Interview with Ruby Peru

Ruby Peru has been a ghost writer specializing in memoir for 15 years. She also has a witty novel it’s called bits of string to small to save. She has traveled far and wide to research and write memoirs for her clients, including everything from cult escapes to African Wildlife Research, from Epic romance to prison memoirs.

She has innumerable interesting and funny stories and insights on the essence of memoir, as well as tips on how to write your own. She describes herself as a sloppy workaholic and independent operator. Ruby drives a beat up pickup truck and restores old houses.

Some are pine she’s a little bit of a badass, having studied with Kurt Vonnegut’s in the 80s and David Foster Wallace in the 90s. she’d love to be a person who surfs, climbs cruises around looking cool on a motorcycle, and never runs out of adventurous weekends. But she isn’t. And she doesn’t. She’s a writer.

Her first novel bits of string too small to save, which came out in 2017 is a witty illustrated fantasy for adults that asks, What’s really the difference between animals and people? And aren’t magic and technology the same thing? And what’s the relationship between seduction and just plain manipulation? And what makes a place a home?

Well, let’s chat to Ruby and find out the answers to all of these questions. And of course find out about her own writing.

Well, Ruby, thank you so so much for joining me today. I’m absolutely delighted to have you on the show. 

Ruby Peru  03:16

Thanks for having me, Emma. 

Emma Dhesi  03:17

Pleasure. I wondered if we could just start off by asking, you know, what brought you to writing? What was it? That… was the inspiration for you, you know, is that something you’ve always wanted to do? Or did you come to it a little bit later in life? 

Ruby Peru  03:31

Well, I’ve always been a writer, ever since I was a kid. And through growing up, it was always a big focus for me. But then I, I became trained as an actor. And that was, that was something I became very involved in. But didn’t really make it as an actor. So it led me back to writing but with a new perspective, because, because I use a lot of techniques that actors use in my writing. 

Emma Dhesi  03:58

Ah, could you give us an example? 

Ruby Peru  04:01

Well, yeah, sure. Well, I do ghostwriting, I do memoir ghost writing. That’s, that’s the primary type of ghostwriting that I do. And that means that other people have their life stories that they want to tell sometimes very complex, epic stories. Sometimes it’s a romantic story, sometimes action story, you know, sometimes it’s just like, I want to teach you all about my business techniques, all kinds of different things.

But with my acting background, I’m able to really sort of embody their life and experience their, their emotional experience… experiences, personally so that when it comes out on the page, it feels like it was them. What you look for when you’re plotting when you’re when you’re analyzing a script as an actor, and also when you’re plotting a book as a writer, you’re looking for moments where the, where the person changes where they have a moment, and it changes their outlook on life permanently, you know, and after that moment, you’re different.

So as an actor, you go through the script, and you get to a certain point and you go, boom, that’s a big change. And that means everything is different. Now, now, I’m viewing things differently.

I’m trying to achieve different goals with the things that I’m saying and doing. And so you have to stop. And you have to realize that, that internally, you have changed as a person after this moment.

So as a writer, I do the same thing, I try to find those moments of change, and emphasize them in the book and show how the person has like, become a different person because of an event that happened. 

Emma Dhesi  05:45

Mm hmm. That’s fascinating is it really, it’s, it’s really delving into that character development that we might think of in fiction, but actually applying it equally to, to nonfiction by someone’s life.

And those, those key points, as you see that, that, that change their self belief or the beliefs about the world, and then ultimately change kind of how they how they progress with their life and the decisions they make about their life going forward.

Ruby Peru  06:11

Yeah, because ultimately, fiction is, fiction wouldn’t make sense unless it was based on people’s actual lives. You know, we’re just making up people, but we’re putting them through the same things that real people go through. So…

Emma Dhesi  06:25

Yeah, I think it’s a good a good reminder about that, when we’re developing our fictional characters to remember that they are people. 

Ruby Peru  06:33

Yeah, the same depth of character that real people have, you know, and, and one thing that I learned a lot from ghost writing is everybody is a massive contradictions. Everybody I have ever interviewed, and I do interviews like 30 to 40 hours of interviews with these people, it’s very intense.

