Perspectives and reflections on the writing and publishing life. Mark Leslie Lefebvre, a writer, bookseller, digital publishing advocate, professional speaker, and publishing consultant explores inclusive and collaborative opportunities for writers and book publishing professionals via interviews, discussions, and reflections about the industry. (Mark's personal website is www.markleslie.ca)
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EP 416 - The Irony of a Woefully Inadequate Imposter Syndrome
Season 8 · Episode 416
Friday, May 16, 2025 • Duration 31:28
That pervasive feeling of self-doubt and insecurity you believe you are not deserving of your achievements and fear being exposed as a fraud known as imposter syndrome is especially common among writers and other creatives who often grapple with the vulnerability inherent in sharing their work with the world.
But perhaps your imposter syndrome is actually a positive sign about your progression as a writer.
That's the topic of this solo episode in which Mark reflects upon that.
This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK5 at checkout and save $5.00 off your own personalized report.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
EP 415 - April Showers Bring May Reflections
Season 8 · Episode 415
Friday, May 9, 2025 • Duration 42:37
In this solo episode Mark shares a personal update and some reflections about writing, publishing, and some marketing ideas.
This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK5 at checkout and save $5.00 off your own personalized report.
EP 406 - How Authors Can Engage With Their Library
Season 8 · Episode 406
Friday, March 14, 2025 • Duration 55:21
In this solo episode Mark shares an excerpt from his forthcoming book A BOOK IN HAND: Strategies for Optimizing Print Book Sales via Signings and Other In Person Events.
Prior to the main content, Mark shares a brief personal update and a word about this episode's sponsor.
Learn more about Toronto Indie Author Conference 2025 here.
The content for this episode is an excerpt from the work in progress: A BOOK IN HAND.
The thirty-years of consulting that Johanna has experience with
The fact that she is not a "natural writer"
Beginning to write in 1997 because she realized that speaking only wasn't a great way to market her business as a consultant
Advice Johanna received from Gerald Weinberg
How Johanna began to write short fiction in 2016
Being involved in the early days of "Agile" development
Why Johanna recommends writing in 15 minute chunks for non-fiction
Who the idea reader is for Johanna's book FREE YOUR INNER NONFICTION WRITER
How to keep a business-related blog interesting
How writing non-fiction includes universal story elements: "a person in a situation with a problem"
The "write fast to write well" concept
The importance of maintaining your voice
Why Johanna writes a question of the week on her blog
The book Obliquity by John Kay and how detours might help us better in the long run
Advice Johanna would offer to writers for getting better at their own non-fiction writing
And more...
After the interview Mark reflects on the importance of your author voice as well as the divergent ways you sometimes find your way to your destination.
EP 314 - Defeating Writer's Block Using Penspyre with David Olive Jr.
Season 6 · Episode 314
Thursday, July 13, 2023 • Duration 50:55
Mark interviews David Olive, Jr (AKA David Grimdark) author and one of the engineers behind Penspyre a tool to help writers tackle writer's block and productivity.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares a brief personal update, comments from recent episodes, and word about this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
In the interview, Mark and David talk about:
David's love of reading as a young child and his love of fantasy novels
Begining to read eBooks on a dedicated reader, and reading Webnovels
Starting to write when interning in University
Putting some of his work up on Wattpad
The Systems Design Engineering program David recently graduated from at University of Waterloo
The final year project that David and his fellow engineering students put together, which resulted in Penspyre
The procedural documentation of identifying problems related to the writing process
Reaching out to local writers from the Cambridge Writer's Group as part of their research and investigation
Learning the Google Spring method
How Pensypre offers up AI-generated writing prompts to help a writer with their productivity
The research they'd done with writers leading them to believe they didn't want a tool that would give them something they'd take word for word but that they needed something to help "get the ball rolling."
