Interview with Celeste Stacy

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers. If you’re brand new here, welcome. And here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started. Before we dive in. This week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 talk tips to find time to write. In this guide, I give you 30 ways that you can find time to write in the small gaps that appear between the various errands and tasks and responsibilities that you have in your day to day life.

Now, you might be thinking that you don’t have any time to spare, but I can guarantee these top tips will give you writing time you didn’t think you had. If you thought writing always involved a pen and paper or a keyboard. Think again. If you thought you needed at least an hour at a time to write your manuscript, i help you reframe that you won’t be disappointed. Get your free copy of 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30toptips Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Celeste Stacy is a transgender woman who lives in Ohio. Although she has lived there all of her life she has traveled abroad extensively. And as such, she has a very broad view of the world and the people who live here. Her belief is that we are all children of the earth, and that everyone should live in peace and harmony. Celeste initially wanted to join the medical profession but crossover into the arts for scheme with acting.

She started in a low budget horror film yet to be released, but then found her way into writing when her english instructor who fell in love with her short stories, encouraged Celeste to pursue writing Instead, she currently shares her life with her loving wife, their three adult sons and grandkids. Her debut novel S.A.I secret agents of Illuminati book 1 was released in April of this year.

Let’s hear more about how Celeste got started. And what inspired her novel. Well, Celeste, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m thrilled to have you on the show.

Celeste Stacy  02:57

Thank you. 

Emma Dhesi  02:58

I wonder, I wonder if you could just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into writing. 

Celeste Stacy  03:07

I got into writing about seven years ago, I was going to school, college, and my my english comp teacher. She was a really liking my stories. And I was putting out these stories like on an every weekly basis. And she’s like, Where are you coming up with this stuff? And I know, I just have an active imagination. And she’s like, what are you going to college for? And I was going to school at the time for medical support. And she says, that’s the wrong profession for you is like, Oh, really? And then like I just like put her you know, comment off to the side.

And then a school drug on when when the year someone approached me when I was in the cafeteria and they said, Hey, you want to be in a short horror short. So I said yeah, right. And then he gave me the script. And I looked at it. And then I said, Okay, and I did it. And then I kind of got into you know, filmmaking, and then I got more into the screenplay, right? And then from there, I started selling my screenplays into contests to be you know, judged. And that really helped my writing style.

And there’s like, I was trying to sell my screenplays to Hollywood, which is like, really hard to do. It’s like you get to know people on the inside to do that. So I decided just last fall to take my screenplays and use it like an outline and turn it into a book after seeing some YouTube videos and how to turn screenplays in the books. So January well, December I started writing S.A.I Secret Agency Illuminati from a screenplay format into a book format. And then I published it in mid April.

Emma Dhesi  04:57

Of this year. That’s right 

Celeste Stacy  04:59

This year. Yeah, I had it mostly written. And then the pandemic happened. And I the overtime in my day job kicked in. So I took some time off vacation time. And then I finished the book and then I published it. And then yeah, went back to work. And it’s like, been trying to find free time here and there. But I did I actually, I left my day job of 23 years, just in September, September 4 was the day I left was my last day, because I wanted to be an author. 

Emma Dhesi  05:37

I’m going to come back to that. Do you want to ask you about that? the realities of being a full time writer. So I’m glad you mentioned that. Before we do, though, I’d love you. I’m really interested in I didn’t know that you had done screenwriting as well. So I wondered, what for you was the kind of biggest difference between writing a screenplay and writing a manuscript.

Celeste Stacy  06:01

The biggest difference is with with a book format, you have to fill in all the details. I mean, you get filled in, I know, S.A.I Secret Agents, Illuminati, I use more form is not more it’s book format, but it’s more of the old radio programs kind of thing. 

Emma Dhesi  06:22

And so did you. 

Celeste Stacy  06:24

Is it more dial it’s got more dialogue, I guess I’m trying to say is, it’s telled more in the dialogue and then… 

Emma Dhesi  06:31

And so I guess, in terms of structure, is it very similar that you have something exciting that happens at the beginning that inciting incident? And then you build the tension in the same way so you get to the climax at the end? 

Celeste Stacy  06:44

Yeah. Basically, what I did is I took my screenplay and use it as the outline, and I just filled in all the blanks. 

Emma Dhesi  06:51

Okay.

Celeste Stacy  06:51

What was a screenplay? I don’t know, if you’ve read a screenplay, but a screenplay format, you got the like the screen, hit the scene heading. And then you got a little bit of action and dialogue, and then more action and more dialogue. And all that other stuff in between is filled out in the movie, or TV show by by a crew and other departments. So it’s, it’s a team effort to do a screenplay and it’s, it’s silly. 