And what I learned about everybody is that they’re very much one way, and yet, they are the total opposite. Also, on alternate Tuesday’s, you know, everybody’s a massive contradiction. And one of the things that happens a lot when I’m talking to beginning writers, is they worry that their character doesn’t seem realistic, because they have these different conflicting things.

And I’m like, no, that makes it more realistic. You have to understand people, the more conflict in their soul, the more conflict in their behavior, the better. It just has to make sense to them. You know, they have to have both of those sides of them, because that’s how people are. 

Emma Dhesi  07:29

Yeah, I love it. So you’ve mentioned that it’s memoir ghost writing that you do what what was the particular draw to, to memoir ghost writing as opposed to fictional ghost writing, for example? 

Ruby Peru  07:43

Well, I… It okay. ghostwriting is a weird thing, because you’re writing for somebody else, and you’re not getting credit for it. At this point in my career, I get credit for stuff. But for 15 years, I wrote books for people without getting any credit.

And I’m happy to do it when I’m writing somebody’s memoir, because it’s their story. It’s their life story. I’m just the technician who’s helping them get it on paper. And I don’t mind not getting credit for it, because I just feel like I’m helping them tell something that already belongs to them.

But when it’s fiction, I would have to make it up. I would have to like it would all be me It’s me. My story. My writing everything is me. Why would I not get credit for that? That doesn’t that would not seem fair to me.

Whereas memoir ghostwriting seems fair, a fair exchange, you know, if they pay me, I hope to put their story on paper. 

Emma Dhesi  08:32

Oh, I see. I see. Um, and so I’m wondering what, you know, apart from the fact that you are writing about somebody else’s life, are there any kind of key differences or key approach, a key difference of approach when you’re writing somebody else’s memoir, as opposed to your own either fiction, or if you’re writing memoir, as well for yourself?

Ruby Peru  08:56

Yes, I’ll tell you this. Um, okay, when I write memoir for other people, I do this intense interview process, I organize all the information, I write a synopsis that is like a very detailed outline of the characters, their external conflicts, their internal conflicts, their relationships with each other, I plan it all out.

And then I write it in sort of paint by numbers at that point, because everything’s planned out. And that way, the client knows exactly what they’re getting. Right? Whatever I for myself, I don’t do that. No way, way too much work takes all the fun out of it. I also find I’ve also taught classes recently in memoir writing, and I, what I started doing is really encouraging my clients to write short stories instead of trying to write long books.

It’s not that it’s easier. It’s just that it helps you get to the meat of what you’re trying to say when it’s a short story because what what will happen is you’ll be like, Oh, I want to tell a story about the time I went to the beach or whatever. And so you’re writing about Okay, this happened, this happened and then I’m going okay, so But where’s the, where’s the main conflict of the story?

What is the main thing where this character wants something that’s difficult to get, or the characters up against some kind of difficult challenge. And then they realized that actually several challenges in this story, and they realized they actually have four stories, you could write for stories about that trip to the beach, because each one focuses on a different conflict, whether it’s internal or external.

So when you break it down into short stories, you get more bang for your buck story wise. And also, each story is more focused and more interesting, because it’s less scattered. 

Emma Dhesi  10:37

Hmm. Did you like short stories yourself? 

Ruby Peru  10:40

Yes. So I’m writing my own memoir now. And it’s in short story format. I’m a huge fan of David Sedaris, who’s written numerous, hilarious memoir books that are all a short story based.

And that I think, is also the funniest way to write. And I want it to be funny. So it’s about growing up on a horse Ranch, and going, everything that happened before that everything happened after that, and various things, and it was sort of an interesting transitional phase of my life.

So I’m writing and, and because it’s memories, you know, they kind of come in chunks. So it works better to me to write it as short stories.

Great Short Stories with Ruby Peru

Emma Dhesi  11:27

Mm hmm. So, so that’s interesting, then, so you’re not writing your own memoir, in the same way that you do other people’s, you’re not planning it out, you’re in the same way.

But as one continuous story, it sounds like but breaking it down into those key moments that, that helps you transition from one phase to the next or one thought, thought change to the next. 

