Hello fellow books lovers!

Today I bring you an interview with A.B. Herron, who is chatting about her book Elemental Wolf.

Also, in Introverted Indies news we have a heap of indie authors that have signed up to read from their books for our channel. These 5 minute snippets will be released every week so you can add a new book to your TBR pile!

So, over to A.B. Herron!

An Interview with A.B. Herron
Author of the Elemental Wolf Series

Hello, A.B. Herron. Thanks for joining me at Indie Author Insight. Would you like to introduce yourself.

A little bit about myself: I love being outdoors, I work full time at a job that I deeply enjoy, and my dog is my constant companion. I’m also a “fortunate” dyslexic because I was never told I shouldn’t write, so I didn’t have to overcome that particular obstacle—which is good, because having to learn how to spell “particular” has been hard enough.

Currently I reside in the Pacific Northwest, but I grew up further south with a detour to the Midwest for college. I’ve been playing with writing and storytelling since I was a kid. In college I started filling up the back of my notebooks with fragments of stories and bad poetry. It wasn’t until 2015 that I actually sat down and wrote a whole book.

Finding inspiration is not a problem, it’s everywhere, but getting myself to put it down on paper took a combination of experiences. In short I was going through a challenging part of my life and I was looking for a creative outlet and some escapism. Mix that with having too much downtime while starting my own business, and I suddenly had this unexpected window of time to actually write. So I did. What amazes me is that I kept going.

Great to meet you. Could you tell me a bit more about your series?

My Elemental Wolf series is currently two books, Watching Water, and Hearing Wind. The third book is due out in 2025, with three more to follow. My paragraph blurb for Watching Water is:

Nora thought she could live with the humans, but now her heart is broken and her wolf soul is damaged. She has to rediscover the magic within her before it fades, which means trusting her inner wolf, allowing her ravenous desires to be fulfilled, and not being distracted by her gorgeous best friend, Zayden—who also might be more than he appears. Yet as danger stalks her and her friends, she can’t help but follow Zayden’s pull into the deep, lush, woods.

It took me a year to write the first book. However, to get it edited, and then published, that took at least another year because I had no idea what I was doing. In 2021, I re-released the book with three new chapters and a new cover, and then Hearing Wind came out shortly after that. The true trope would be friends to lovers (slow burn). Other themes in the book would be: found family, multiple partners, slow burn romance, strong FMC, indigenous FMC, self-discovery, acceptance, LGBTQ+ characters, adventure, shifters, Fey, urban fantasy.

In Watching Water there is stalking, physical violence, abuse mentions, kidnapping, threats of sexual violence, magical enslavement, and M/F sex on the page. In Hearing Wind there is also on page M/M and F/M sex scenes.

And are you working on anything else at the moment?

I’m super excited about my next book due out this coming year, 2025. It was supposed to be a short story, following the side-character of Tobin from Watching Water. His solo journey is an important one. (I promise he will meet back up with Nora and her friends in the next book.)

Unfortunately, my 30K short story demanded to be more, and now I have a 100K manuscript I’m about to send to an editor. But I can’t wait for everyone to get to know Tobin because he was not the best guy in Watching Water. Tobin is a morally grey anti-hero, and he meets Neoma, who we could also call morally grey and struggling with her own demons. When the two of them get together it creates a slow burn with two flawed individuals who must navigate their own mistakes before they are capable of caring for another person. I love them, and this is the best book I’ve written so far and I can’t wait for the readers to get to know them!

I’m sure your readers will love it! Being an author has its ups and downs. Could you tell us some of your highlights and how you face a lows?

I’m going to start with the lows and end with the highs. I’ve been pretty lucky so far because I haven’t received a scathing review yet. Mostly my lows have been me wrestling with the age old question, “Am I good enough for this space?” along with the marketing monster. Putting a book out there and then watching it do almost nothing is very disheartening. Fortunately, I have a fantastic writing group that is willing to listen to me when I get discouraged. They help remind me that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and the more I write and get out there, the better chance I have of finding the audience for my book.

My high? Oh, that was when a friend called me and told me her sister, who doesn’t read, picked up my book, read it, and was begging for more. I mean, I got someone back into reading, how amazing is that?

That is wonderful! Inspiring a love of books in someone who doesn’t like to read is definitely an author goal. (I am still working on my husband!). So, I find marketing the hardest part of being an indie author, do you have any tips?

Yes, find what you like, or don’t hate doing, and market that way. Marketing is the challenge that might make me stop wanting to be published. >ha< Some days I dream about just posting my stuff on a free website and walking away. Seriously though, poking around at everything out there to find what works best for each individual would be my advice. Right now, I’m having a blast with in-person events. Being able to watch someone, not only show interest in my book, but then take it home, is more rewarding than the numbers on a Kindle spreadsheet. But not everyone wants to interact with the public. Instagram is great for building community, but hasn’t panned out for selling books—at least not for me. Next year I hope to explore Amazon and Facebook ads to discover what that might look like.

I’d love to find more in-person events but there seems to be a real lack of them in my area. Here’s a fun one. If you could go back in time and give yourself some advice what would it be?

Great question. I’d tell myself not to start my book career with a series. Write a few stand alones, learn what it takes to be a published author, take some writing classes where you can get feedback on your work, and get a social media presence up and going before you publish anything. Learn the space you want to be a part of. Don’t do what I did, and blindly write a book and then decide to publish it. Talk about a steep learning curve.

Good advice! Publishing a series as a debut author takes a lot! Do you have any hobbies you like to do when you’re not writing? I love to crochet!

I’m so impressed with people who do crocheting, that’s so cool. Yes, I collect hobbies, writing is one of them. I wish I had time to do everything that I’m interested in. Mostly I stick to dog sports, and writing. My dog sports with Loki are all rooted in nosework. I tried to do agility with him, but he is not as athletic as my past canines, so we stick to the sniffing. We both love it. I want to get into archery, but I don’t have a backyard to practice in and my husband won’t let me practice in the house.

Loki is a great name! Is there anything else you’d like to talk about before we wrap up?

I’m always happy to talk about dyslexia and writing, considering that is one of my challenges. Finding ways around my spelling and grammar hurdles has been a lifelong learning process. Having voice to text options now is fantastic. As I write I will stop and talk into my phone to get the correct spelling for a word that is giving me fits. If anyone ever looks at my browser history they are really going to wonder why I don’t know the definition of “appreciate,” and why I keep looking it up. I can’t stand the spelling of that word. 😊

You’re amazing. Well done for writing and not letting anything hold you back. It’s great that there are more and more things to help authors achieve their dreams. Voice recorders are a brilliant tool for all authors! There are words I just can’t get my head around either. I cannot spell necessary for the life of me 😆 

Thank you so much for joining me A.B. Herron. It’s been great to chat!

You can follow A.B. Herron on instagram here and find her website here

Thank you for reading!

Lydia x