls of dirt and you don't know how to get out.

D.J. Williams: Yeah. Trying to do it, you know, the right way, that doesn't work for me. If I feel like I'm chasing the characters, then I know that my pacing's right. I know that if I do write myself into a hole, then I'm chasing the character and that character's got to figure out a way to get out of it. And that makes it even more exciting.

Jennia: Oh, yeah. Take the stress off yourself. It's on the character now.

D.J. Williams: It is (both laugh). It's all the characters's fault! If it doesn't work, it's because the character put me down the wrong path. You know what I mean?

Jennia: How freeing (laughs).

D.J. Williams: But I will say, when I wrote Battle of Lion Rock—which is book three in the Beacon Hills series—as I got towards the end, it did get a little more technical because I'm like, "I need to land the plane. Now I have to land the plane of all the buildup from book one, book two . . ." You know, so it got a little more not so freewheeling towards the end. Because I had a list of all the storylines and I'm like, "I need to wrap that up. I need to wrap that up." And so then it was more like, "Let's check the list off to make sure we didn't miss anything," you know.

Jennia: I just want to say I appreciate that this interview started with trying to land a plane, and now we're wrapping up with trying to—

D.J. Williams: See? (both laugh) You like that?

Jennia: Look at that!

D.J. Williams: I went full circle! I like that. Oh my Gosh (laughs).

Jennia: That's how you know this guy is a master storyteller, just so everyone picks up on that (both laugh).

D.J. Williams: That's so good! I'll take it! I'll take it (Jennia laughs).

Jennia: One last thing I wanted to bring up is that even your website helps make this experience feel even more immersive. It's not just the books themselves. It's also then visiting the website, clicking around, seeing the videos. And I wanted to ask why you think that's an important component?

D.J. Williams: You know, I think if you're gonna build the world out for the reader, it has to be kind of, like, an immersive experience.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: That's one reason why we did the documentary. Because leading up to, like, the release of Hunt For Eden's Star, we cut the documentary up in the short kind of like two-minute episodes for social [media]. That got people kind of on board. And then we did a final cut of the documentary, which I think is, like, 40 minutes or something. Just putting that out on social before the release of the books, we've gotten almost two million views—

Jennia: Oh wow.

D.J. Williams: —of the documentary. And I think that really helped kind of move it forward. We have a little bit of an advantage because we are a production company. So, like, the trailers and all that, you know, we could knock those things out. But having all of that available, really—you know, it also helped on another front where, with this series, which is interesting—Typically Amazon is where you're going to sell most of your books.

Jennia: Mhm.

D.J. Williams: With this series, it's been a completely different route.

Jennia: Oh, really?

D.J. Williams: So this is how we operate. We built our own database of every Barnes and Noble customer relations manager in the country, and we can reach out to them directly. So when Beacon Hill was getting ready to come out, we reached out to every store, talked to everybody, got them to get the books in the stores ahead of time. And so, you know—I could be wrong by some percentage points—but I think about 90 percent of the books that have been sold through the Beacon Hill series have been at Barnes and Noble retail stores.

Jennia: That is amazing!

D.J. Williams: And so I did 30 dates with them last year. We sold out every book signing except for one, which was Easter weekend—

Jennia: Ahh, well.

D.J. Williams: —And I'm like, "I-I can't compete with Easter!"

Jennia: No, you really can't. Sorry (laughs).

D.J. Williams: It can't happen! (laughs) You know? So Barnes and Nobles, man . . . super happy. You know, and that's the other thing I would say, if anyone's listening to this that's a writer and author, you know, you're trying to figure out, "How do I get my books and my stories out there?" There isn't just one path for that to happen. And so I think when you find where that niche is, then you put all your energy into that path instead of trying to do everything. So if you find that Amazon's really working, then you dial in and just focus on really make it—building that out. If it's independent bookstores, then work that system.

Jennia: That is such good advice. I'm glad, too, that you pointed out that it might change from book to book or series to series. But it doesn't mean you need to try whatever plan A was before, and then if it fails, that means the book is a failure. Yeah, just move along. And now move to plan B or Plan C.

D.J. Williams: Yeah, totally.

Jennia: Well, thank you for being an absolute deep well of advice and insights. And do you have any upcoming projects or events that you're allowed to share?

D.J. Williams: Battle of Lion Rock comes out in January. I just finished book one in a new series.

Jennia: Oh, exciting!

D.J. Williams: And I'm slotted to write three books next year. Three books in three different series.

Jennia: Oh my gosh! Well (laughs).

D.J. Williams: So I'm trying to wrap my head around that one for a minute, but I think next year for me—you know, the last two years, I've been on the road doing a bunch of stuff for the books. Next year for me, I've kind of decided, it's going to be all about creating content. And so it's going to be about writing these stories, getting them done. But we'll see. I've kind of decided, like, you know, when you're on the road, like, 30 dates with Barnes and Noble, that's a chunk of time. And when you're trying to write, like, the next book, I need to be sequestered by myself in my office for, like, weeks on end (Jennia laughs) to get it done. You know what I mean?

Jennia: Yes!

D.J. Williams: So, but, yeah—but if anyone wants to follow along what's happening, I'm on Instagram. djwilliamsbooks, Instagram and X. And then they can always go to my website, which is djwilliamsbooks.com.

Jennia: All right, well, thank you again!

D.J. Williams: All right, thanks for having me!

Jennia: And thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information, including all of D.J.'s links. And if you enjoy today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe so you never miss one. And then please join me next week when Wendy Dale will tell you which writing rules you should break and why. Thanks again!