Ruby Peru  11:53

Yeah, like it’s, you know, when you’re writing a coming of age story, something about when you’re a child, then it’s always, it’s always a story about change, because that’s children are constantly going through change. That’s what makes them adults. So looking back on that period of my life, I’m able to realize how much that changed me in a very short time.

And then I’m able to pick out the specific memories that were key to those changes, not just changing me, but changing by relationships with people making me understand things about my parents and other people and sort of having revelations and going, Oh, so that’s the way things really are, you know, and each of those moments of change is interesting enough to have a short story around it.

You know, rather than trying to put it into one, one big, but I don’t really think that I have a big book in me as far as my life has. Its i don’t i it you have to be like 80 years old to be able to look back and see, well, what was the grand theme of my life like it? But I can and I think anybody of any age can look back and go, you know, this specific memory sticks with me?

For, for a reason. What is that reason? Stop and think about it? What is that reason? Why do you remember that weird little thing? That seems like nothing seems like just like, Oh, this day that I was having breakfast with my dad or whatever? And like, why do you remember that? Think about it?

Because whatever the reason is, it’s because something changed in you. You realize something and it made you look at the world differently forever. And that’s what makes a short story.

Emma Dhesi  13:34

 Yeah. Well, I’ve never thought about short stories in that way. I confess, I’m one of those people who really struggles with short stories, I find them very find them harder to write than 80,000 words for whatever reason, but I’m making them concise making them impactful making them in the small container. I find it really, really challenging. 

Ruby Peru  13:54

It is hard, because it’s forcing you to be better. It forces you not to ramble on it forces you to get to the point, it forces you to realize what is this about? You know?

Emma Dhesi  14:08

Yes, I need to work on that. And I did have a question that was going to come out of that and it’s completely gone out of my hand.

Maybe it’s important, it will come back to me… Okay, Now, you mentioned and I mentioned it in the introduction into the the episode that you have worked under or studied under two very well known, well respected writer is Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace.

So that must have been amazing experiences. And I wondered if there were any particular takeaways that you have from your time studying with them and that you still use to this day and that you you might be willing to share with our listeners.

Ruby Peru  14:53

I’ll go backwards. Dave Wallace I studied with in graduate school and he was such a stickler for grammar. I mean, it was like he would just absolutely come to class infuriated if people if people said, this is one of his things. You’ve got another, you’ve got another thing coming.

The expression is you’ve got another thing coming. Apparently, according to Dave, and he would get so angry if somebody used that expression. In a book, you’ve got another thing coming. And he was like, No, the expression is, you’ve got another thing coming.

And I related to that, because I am, I care about these things as well like grammar, punctuating things, right. Getting getting, you know, we’re, you know, understanding what words mean.

So that you can be concise and using them properly, you know, so he was, he was he gave me permission to be as uptight as I want to be, you know, because he was very uptight about this.

Emma Dhesi  15:59

You worked well together, then that was a good thing. 

Ruby Peru  16:01

Yeah. And Kurt Vonnegut gave a lot of lectures when I was at Carnegie Mellon, and, he was sort of give these grand sweeping lessons on plotting, you know, he was like, really the opposite of Dave in a way. And he was always comparing everything to Hamlet. Because he, this was this is his big thing that he was always coming back to.

If you take a you know, like a fairy tale, you know, Cinderella or something, something happens and it’s bad. Oh, she’s has to work as a scullery maid, then something happens and it’s good. Oh, she gets an invitation to the ball. And then she loses her slipper. And it’s bad. And he would like make this graph and he would graph it on the graph up as good down as bad off as good downs, but he would make it like on an xy axis, graphing the story.

So you can see in a, in a typical story, like a fairy tale, good things happen and bad things happen. And they are followed one by after the other. But in a story like Hamlet, Hamlet is kind of like, well, I wonder if my uncle actually killed my father? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it true? Is it a lie? I don’t know.

So it’s not good or bad, sir, in between? And then like, well, I don’t know, maybe I should take this action. But then again, I know is the ghost real? Is the ghost not real? I don’t know. So how much light is kind of like a straight line across the middle, where you never really know if anything’s good or bad. And he’s, that’s a good story.