The metrics they looked at for their research with how writers engaged with the tool
Their study's results showing that writers typically wrote 15% more in a 20 minute writing sprint using the tool than when not using the tool
How Pensyre is a tool David wanted to make as much for himself as for other writers
The "Continue the Story" option where you can focus on action, dialogue, or inner thoughts of the characters with various styles or moods
The "Link the story" feature for briding two different scenes or moments or actions together
EP 313 - Pioneering In Digital Indie Publishing with Peter M. Ball
Season 6 · Episode 313
Thursday, July 6, 2023 • Duration 01:00:09
Mark interviews author, publisher and RPG gamer Peter M. Ball who has been engaged in experimental and digital publishing since the very beginning of its appearance in the book industry.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares a word about this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
In the interview, Mark and Peter talk about:
Peter being a night owl who is most comfortable starting to write at about 10 PM at night and working through the night
How, through necessity with a regular life schedule, Peter will get the writing done first thing in the morning
Peter having wanted to be a writer since he was quite young
The way that most of the work he has taken on in his life has been somehow affiliated with the writing world
Describing the Gold Coast of Australia as Miami with slightly less charm
The undergraduate degree focus which mostly avoided genre fiction
How you can never escape poetry once you've done it, even years later being introgued as "Peter the Poet"
How in the early 2000s Dungeons and Dragons open-sourced their rules, allowing people to provide material within their realm
Getting involved in DriveThruFiction back in 2005
The hunger for content that came out in that time period
How changes in the RPG industry that happened were later echoed a few years later in the eBook fiction publishing space
The issues Peter recognized in 2006 in creating role playing game material where somebody else held the licensce for it
Challenges of submitting fiction to markets from a country like Australia
Spending six weeks at an Australian branch of the Clarion Writers Workshop and how that dramatically changed the perspective forced on him from his university education
Continuing to submit his fiction to the traditional markets but paying attention to what was going on in the self-publishing, digital publishing, and indie publishing space
Launching Brain Jar Press in 2017 largely as a vehicle for publishing his backlist
EP 312 - The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Know With Jeff Elkins
Season 6 · Episode 312
Friday, June 30, 2023 • Duration 01:05:03
Mark interviews Jeff Elkins about his writing, about dialogue and character voice, about his new book The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Now, and more . . .
Prior to the interview, Mark shares the winners of the complimentary tickets to BookMARCon, the surprise winners of complimentary pizza, a personal update, and a word from this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
During their conversation Mark and Jeff talk about:
Jeff's "nickname" as "The Dialogue Doctor" as well as his background as a writer
What Jeff has seen in the past eight years that he has been involved in the indie author space
The latest novel Jeff released in March 2023 co-authored with J.P. Rindfleisch called NRDS: National Recently Deceased Services which is described as "Ghostbusters meets The Office"
The first collaboration Jeff had done with his best friend years ago
Wanting to reengage in and looking for a way to give back to the author community in 2020
Adapting what he does professionally, training professionals in difficult conversations, and leveraging that to help authors apply those skills to their writing
Doing more than 200 1:1 sessions since 2020 with authors to help them with their dialogue
Liking helping writers perhaps more than he even likes writing
The Dialogue Doctor community that seems to operate as a problem-solving community
Jeff's book The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Now, coming July 1, 2023
The structure of the book, which is hear the problem, learn the philosophy and the strategy for fixing it, then do a reading challenge, then a writing challenge
The emotional journey a character goes on and the emotional shape of stories
How you can have all the right plot points but not have the right emotional journey and the reader will disconnect from it
Replacing the words hero, alley, and villain with terms like vehicle (the point of view character), the engines (characters who help move them forward), the anchors (those who weigh the vehicle down or bring out the worst versions of the vehicle)
EP 311 - Being A Career Self-Publishing Author with Lindsay Buroker
Season 6 · Episode 311
Thursday, June 22, 2023 • Duration 47:23
Mark interviews Lindsay Buroker, a full-time independent fantasy and science fiction author who has written over a hundred novels, appeared on the USA Today bestseller list, and has been twice nominated for a Goodreads Readers' Choice Award.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares an extremely short personal update, and a word from this episode's sponsor.
You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.