Emma Dhesi  07:22

Yes, I was in a garret on a room.

Celeste Stacy  07:25

Yeah.

Emma Dhesi  07:26

So tell us about some secret agents of the Illuminati. Where did that idea come from? 

Celeste Stacy  07:32

I came up with this idea for the story about two years ago, and I worked on, I was working on creating a web series for it. And that’s where I got it from him. But Originally, I was going to do a spoof comedy series on the old 80s action shows like Charlie’s Angels, a team and all them and it was kind of like, you know, going to spoof them. But my book more or less boosts Marvel. It does have a little bit of Charlie’s Angels flair, and 18 flair, but it’s like really spoofing the Marvel Studios. 

Emma Dhesi  08:08

So tell us a little bit about it. What’s the How does the story start? 

Celeste Stacy  08:12

Um, it starts at their alien race from another galaxy and they’re flying through and they drop out of hyperspace into the asteroid belt crash into an asteroid. And then they abandon ship and come to earth. And then they, because they came to earth, when everyone was really primitive, they basically set up the society of today is like, you know, the conspiracy theorists, you know, Illuminati, mindset Illuminati. And it’s like, the people are from yo Nardi. It’s just his comedy. It’s like, you know, tongue in cheek. 

Emma Dhesi  08:48

I like it. I like it. So and I’ve never written comedy, I imagined that to be very, very difficult. What did you find to be the most challenging aspects of writing the book?

Celeste Stacy  09:02

The dynamics of the characters and how they interact, and the dialogue is not read not using the same words to progress the characters, dialogue with the other characters and interactions. It’s like, he has done a lot of editing because I was finding myself a lot of the dialogue was starting the conversations was was like turning out the same and it’s like my boss, chris, you said, it’s like, what are these conversations are the same? Yeah, don’t mix it up. So I started changing it. 

Emma Dhesi  09:36

So that’s interesting, then the type of dialogue that you write for a screenplay would be quite different than for fiction books or that even though the, the gist of the conversation might be the same, the actual dialogue needs to do with it. 

Celeste Stacy  09:53

And then I have to fill in the fill in the blanks of you know, what’s going on in the with around the conversation around the people and you know.

Emma Dhesi  10:02

Okay, so your book is sort of it’s sci fi comedy, I think you described as?

Celeste Stacy  10:08

Yeah. 

Emma Dhesi  10:10

So you’ve had to do quite a bit of world building and how how did you go about doing that? What’s the kind of what was the starting point for this new world? 

Celeste Stacy  10:19

Well, in the book, it’s it takes place in modern times. It’ll have flashbacks, but it pretty much just feel today. Well, you know, what’s going on in today’s world? 

Emma Dhesi  10:30

Right. Okay, so the aliens? We don’t we’re not transported to their world at all. It’s all taking place. Or not yet? 

Celeste Stacy  10:38

Not yet. We will eventually, but it’s taking place on Earth.

Emma Dhesi  10:46

Right, okay, Will we see more of the alien world in? It’s part of series, isn’t it? So will it be? We meet the alien worlds? 

Celeste Stacy  10:55

Eventually. Okay, eventually, I have booked to coming out in about a month. And that one has some timing why me kind of stuff where they go back in time? A few years, but

Emma Dhesi  11:10

Not enough, so not to the alien world? So giving thought to that yes. Or, or not quite yet to that that new world that world building?

Celeste Stacy  11:20

Yes, but not yet. Yeah, it’s gonna be in a few books from now. With this as I’ve started a companion series, called tales of Illuminati, and that’s gonna take place from past missions. And the first book for that which I’ve about a third of the way. That one’s about, that’s going to be like a Western. That takes place 100 years ago in the West, like 1865.

So but yeah, on the the first book, secret agent is it’s just, it’s assembling the team of girls, because the first team, they ended up being turned into zombies. And they’re in barrels in the pope in the hangar in storage, so to say. So we got a new team, and they’re being trained. And they’re like, you know, got some really good characters going on.

Emma Dhesi  12:16

So you mentioned earlier that you took the plunge, and you decided to go full time writer. But then you just mentioned there that, that you’ve gone back to a paid job. So tell us about why you decided to take that plunge, what it was like moving into being a full time writer. And then kind of what’s happened since then?

Celeste Stacy  12:42

We were working, I worked in a food plant. And we came off our busy season. And we had like two weeks where we were working just normal eight hours, and then the pandemic happened. And then the overtime kicked in. And I was like working 14 hours a day, every day. And the job was like 40 minutes from my house.

