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Jerry officially sends book three off to his editor at a final word count of 68,060, but not before running a genuinely clever experiment: feeding every single email exchange with his editor — plot discussions, character notes, revisions — into Claude to build a master plot reference, then checking the finished manuscript against it to catch continuity gaps. It finds a couple of real ones, including a leftover character name he never changed and a girlfriend subplot that quietly disappears for a hundred pages. He also discovers an ElevenLabs quirk: to legally sell an AI-narrated audiobook he has to carry a monthly subscription, not just pay-as-you-go credits, and unused tokens cap out and can expire. On top of all that, he’s simultaneously plotting a prequel novella and sketching the premise for an entirely new book four, hunting down banned words in his very first published novel to prep it for narration, and dealing with a sudden, painful knee issue his mother immediately (and correctly, probably) blamed on age. Rich, meanwhile, had a genuinely sweet development: he started writing again for the first time in ages, inventing his own low-pressure “NecNoRiMo” challenge (NaNoWriMo spread across two months with an easy daily word count), inspired partly by a book club pick with absurdly short chapters. He also built raised garden beds from free lumber, dove deep into Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and spent election night eating an entire mixing bowl of popcorn. Contact Us Jerry Evanoff Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠ ⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich Kacy Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ BlueSky: @RichKacy ⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tags writing process, novel revision, self-publishing, developmental editing, Claude AI, AI narration, indie authors, plotting, book recommendations, productivity, gardening, craft advice, career updates

Big milestone this episode: Jerry officially finishes the latest revision of book three at 67,467 words, cuts it down to a respectable one or two F-bombs (he always writes a dozen first, then trims), and gets it ready to send off to his editor. Along the way he builds two genuinely clever upgrades into his custom writing app — a button that exports the whole manuscript straight to a nicely formatted Word doc, and a full-manuscript search tool that lets him hunt down his “banned words” across the entire book without his Word file and his app ever falling out of sync. He also walks through real results from his latest Kindle Daily Countdown, a detailed Facebook ad breakdown built using Claude’s analysis of his own campaign data (front-loading spend, narrowing age targeting to 55+, cutting Amazon ads entirely), and a surprisingly sweet gift idea he found on Instagram: a subscription service that sends handwritten-style historical love letters as a birthday present. Also covered: a new feature letting different characters get different ElevenLabs narrator voices, a lucky NBA parlay win, and ongoing Browns optimism he’s actively trying to suppress. Rich, meanwhile, snagged a ticket to a new in-person author conference in Texas, finished the Leigh Bardugo trilogy he’s been raving about, started reading Lolita after a podcast deep-dive, and spent two weeks building a genuinely impressive AI agent with Claude’s help to automatically organize his wife’s 15,000 unlabeled photos — plus some real talk about library burnout and a new raised-bed garden project using free lumber from his contractor neighbor. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Facebook ads, Kindle Daily Countdown, Claude AI, AI narration, indie authors, book recommendations, library life, productivity, golf

Jerry’s deep in his final revision of book three — up to chapter 10 of 43, hunting down “band words” like just, actually, and glanced that sneak into his prose without him noticing, then running each chapter through a layered process of text-to-speech listening, AI grammar review, and ElevenLabs narration before calling it done. He also gets a rude pricing surprise: the discounted ElevenLabs voice rate he’d been using quadrupled the moment a promotional window ended, meaning the audiobook experiment is going to cost considerably more than planned. On the marketing side, he rebuilds his Facebook ad strategy for an upcoming Kindle Daily Countdown using real conversion data pulled straight from Facebook’s own ad chatbot, narrowing his audience, front-loading the budget, and adding a couple of new interest targets, while also sharing a genuinely great month of paperback sales through Draft2Digital. Rich had an eventful week of his own: watching an honest-to-goodness delivery drone drop a package from ten feet in the air on the same day he was expecting his wife’s new MacBook. He also installed Linux on an old laptop and promptly losing two days to antivirus troubleshooting, an ambitious (and ultimately abandoned) attempt to build an AI photo-organizing agent, a concerning thyroid lab result, a lively book club discussion of a surprise bestseller, and the news that he’s heading into federal jury duty on Monday with absolutely no idea what his week looks like. Also: Kit Kats, Halloween candy by the bagful, and a debate over whether software subscriptions are a dying business model. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Facebook ads, AI narration, Claude AI, indie authors, Linux, book recommendations, library life, productivity, craft advice