During their conversation Mark and Lindsay talk about:
Lindsay's first appearance on the Stark Reflections Podcast, back in December 2018
The last time they saw one another in person, back in Vegas at 20BooksVegas a few months prior to the global pandemic
Lindsay's start in self-publishing, which started just prior to Christmas in 2010
How she had been about to hit the publishing button for her first book when she received an offer back from an agent - and she decided to just go ahead and hit that "publish" button
Using Podiobooks to release the first three books in audio for free
Doing a Kickstarter to pay for the audiobook production back in 2012
What it was like self-publishing back in 2010 through 2013
Writing in different genres, the various experiences of doing that, and the surprising number of readers who willingly follow her on this journey
Listening to her fans, but actually responding more to sales than to requests from her readers
The writing, editing, proofreading, betareading, publishing process Lindsay loops through
Always being aware of the possibility that the sales and consistent income might not always be there
Launching books to her fans "direct" via Patreon prior to pushing them into KDP Select
How an introvert like Lindsay can deal with being in such high demand from the author community and the reader community
Pseudo-retiring the weekly schedule of The Six Figure Author Podcast and considering doing an episode once every quarter
Books that Lindsay would recommend new readers might want to start with
EP 310 - Book Marketing and BookMARCon with Dana Claire
Season 6 · Episode 310
Thursday, June 15, 2023 • Duration 57:08
Mark interviews Dana Claire, an award-winning author and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Book Brush about her writing, about Book Brush, and about the virtual BookMARCon conference.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes and a word from this episode's sponsor.
During their conversation, Mark and Dana talk about:
Dana's background as a creative person as a writer, including the influence of her mother, an English teacher, and her college experience
Joining forces with her mother who wanted to write a children's book, and Dana who wanted to write an adult book - and the resulting young adult book they decided upon
Losing her mother unexpectedly, and then honoring her mother's memory by releasing the book the had planned on
Some of the issues and errors Dana made when publishing her first book (The Connection)
Dana's experience and background doing marketing and promotions for major companies
Being an author who has both traditionally published and self-published
Dana's belief in conferences and how important that has been to her author career
Pitching her novel to fourteen different publishers at a conference, and how it got picked up because of this
What Book Brush is - online software to make promotional images for books, including 3D versions of the books, within thousands of images that place it in specific settings and environments
How Book Brush is updated weekly and there's always something new available for writers to take advantage of
The way Book Brush can be very community driven so that authors don't feel so lonely
What BookMARCon is (a three day virtual event - August 11 through 13, 2023), the origin of it, and how that MAR stands for MARKETING. (Book Marketing Con)
The agent pitches that will be a part of this virtual conference
The importance of the "personality fit" that can happen between authors and agents
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your complex problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see practical alternatives that help them achieve more agility in their work. With that knowledge, they can choose what—and how—to adapt their product development.
For almost three decades, Johanna has helped her clients experiment with agile and lean alternatives for every piece of their product development. As a result, her clients create more management agility which translates to better business results.
A prolific writer, Johanna is the author of 18 books and hundreds of articles about many aspects of product development. She uses her trademark practicality and humor to focus on what people can do—and not take herself too seriously.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
The "Describe" function that allows you to draw upon one or more of the five senses
Penspyre's availability as a Google Docs extension
How writers during the test kept the prompts unedited about 15% of the time
The element of the software that suggests the level of "originality" score to the prompt
Advice David would offer to beginning writers
David's thoughts on why writers shouldn't be afraid of this new technology
After the interview Mark shares a few of his own reflections, thanks Patrons for their support and reminds them there'll be a video walk-thru of Penspyre available for them at www.patreon.com/starkreflections.
David Olive Jr is a recent graduate from the University of Waterloo, Canada who has a passion for reading and writing fiction. As an aspiring writer he and some classmates decided to try and tackle writing productivity as their final year design project. The result was Penspyre, a tool that utilizes AI to give the writer contextualized writing prompts and help them be more productive.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Why cutting your teeth in short fiction can be great
Having a plan to indie publish his own books for about ten years, make all the mistake on his own books, rather than someone elses, and getting solid learning and experience from it to benefit his press
Working with Kathleen Jennings on a poetry collection right at about the time her first book with Tor went huge
The idea for a series of short chapbooks with four or five essays per writer in order to bring these remarkable articles the authors had already written back into availability
Borrowing the cultural capital of all the people they're publishing so that they can grow and eventually launch new writers
How Peter fell in love with print quite accidentally
The requirement of having to have an online store for the press
The joke that it's cheaper to get things to Narnia than it is to get them to Australia
The thought exercise Peter does regarding how many books he has to sell to make it to $100
Understanding the market base that you're likely selling to as a small specialized indie press
Peter's impatience for just replicating what midlist are publishing is doing in the face of such wonderful, free, and dynamic digital tools when one can be breaking the model, expanding, and forming new ideas and new products
ether Peter has been doing much of his own writing since launching Brain Jar Press 2.0
The flash fiction writing Peter has been able to do during a few 8 minute breaks at work
What Peter is most optimistic about with what's happening in the publishing world now
And more...