So I was like, basically getting up at 5am getting home at like 9:30 eating dinner at 10 go to sleep, rinse and repeat. And it was just it was getting to be crazy. And I used up all my time to take off to finish book 1, and I was telling Chris Iike, I can’t do this anymore. It’s driving me nuts. I want to be a writer and I can’t finish book 2 work in these hours.

And thanks to the overtime I had a lot of money saved up. So I’m living off my say my savings while I write my books. And September 4 was my last day and is like um, it took me a good month to just decompress from working in a food plant and putting all the hassles and the stress and the headaches of that job behind me. And then focus on the book. Now we did take a vacation in September.

And yeah, for anniversary, our 32nd anniversary, 31st anniversary, Happy Anniversary 31st anniversary, and we went to Hocking hills in Ohio, we rent a cabin in the woods. And we just stayed up there. And I just focused on writing. and Chris just focused on reading books. And because she’s an office type worker, and so I let her do her thing. And I just wrote and I finished the book and all that. So that really helped. 

Emma Dhesi  14:34

So that being edited right now.

Celeste Stacy  14:38

No, it’s waiting to be edited. It’s supposed to go to the editing service next week. But Chris did read it a couple of days ago and she says you might want to change some things here and fix this and fix the grammar and psych So I did that and I was just waiting. But it usually takes about a week or two with added service that get it edited and it’ll be ready to publish on Amazon. 

Emma Dhesi  15:02

Wonderful. Well, let’s have a look, if you don’t mind just delving a little bit more into your full time writing life, because going, as you say, going from paid job to a daily job, you know, job well I do that you’re in charge of you’re the boss now, you have to be give yourself discipline, did it take a bit of time to transition into that? And what does an average writing day look for you now?

Celeste Stacy  15:28

Yeah, I gotta have more discipline, I got to stay off YouTube. But My typical day is, I still get up early, about seven o’clock in the morning, and then you know, breakfast coffee, get that out of the way cleaned up. And that’s important, you know, just prepare, like you’re going to a job, but you’re not in that I come to my desk out here. And I do a lot of promoting my book on social media, on Instagram, and Twitter, and Facebook, all the book related, author related forums on Facebook, I’m on all those.

And then I get that I spend about two hours a day on that and that’s really helped my book sales is just, you know, networking with other like minded people and put the word out. And then I do my own website editing. And I’ve been building my website for the book, secret, nerdy.com And then I spend the rest of the day to about five o’clock writing, or when Chris gets home about 5:30-6 o’clock. 

Emma Dhesi  16:39

But that’s interesting. Do you find your more productive? Or more creative in the afternoon? 

Celeste Stacy  16:44

Yes, yes. I spend my mornings with, you know, social media that I eat lunch, and then from after lunch and on and I, before I go take care of my chickens because I have my chickens. They lay the easter eggs so… 

Emma Dhesi  17:03

Very nice. You live in a rural area?

Celeste Stacy  17:07

Yes i live on the country, we own six acres, about a country. That’s very peaceful. 

Emma Dhesi  17:13

Beautiful. Now you did. And I want to come back to the marketing side. But I just wanted to talk about the publishing as well. And how have you find kind of being the publisher of your own books? And are you have you decided to go with sort of key you can limited? Or are you publishing wide with your book?

Celeste Stacy  17:35

For the first book, I published it exclusively with Amazon, and their Kindle Unlimited, and their audio book on Audible, unlimited thing. So you can actually if you have memberships in the audible club, or the Kindle unlimited club, you can read my book or listen to my book for free. 

Emma Dhesi  17:54

Fantastic. I’ll definitely be linking to it in the show notes. Don’t worry. And now you’ve mentioned audio. So I know that you made an audio book, the audio version of your book. Tell me about that experience. What was that? Like?

Celeste Stacy  18:08

Yeah, I when I when I did it in? February, I started it. late February, I did it. I went to ACX, the website, ACX for Amazon. And I create one on there. It’s really straightforward. They have some tutorials, but it’s really straightforward and you, you create the job, and then you put the title and then you put in for accepting the auditions and then I started what listening to the auditions as they came in, which was a good 15 – 16 people and then I found the one. His name’s john Moriarty and he’s really good.

Emma Dhesi  18:52

So it wasn’t I didn’t know they did that, that they and help you find the narrator as well. Yep. And so And how long did it take him to narrate the book?

Celeste Stacy  19:04

About a week

Emma Dhesi  19:06

And then once the, once the recording is done, because presumably he does he just go off and do it by himself? Or how does that work? 