Big milestone episode: Jerry officially finishes the latest revision of book three at 61,718 words and 43 chapters, then dives straight into his final draft pass. He also hands Claude Code a five-file plan for his reader-engagement mystery puzzle website and literally just... watches it build the whole thing from the couch, which is somehow both the most normal and most science-fiction moment of his week. The real highlight, though, is his deep dive into AI narration: after discovering wildly different per-voice pricing on ElevenLabs, he finds a cheap, older-sounding “southern” voice he loves, builds full text-to-speech into his writing app, and creates a complete AI-narrated version of chapter one — which he shares a link to in the show notes and is seriously considering selling as a budget alternative to the $5,000 professional narrators he can’t afford. He also admits he’s probably done with his writers’ club after skipping three straight months, walks through a genuinely fascinating session where he fed Facebook’s own ad chatbot data and then had Claude interpret the results to build a sharper October ad campaign, and shares some surprising demographic findings about exactly who’s buying his books. Rich had a quieter week — planting a fall garden, finally getting his new table saw assembled, treating his wife to a new laptop, and delivering a brutally honest, pretty funny review of his disappointing book club pick. He also shares some real excitement about a new in-person author conference opening up in Texas next spring, headlined by a few recognizable indie-publishing names. Jerry's Chapter 1 - AI-Created Audiobook: https://jerryevanoff.com/books/networking-murder Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Facebook ads, AI narration, Claude AI, indie authors, audiobooks, book recommendations, author conferences, productivity, golf

Good news to open: last week's missing-chapter cliffhanger resolves itself, as Jerry's backup-hunting with Claude paid off and book three is back intact, now sitting at 57,381 words and over 70% through its second edit. He also gets real numbers back from his contractor on that long-gutted upstairs bathroom — a jaw-dropping $25,000 quote that gets an immediate, dad-approved "absolutely not," followed by a cheaper plan-B option that would simply restore the original footprint instead. Between a slow golf foursome, a twelve-and-a-half-hour workday migrating systems for his new job, and three straight Browns wins fueled by a crock-pot beef-and-potatoes good-luck ritual he's now handed off to his dad, Jerry keeps chipping away at his reader-engagement side project: a mystery puzzle he's now calling "Wordle meets Encyclopedia Brown meets Clue," complete with detective rank tiers and streak tracking designed to quietly funnel solvers toward his books. Rich had a rougher, more domestic week — a sudden knee injury that swelled up overnight, a splurge on a weighted blanket and a table saw courtesy of inheritance money, a failed experiment brining catfish, and more frustration with rigid civil-service rules as a coworker situation at the library comes to a head. He also shares two genuinely great book recommendations (Richard Osman's new thriller and his book club's current pick), a newly discovered chef he can't stop reading, and an author friend's wildly successful Kickstarter for a gorgeous limited-edition book. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, reader engagement, Claude AI, indie authors, home renovation, book recommendations, library life, fantasy football, productivity, golf

This one opens with a genuine cliffhanger: right before recording, Jerry discovers chapter one has vanished from his writing app, and spends the whole episode with Claude in another tab hunting through backup files to recover it (you'll have to listen to find out if it worked). From there, Jerry unveils a genuinely clever idea for capturing reader contact info from his 4,800 free-promo downloads — a weekly mystery puzzle inspired by Encyclopedia Brown and Wordle, complete with streaks, shareable results, and an email signup, all coded with help from an AI admin he's named Jack Sterling. He also works through more editing (now up to chapter 17 of 42), a rain-delayed Browns win, a surprisingly lucrative $153 sports betting parlay, a slow-cooker beef stew recipe, his ongoing weekly "clutter bag" decluttering project, and a scheduled contractor visit to quote out that long-gutted upstairs bathroom as he gets more serious about a possible move. Rich had a reading-heavy week finishing his independent author judging assignments — and delivers a genuine, enthusiastic recommendation for a thriller called "The Hunted" that's free on Biblioboard. He also shares one of the stranger library lost-and-found stories in recent memory involving a taser, a roll of peppermint Life Savers, and an unclaimed condom that nobody at the library will own up to. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, reader engagement, Claude AI, indie authors, book recommendations, library life, real estate, fantasy football, productivity, golf