After the interview Mark reflects on Peter working in publishing and writing related realms, the value of connecting with others in the industry, and Peter's thirst for innovation and experimentation within digital publishing.
Peter M. Ball is an author, publisher, and RPG gamer whose love of speculative fiction emerged after exposure to The Hobbit, Star Wars, David Lynch’s Dune, and far too many games of Dungeons and Dragons before the age of 7. He’s spent the bulk of his life working as a creative writing tutor, with brief stints as a performance poet, gaming convention organiser, online content developer, non-profit arts manager, and d20 RPG publisher.
Peter’s three biggest passions are fiction, gaming, and honing the way aspiring writers think about the business and craft of writing, which led to a five-year period working for Queensland Writers Centre as manager of the Australian Writers Marketplace and convenor of the GenreCon writing conference. He is now pursuing a PhD in Writing at the University of Queensland, exploring the poetics of series fiction and their response to emerging publishing technologies.
He’s the author of the Miriam Aster series and the Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thrillers, three short story collections, and more stories, articles, poems, and RPG material than he’d care to count. He’s one-half of Brain Jar Press with his partner, Sarah, publishes his own work under the Eclectic Projects imprint, and resides in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife and two very affectionate cats.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
If you need the character to struggle, put them in scenes with their anchor
If you want a big emotional moment where the character has to make an emotional choice, have the character enacting upon the influence of the anchor, then introduce the engine into that scene
How when we talk about dialogue we're really talking about overall character interaction
Building a character voice and ways of building a dynamic cast around a character where they can all build upon one another
The difference between segments and scenes
Jeff's "Apple a day" style advice for writers
And more...
After the interview Mark reflects on dialogue being one important aspect of overall character interaction, the readers emotional journey, and the value in helping other authors.
Jeff Elkins coaches authors and podcasts as the Dialogue Doctor. Since launching the Dialogue Doctor in 2020, he's held over 200 1-on-1 coaching sessions with authors focused on helping them improved their dialogue. In addition to 12 novels, Jeff is the author of The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Now: How to Write Dialogue and Characters Readers Will Love -- a primer on how to write great dialogue, dynamic character voices, and powerful casts of characters.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Advice Lindsay has for authors who prefer to "follow the muse"
And more...
After the interview Mark reflects on a few things about Lindsay's unique journey as well as how much he enjoyed returning to her books as a reader.
Lindsay Buroker is a full-time independent fantasy and science fiction author who loves travel, hiking, tennis, and vizslas. She's written over a hundred novels, appeared on the USA Today bestseller list, and has been twice nominated for a Goodreads Readers' Choice Award.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Self-publishing a book that her agent didn't want to pick up, and how that led to it winning an award and also being involved in a few things Dana isn't yet able to publicly talk about
Her novel Sideliners being optioned for TV because Hunterland was optioned for television
How self-published titles can help sell more of an author's traditionally published titles and vice versa
More about the various topics that'll be covered during BookMARCon
Heart-felt advice that Dana received from an agent during a meeting where the book she'd pitched was rejected and how that stayed with her and kept her motivated
The $199 USD registration fee for this conference
The Early Bird special registrants can get at the price of $149 until the end of July
How you can get $50 off the conference registration using code MARK50
Advice that Dana would offer to other writers
And more...
After the interview Mark reflects on the importance of conferences to a writer's career, particularly from the networking and connections made there, Dana's great advice for writers, and the unique way that Dana signs her emails to authors as the company's COO.
Dana Claire is an award-winning author and also serves as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Book Brush, overseeing the company's daily operations, spearheading strategic initiatives, and expanding the platform's offerings. With her experience as an author, Dana brings a unique perspective to Book Brush, enabling her to empathize with the needs of the community and provide tailored solutions. With nearly two decades of experience in marketing and sales, she is well-equipped to bridge the gap between traditional marketing and the literary world. Dana currently resides in sunny Los Angeles, California with her biggest fan, her husband.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.comand is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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