Celeste Stacy  19:15

He does it in his in his own home or recording studio, whatever. But you know, it’s really good, high quality mp3 type files, and then every, every night, I would get a new file, and then I would listen to it and then I would approve it. So yeah, that’s why I want it it’s like every every day was a was a new was one or two new chapters. 

Emma Dhesi  19:40

I see. So then does ACX called the the file in the cloud, if you like, and then you have it there accessible and then it’s distributed from ACX, or did they do the distribution themselves? 

Celeste Stacy  19:52

Yeah, they have a distributed on their website on the audible.com. I also have files on my computer, the original files, but but it’s it’s distributed via audible.com. 

Emma Dhesi  20:06

Okay. Okay, so they Okay, yeah. 

Celeste Stacy  20:09

But if you go on to Amazon and go to look on my book, you’ll have the three different formats available. It’s a ebook, paperback and audible. And then you click on the audible link, and it’ll take you to a test though. 

Emma Dhesi  20:24

That’s so exciting. Really. 

Celeste Stacy  20:25

I know.

Emma Dhesi  20:28

Now marketing, you mentioned marketing. Before that you spent quite a bit of time on social media. Have you found either a platform or a system that works really well for you? Because you said, and that has really helped with your book sales, which is fantastic. So I know that there’ll be others kind of wanting to and learn from you about how do you generate book sales through social media or other platforms? 

Celeste Stacy  20:52

Yeah. First I, I’ll put ads out on on Amazon, I have an ad campaign going. And people that have their ebook, their e-reader, black screen, I’m advertising and it’s it’ll come up randomly for that and that’s one form of advertisement. And then there’s a through the Google SEO thing, it’s, you pay the get bumped up in search results. And Amazon’s Yeah, like 10s of 1000s of authors and their books. And he says, I get a call your way up to the top. I think my last star rank book ranking was like 155,000. That’s my ranking. My book is like, I just climb my way up. 

Emma Dhesi  21:46

Yeah. That’s really good.

Celeste Stacy  21:48

I found it just, you know, talking to people in the author groups, and the reader book reader groups, and, and distribute, distribute my Amazon link on those groups, and doing author reviews, and, you know, swapping author reviews with other authors. That really helps, too, because you got to have, you know, you got to have reviews on your book. And if you don’t have reviews, people are gonna say, Well, I can read this, no one’s read it as I go by anybody if they see it, like, Oh, it’s got a lot of reviews since like, so look at it. So that’s a thing is getting the reviews and…

Emma Dhesi  22:24

So who do you are? Who do you go through? Or which websites do you use to get those author reviews? 

Celeste Stacy  22:31

There’s Facebook and their forums. And then I’m just now starting to see there’s only like a pop up this one do they do they have author reviews kinds of things you could talk to? And then…. there’s a few others, I can’t think of. Mostly it’s been just the Facebook forum groups talking to other authors. 

Emma Dhesi  22:57

It’s the platform I use the most as well I find it It’s funny, everybody gravitates to different things. Don’t leave a Facebook. I just I didn’t get my age, but I certainly find it easiest to navigate. makes sense to me. 

Celeste Stacy  23:09

Yeah. Oh, Instagram is a really good platform for advertising because I did a freebie a freebie event, in celebration of Prime Day, Monday and Tuesday, and my book was free for two days. And I didn’t, you know, wrote up a thing and I put it on my, my Facebook page, on a lot of the forums, and that generates generated some sales leads. And then I put it on Twitter, generates some see, you know, some free sales, but putting it on Instagram, my Instagram account that really generated a lot of sales. Well, their sales, but they’re free. So that’s amazing. 

Emma Dhesi  23:53

Yeah, that’s it’s getting people into your stories and your characters. So they…

Celeste Stacy  23:56

Just get them to read the book and then hopefully, they’ll come back and they’ll buy the second book and the third book and on…

Emma Dhesi  24:02

Yeah, yeah, you go. And now you’ve described and Secrets Agents of the Illuminati as a dime store type novel. And so does that have an impact on the type of covers that you use or the imagery that you use in your efforts?

Celeste Stacy  24:19

Yes, they will for tales of Illuminati, because that’s going to be 100 pages where or less, whereas my it’s not novella, but it’s only gonna max out at 200 pages. I think the first one was 138 pages. And then second one’s like 168 pages. So the second book is a little bit longer. It’s got a little bit more story to it. But uh, yeah, that’s they’re all novellas because novellas is, you know, shorter than a regular novel. And it’s like, I’ve been hearing a lot of the people who like preferred the novellas, and it’s like they can read them on an airport and on the airplane, or on the train or buses, and it’s like just they just want something quick.