Jerry hits a huge milestone this episode: the full second revision of book three is officially done, powered by an absurd ten-day stretch off work that also included two high school football games, a Top Golf outing in the rain, a casino stop that reminded him why he quit going, and roughly a dozen fantasy football drafts (including a Claude-built auction tracker he's using for real this time). He also shares hard numbers on his free Kindle promo's aftermath — nearly 4,900 downloads translating into real page reads and full-price sales across the series — plus real, specific figures from a realtor visit about what his house could sell for with a few renovations, and his early conversations with a contractor about finally finishing that gutted upstairs bathroom. Along the way: new features rolling out in his homemade writing app (split-screen notes, custom sections, and text-to-speech), an Amazon A+ content update bragging about his bestseller rankings, and an honest admission that he's quietly drifted away from his writers' club after eight years. Rich's stretch was a mix of comfort and chaos — baking croissants from scratch, hitting new personal bests back at the gym, actual progress on his Thelma & Louise-style story, and then a rough patch: a federal jury duty summons, a deep dive into long-term care insurance that he does not recommend doing for fun, a full-blown library staffing crisis, and his wife's new blood pressure and cholesterol diagnosis putting their nightly ice cream habit in jeopardy. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Kindle free promotion, Claude AI, writing tools, indie authors, real estate, fantasy football, career and life updates, productivity, health

Big marketing episode this week. Jerry runs a full free Kindle promo for book one and shares the play-by-play numbers as they happen: 187 downloads day one, then an explosive 2,500-plus after hitting FreeBooksy's massive email list, eventually landing him at #1 in Private Investigators, #1 in Amateur Sleuth, and #9 overall in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense on Amazon. He walks through real-time strategy conversations with Claude about adjusting Facebook ad bids, pivoting Amazon ads from book one to book two, and building the case for keeping a low-cost ad running for a few weeks after a promo ends to catch tail-end buyers — with actual dollar figures on total spend versus book two sales. He's also kicking off ten days off work packed with golf outings, a house call from a realtor to explore what selling might look like, and no fewer than six separate fantasy football drafts, including another custom Claude-built auction tracker fed with years of league history. Rich had a quieter, more domestic week — some real progress on his Scotland travel narrative, a deep dive into judging duties for his indie author competition, a DIY oven motherboard repair, a return to the gym with his wife, and growing frustration with being chronically short-staffed at the library. Also: mango overload, chocolate lava cake rationing, and a debate over what "Cinny Toasties" are actually called. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, self-publishing, book marketing, Kindle free promotion, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Claude AI, indie authors, mystery writing, book reviews, real estate, fantasy football, productivity, career reflection

This episode has a little bit of everything. Jerry keeps grinding through the edit of book three, technically hitting his "chapter 11" goal by splitting oversized chapters into smaller ones (a trick he's fully owning at this point). But the real highlight is a genuinely fun creative tangent: a vivid dream sparks the concept for a soap-opera-flavored murder mystery for book four, complete with secret affairs, swingers, a wedding gone wrong, and Jerry himself as the prime suspect — with careful attention to keeping it tonally consistent with his amateur-sleuth series rather than turning graphic. He also books a two-month winter stay in Myrtle Beach, then almost immediately starts wondering out loud whether he should just move there permanently, going as far as calling a realtor the very next day to start exploring what selling his house could look like. Along the way: a free Kindle promo launching September 1st, tweaks to his Facebook ad strategy using AI-generated image variations, a BookBub rejection, and a very excited detour into a long-awaited Star Wars strategy game release. Rich had another writing-light week but brings real texture: genuine frustration with feeling stagnant at his library job after two and a half years, teaching his first Canva video-editing class, prepping a Mary Shelley-themed quarterly bingo night, and weighing in on the growing author uproar over Meta's advertising platform changes. Oh, and they may have just invented chocolate lava cake mango ice cream. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, mystery writing, self-publishing, book marketing, Facebook ads, Kindle free promotion, BookBub, indie authors, career reflection, real estate, Myrtle Beach, productivity, plotting

