My ALLi author guest this episode writes books that seem ideal for this summer beach-reading season. She is KC Savage, a romance author who decided to shake things up a little bit in her life by writing scandalous stories of cheating and reverse age gap relationships. And along the way, she discovered that publishing these books began to cure her own shyness.
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Inspirational Indie Author Interview: KC Savage
Inspirational Indie Author Interview: KC Savage. Romance Author Cures Her Own Shyness Through ‘Scandalous' Stories Share on XDon't Miss an #AskALLi Broadcast
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Inspirational Indie Author Interview: KC Savage. About the Author
KC Savage lives in Florida with her husband of over 30 years. When not writing, she reads, and binge watches shows like Scandal. She loves baseball, and relaxing with an excellent whiskey at the end of her day. Her favorite genre to read is the one she writes, taboo romance. She also likes to read horror. Her favorite author is Stephen King. Las Vegas is her favorite vacation spot, NYC and the beach are also places she loves to go.About the Host
Howard Lovy has been a journalist for more than 35 years, and now amplifies the voices of independent author-publishers and works with authors as a developmental editor. Find Howard at howardlovy.com, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Read the Transcripts: Inspirational Indie Author Interview: KC Savage
Howard Lovy: My guest this episode writes books that seem ideal for this summer beach reading season.
She's KC Savage, a romance author who decided to shake things up a little bit in her life by writing scandalous stories of cheating and reverse age-gap relationships, and along the way she discovered that publishing these books began to cure her own shyness. I'll let KC Savage tell her own story.
KC Savage: Hello, my name is KC Savage. I write steamy, reverse age-gap, cheating novels. My current work is a novella in a shared world with several other authors called, Club Wonderland. My book is called Escape to Wonderland. It's about a BDSM club, when a couple goes there, and things don't exactly go as Julia plans. So, there's a little twisty stuff in there.
I also have another novella called Unexpected Love that I'm working on. They'll probably launch close to each other. Those are the projects for this year. I have four more for next year, I'm hoping for, but that's pretty much what I have going on right now.
I was born and raised mostly in central Pennsylvania, moved Florida as a teenager. That's where I met my husband in high school. I moved back to Pennsylvania right after graduation and then I moved back down and got reunited with him. We've been together, it'll be 31 years this year.
My grandparents started me off with Bobbsey Twins books. I don't think that was as popular as Nancy Drew, but I read those, I think I read their entire catalogue. Then when I was in high school, my first book into the romance genre was, Valley of the Dolls, and then I took a break from romance and started reading Stephen King, and he is, My favorite author. Even though I don't write that, I love to be scared when I read, and I like to watch scary movies. My husband's not too thrilled with that, but those are my favorite. I don't write that stuff, but I do enjoy it.
Howard Lovy: KC was able to find work in an area she enjoyed, taking care of children.
KC Savage: When I was in Pennsylvania, I worked retail, grocery stores, deli, deli manager, and then when I came back down here, I wanted something completely different and I became a nanny for a private family, and I did that for 25 years for different families. I don't have any children of my own, but in the end, I have a lot of children because every family I worked for, their children were basically my children.
Most of them are all grown now. I think there's one or two that are still little kids, but I don't have a whole lot of contact because life goes on, everybody grows up, but I can see them from afar. I can see how successful they are and it's really nice to see.
Howard Lovy: Writing did not become a part of her life until she had some time on her hands recovering from an injury.
KC Savage: I've always read my whole life. I wanted to write, but I never felt I had the ability, and then I had shoulder surgery and I really couldn't do anything. So, I just opened up a journal and started putting little entries into that every day, and after about a year of daily entries, my husband helped me upload it into Word and I realized that I might have something.
So, I joined Self Publishing School, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, Chandler Bolt runs it. I enrolled there and I learned a lot from that school, and I met a dear friend of mine there. That's who I'm writing in this shared world with, this was her idea. She convinced me that I can write this type of book even though I didn't think I could.
Howard Lovy: So, why did she pick romance as her genre?
KC Savage: The escape from, sometimes life gets a little mundane, and after so many years of marriage, try to shake it up a little bit, and with me writing the reverse age-gap, I'm writing about women my age being with younger men. I just play around with my husband, and I tease him; he has nothing to worry about though, he's a wonderful, supportive man. He has read all my books, and he is not a reader, so I feel quite honoured that he took the time to read my books.
Howard Lovy: And the types of romances KC writes are the most scandalous kind.
KC Savage: I like writing a scandalous type of book, and that's why I like writing the cheating trope.
A lot of people don't like it, I know that, but it fuels me because it's so scandalous. My books will always have a happily ever after, so the cheaters will be with each other. They won't ever cheat on each other, but one or two may be married. Like in my first series, they were both married to other people, but once they were together, that was it, they never ventured to other people. I'm very aware that it's a difficult trope to find readers, but I'm finding them slowly.
Howard Lovy: And what is it about the reverse age-gap that appeals to her? And by the way, that means younger man and older woman.
KC Savage: Maybe a fantasy aspect of it. I watched a lot of soap operas growing up. A lot. There was that in some of them. You know, I've met a few younger men that seem to be very nice that, you know, again, if I wasn't married. I've chatted with some online that have come to my page because they like reading my stories. So, they'll send me messages and everything, but I always make it clear that these are just stories, these are pure fiction.
I talk to my niece about this a lot. She's like well, just because you write a character that's a murderer, it doesn't make you a murderer. So, just because I write a cheating book doesn't make me a cheater, but I think some people probably have that perspective. They think, oh, because a lot of writers I know pull from their real-life experiences. I'm not writing from that. I am just writing fantasy, I guess.
Howard Lovy: And publishing the indie way seems to work best for KC.
KC Savage: It seemed really difficult to try to get a traditional publishing and it would be a lot of nos. Even though I don't look at it that way, I look at no as my next opportunity, I just didn't want to set myself up for failure by trying to do that. My husband and I looked at maybe getting an agent. We talked about it, but then I had found this Self Publishing School and they're pretty much all about doing it yourself; you can do it yourself, believe in yourself, invest in yourself.
So, I did, and then I found, obviously Amazon, then I found Ingram Spark. I use them for other distribution, and I think I found ALLi in a Facebook group and joined them basically for learning more about the industry and the stuff with Ingram Spark, but they recently changed all their policies.
But I'm not leaving ALLi, I think it's worth my time and money to stay with them. There's a lot of good resources.
Howard Lovy: Writing romances enabled KC to finally come out of her shell.
KC Savage: Yes, I've been a pretty shy, quiet person my entire life, and going through the pandemic, that made a big change on me. I took care of myself better, lost a lot of weight, became a better person. I don't want to say new person, because I'm still me, but better, more confident, meeting new people even though it was mostly online. I feel freer doing this.
I'm still shy, and I do have to get over that because I'm going to Vegas for 20Books. So, that's my first event ever. It's pretty exciting, but I'm going to have to shed a few more layers of my shyness, but I'll get there. It's just a new version of me instead of being so shy and passive and quiet.
Howard Lovy: KC's advice to other writers, pay attention to the stories that come to you.
KC Savage: Keep writing. There is a meme that I found when I first started. It's called Reminder for Writers, and it reads, that story you're writing, that one that feels genius one day and like a failure the next. The one that sometimes makes you wonder if you're skilled enough to tackle it. That story came to you for a reason. No one can write it the way you can.
I read that thing daily to myself because I believe it. I mean, we all have our own stories to tell, and no one can tell them like we can.