Emma Dhesi  25:06

Yes, you know, there does seem to be I think now that we’ve got the now that the indie world is here, we can see that people like all sorts of different types of stories, different formats, day to day or traditional estimations of what normal is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what was it gonna say? There was a question that came up there, and I’ve totally forgotten what it was no. At all. Yes, I was good to answer. Do you plot your stories? Are you more of a discovery writer and you have a character and you see what happens? 

Celeste Stacy  25:39

Or do it again? 

Emma Dhesi  25:40

Or do you have you know, do you plot your novels? Or are you more of a discovery writer? And so you maybe have a character in your head? And then you just see what happens? Or do you… 

Celeste Stacy  25:50

More, more discovery because I’ll go through and I’ll read read up of what I’ve written so far. And then I’ll just kind of like play out in my head, Daydream. And just like, this is kind of exciting. Because even I don’t even know where the story is going. is like, it was like, go down this one go down this one way. And then that’s like, okay, as I guess, like a house. So well, maybe I’ll do this differently. And it’s like, it just unloads and like a movie in my head as I go. I’m really cool, i just write it down, so…

Emma Dhesi  26:24

 yeah, that’s what I like. I’m also a discovery writer. And I do love those moments of surprise when, oh, my goodness, i just…. 

Celeste Stacy  26:31

I didn’t laugh and I’ll be laughing actresses. Like, why you laugh about my story? So, yeah. 

Emma Dhesi  26:40

And so what are you working on at the moment? The two novellas? 

Celeste Stacy  26:44

Yeah, I’m right now I’m working on tales of luminary tales of Illuminati. And I do have another series that I’m going to start. It was my actually my first feature length screenplay. And it’s called Martian Twilight, and the niche of time, and that’s a new book series. Now that is, you know, fantasy. It’s taken like it’s like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and like ancient, the, you know, old Zeus type Greek movies, like, you know, Clash of the Titans. And I’m putting them into it, that’s going to be a feature length, or, you know, full note novel series so… 

Emma Dhesi  27:30

I love your sort of inspiration for a lot of these. I get the feeling that maybe you’re a big fan of these and 1950s type B movies with, you know…

Celeste Stacy  27:39

Yeah, I did like that saturday creature features. Yeah, I love those. Yeah, I do have other stories that I’ve written out. And they’re different genres. I’ve got some other that’s like it’s like a nor type. It’s a 1920s is that one’s called Mike sledge and the big picture and that’s more like a Humphrey Bogart and kind of kind of story and this is quitting my factory job and we’re in writing full time it’s like all these stories are gonna start coming out and they’ll start publishing this you know, stories so…

Emma Dhesi  28:19

Very exciting. You have got a lot…

Celeste Stacy  28:20

I have a lot of stories in my head. 

Emma Dhesi  28:22

Well, listen, we’re we’re kind of at the top of our our time together. So where can listeners find out more about your current books and also about your future series?

Celeste Stacy  28:34

secretnardi.com is where the current series for tales and secret agents will be that’s the website but um, I am going to create another website and it’s gonna it’s gonna be do with my publishing mogul media. So I get that up and then but right now is just like Facebook and on a secretnerdi.com Oh, and also you can find me on my social medias like Twitter and Instagram, which is celestestacy67 and then my email celestestacy67@gmail so… 

Emma Dhesi  29:12

Fantastic. I’ll put them in the show notes so people can be chase.

Celeste Stacy  29:17

Stay tuned is like I’m just getting started. 

Emma Dhesi  29:20

Yes, it does feel like that very much so, thank you very much for your time today. I really enjoy it to do.

Celeste Stacy  29:27

Thank you.

Emma Dhesi  29:30

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Celeste Stacy. One of the things that I got from that was really the love that she has for the writing that she does. And it all seems like a lot of fun for her and she enjoys the spoof and the comedy element of it. And as a result, she’s got so many ideas for future books and future stories. So I really love hearing about that side of things. The other thing I took from our chat together was how we can take old stories and retail them in a way that’s fresh and new for us in and genres that we like.

So for example, Celeste loves all the sort of B movies from the 1950s and 60s. And so she takes a lot of those ideas and the storylines and she adapts and changes them to fit the kind of stories that she loves to town. And why not, you know, though, as they say, there is no new story out there and if it was good enough for Shakespeare, hey, it’s good enough for us. So let me know if you enjoyed the show. Comment below. What were your big takeaways, and then I’ll see you again next time. Bye.

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Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.