Both hosts admit up front this was a light writing week, and honestly, it makes for one of the more entertaining episodes. Jerry's stuck in his familiar Friday-Saturday-Sunday-writing, rest-of-the-week-nothing rut, though he does get real editing done on a tense "trapped on a mountain" chapter he's excited to read to his writers' club. He also goes deep on the strategy behind timing a BookBub submission against a Kindle Daily Countdown for book three's November release, and admits to a genuinely impressive (and borderline unhinged) side project: feeding Claude six years of his fantasy football league's ESPN history to build a live auction draft-tracking app and analyze everyone's bidding tendencies ahead of his 27-year-old league's draft. Rich, meanwhile, had a much stranger week — getting labeled a member of the Gestapo by an irate library patron over a phone-on-speaker incident, dealing with a self-appointed mahjong league enforcer, and, after digging into how Anthropic's new AI watermarking actually works, deciding he's done using AI for his own writing altogether. It's a good, honest conversation about what that watermarking really means for authors going forward. Also covered: a deep dive into what "BW3" actually stands for, a fantastic buy-one-get-one shoe deal, mango smoothies, and Jerry's early planning for a golf-focused winter escape to Myrtle Beach. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, BookBub, Kindle Daily Countdown, AI writing tools, Claude AI, AI watermarking, indie authors, library life, golf, productivity, winter travel

This one starts with a genuinely useful craft conversation: Rich is stuck on how to make his amateur-sleuth protagonist believable when she's embedded with the police, and Jerry walks through how he solved the exact same problem across his own series — building real tension and a slow-earned trust with law enforcement instead of just handing his character access. From there it's a packed episode. Jerry's deep into the first revision of book three (and admits to a little chapter-splitting "cheating" to hit his weekly goal), locked in a three-year hosting renewal, and has somehow built or upgraded six separate Claude-coded apps in about a week and a half — a historical stats site for his 12-year-old golf league, a fantasy draft tendency tracker, a live auction-draft tool for his 27-year-old fantasy football league, and more. He's also building a dedicated no-distractions writing desk to fix his home-office focus problem. Rich's week was quieter — recovering from being sick, celebrating a 38th anniversary, going deep on mangoes, and realizing after years of listening to a favorite writing podcast that almost none of the guests actually make a full-time living from books. Then the two of them dig into real news: major AI companies moving to watermark AI-generated output, the EU regulation behind it, what it could mean for authors using AI, and (because of course) a tangent into philosophy, consciousness, and Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, mystery writing, self-publishing, book marketing, AI writing tools, Claude AI, AI watermarking, indie authors, writers group, craft advice, golf, productivity, fantasy football

Two weeks off means twice the stats and twice the news in this one. Jerry closes out the first draft of book three — 45,512 words, 29 chapters, finished just two days after his own deadline — right in the middle of switching jobs and getting his driveway redone. He also shares real numbers from his book two Kindle Daily Countdown, which quietly outperformed his book one promo and is still generating page reads weeks later. Rich, recording this week as "Marcel Proust," has had a rougher stretch — sick, exhausted, barely writing, dozing off in his truck on lunch breaks — but the two of them dig into something bigger going on in the writing world: AI-detection tools like Pangram flagging (and sometimes wrongly canceling) authors, and where each of them personally lands on using AI in their process. Jerry's fully embraced it for everything except the actual prose; Rich is still wrestling with it. Along the way: a genuinely great piece of writing advice about staging action scenes in advance, new finance-tracking and blurb-storage features Jerry's building into his writing app, some very specific golf scores, a mysterious "Storycraft Academy" ad that may or may not be a scam, and Rich's ongoing battle with rock-hard, drought-baked fence post holes. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, first draft, self-publishing, book marketing, Kindle Daily Countdown, AI writing tools, Claude AI, AI detection, indie authors, career change, writers group, productivity, golf

Episode 362 opens with Jerry literally making a fantasy football draft pick mid-recording (Houston Texans defense, sixteenth round, no regrets), a genuinely funny multi-minute detour about Rich's display name blending into his window blinds, and then gets into some real news: as of July 31st, Jerry's current job no longer exists which means his whole writing-at-lunch routine is about to change. On the book side, Jerry's chugging through book three (now two-thirds done, 92% of his yearly word goal) while Rich has been squeezing writing time in between library patrons, hitting nearly 4,000 words on a genuinely tricky structural challenge: a dual-protagonist mystery told entirely from the secondary character's point of view, Watson-to-Holmes style, where you only ever see the main character through her actions. They dig into how Jerry's homemade writing app is evolving, a chapter-review feature that's started flagging when characters act out of type, editable AI personas, and a running list of tiny quality-of-life fixes. Jerry also shares real numbers from his second Kindle Daily Countdown: strong page reads, a higher-than-expected Facebook ad click-to-sale percentage, and cautious optimism about his marketing approach. Along the way: a rough round of golf, a driveway maybe getting redone, a subtropical thunderstorm scare tied to a childhood tornado story, and yet another entry in the ongoing cookie/snack addiction saga (Stouffer's potato bake this time, if you're keeping score). Contact Us Jerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Kindle Daily Countdown, Facebook ads, AI writing tools, Claude AI, indie authors, discovery writing, mystery writing, career change, golf, productivity

Episode 361 kicks off with Rich recording under the alias Captain Beefheart for reasons nobody fully explains, a Steven Wright joke about the Grateful Dead, and Jerry teasing some mysterious "big news" he can't talk about yet (subscribe if you want to find out when he finally spills it). From there it's a genuinely packed episode. Jerry had a monster writing week — book three jumped over 9,000 words and he's now sitting at 85% of his yearly goal — and he keeps building out his in-house writing app, adding an import feature, a Kanban board, and a sneaky Claude-powered database check so he can see who's actually using it (spoiler: he's watching). Rich has been quietly writing again too, cranking out 4,400 words in the app and getting genuinely excited about a new project: a midlife-crisis trilogy called "A Series of Fortunate Disasters," a Nick Hornby/Bill Bryson-style comedic road novel set in Scotland, with the first book title, log line, and everything already sketched out. Along the way you get Jerry's writers' club pushing back on his new paranormal mystery direction, a rough patch of Ohio golf (an 87 followed by a soul-crushing 51 in brutal heat), a power outage that had Jerry crawling off his recliner like "a fat guy rolling off a chair," Rich's airline travel disaster trying to get his wife to Virginia, and both of them nerding out over AI models (Opus 8 vs. the new Sonnet vs. a mystery model called Kimi), email platforms (MailerLite's price hikes vs. Email Octopus), and marketing strategy (Kindle Daily Countdowns, promo stacks, Facebook ads). Oh, and there's a whole segment on bears eating salmon that Jerry cannot stop watching. It's a lot, but somehow it all still ties back to actually writing books. Contact UsJerry EvanoffEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich KacyEmail: ⁠[email protected]⁠BlueSky: @RichKacyhttps://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tagswriting process, novel revision, self-publishing, book marketing, Kindle Daily Countdown, email marketing, AI writing tools, Claude AI, indie authors, writers club, developmental editing, productivity, golf, wildfire smoke

This week, Jerry finally has the kind of update that makes a writer breathe like a human again: real progress. Book 3 is moving. He adds 13,970 words over the last two weeks, pushes the manuscript past 21,000 words, gets about a third of the way through the rewrite, and starts sounding like somebody who can actually see the road instead of just the potholes. Which is nice, because for a while there this book sounded like it was trying to kill him in the woods and hide the body under developmental edits. A big chunk of the episode is Jerry walking through what that progress actually looked like. He talks about writing Chapters 8 through 11, building out the mountain-top data center setting, working through the locked-room mystery mechanics, and trying to hit his July 31 first-draft target. There’s also some fun process talk about his custom writing app, which he keeps improving while actively using it, because apparently rewriting a novel was not enough of a side quest on its own. Then there’s the AI stuff, which is honestly some of the funniest material in the episode. Jerry explains how Claude is now spinning up little helper agents for coding tasks, and instead of giving them boring technical names, he has it naming them after 80s TV characters. So now Higgins, Magnum P.I., Sonny Crockett, and MacGyver are apparently doing software support inside his writing workflow, which feels both deeply ridiculous and weirdly perfect. Rich has a quieter update, but not an empty one. He’s still fighting brutal heat, library understaffing, and the general life problem of never quite getting left alone long enough to write. But he does finally start again, putting some words down longhand on Thirteen Days of Madness, a Scotland-set project he describes as a more comedic cousin to Lost in Translation. So while Jerry is sprinting, Rich is at least back on the track, which counts. There’s also a lot of classic New Author Podcast life clutter in here: golf, library millage drama, Dairy Queen writing sessions, an ice cream cake victory lap, book club talk, Facebook ads for the next Kindle Countdown, driveway replacement plans, garden suffering, and the eternal mystery of what Substack is actually supposed to do for authors. In other words, a very normal week for two guys who are absolutely not making any of this look calm. Contact Us Jerry Evanoff Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠ ⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠ Rich Kacy Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ BlueSky: @RichKacy ⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠ Tags writing podcast self-publishing indie author mystery writing book rewriting writing process AI for writers Claude AI writing app Kindle Countdown Facebook ads Substack golf author life The New Author Podcast