Emma Dhesi  17:34

Okay.

Ruby Peru  17:35

Never quite know where you’re at. 

Emma Dhesi  17:37

So quite different to what we sort of get taught by most, most people most, in most classes that normally we’re looking to stretch up to the highest of the highs, the lowest of the lows, really emphasizing the conflict going on in the story.

But he was kind of suggesting actually, the more ambiguous, the more ambiguous it is almost the better. 

Ruby Peru  17:59

Yeah, sort of like, I think what he was stressing was that the conflict is internal. There’s so much internal conflict in Hamlet, that, that it’s impossible for Hamlet to really know, if he’s in a situation that’s good or bad. So I think what he was emphasizing was to keep the internal conflict really high, you know, so that the reader never feel safe.

They never feel like Oh, I know that good things are happening, or bad things are happening soon as you think it’s good, it’s actually bad. As soon as you think it’s bad now is actually good.

Emma Dhesi  18:29

Well so to great kind of takeaways, then from your time with both of those people, that necessity to be precise with your grammar and your punctuation and, and the word choices that you’re using, and then really delve down into that conflict of your character.

And the more and conflicted they are, the more interesting and unsafe I like that word unsafe that your reader feels, keeps them keeps them going. Now so talking of plots and character and grammar.

You wrote your you published your first novel in 2017, called bits of string to small to save. And I wonder if you could tell us a bit about it.

Ruby Peru  19:13

Well, okay, so this book started because at one point in my life, I taught Montessori school to little kids, and I used to tell them a story every day, that was our initial circle time, I would just extemporaneously just start telling the story. And they were all participants in the story.

And if somebody was wearing like a side ponytail, I put the ponytail in the story and whatever was going on, they loved it. I mean, it would just sit there, totally quiet, behaving just waiting to see when they were going to appear in the story. You know, it was really fun. But I left that job.

And I really missed that creative bursts that I got every morning from doing that was hard work. And it was and it was fun. And it was a really great workout from my mind. So that’s what made me start writing bits of string and so the rule was, I had, I ended up going to this corporate job that I hated.

So I said, Alright, I’m gonna keep my soul alive by writing a novel. And the rule is, you spend an hour a day, and you just have fun, I have to be having fun, not allowed to do anything that’s not fun during my writing time. So I started creating these fun characters, crazy dialogue, and just gave them these weird quirks and just had them interact in ways that was like, I didn’t care what the plot was going to be, I just wanted to have these interesting characters, and I would take characters from my real life.

And I would take, there’s one character in there, that’s a combination between my landlady and my boyfriend at the time, and I was like, they’re the same person. That’s fun, you know. And so, uh, so I had a lot of fun with it. And then I created so many weird subplots and scenarios, that it was a giant mess.

And then I spent many years trying to make sense of all of it and make it into something that made sense. But I wanted it it’s not, it started out with this kind of very sing song, almost like a children’s book, sound to it, because I just come from working for the children. But then it sort of morphed into something that wasn’t a children’s book.

And so then I kind of didn’t know what it was, I was just having fun. And that’s sort of the problem with marketing it. Nobody knows quite what it is. But it’s their call it up or why a new adults or upper young adults. And I wanted it to look like a classic like a classic children’s storybook like Alice in Wonderland or 1001, Arabian Nights where they have these illustrations.

It’s not a it’s not a it’s not a comic book, it just has an illustration at the beginning of each section. So there’s four beautiful pen and ink illustrations inside, in addition to the one on the cover. So it’s meant to look kind of classic in that way. 

Emma Dhesi  22:02

It certainly does. It certainly doesn’t. I’m gonna put a link to it so that people can can go and look, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s beautiful. I’m just really interested in the origin of of the book. I think you’ve given us all there a good reminder that writing is supposed to be fun.

And I think when we’re newbies, particularly, we’re so intent on getting this finished product, we’re so intent on finding an agent we’re so intent on and getting this, this piece of work out into the world that we forget that this is something we we enjoy, and it’s supposed to be fun, and it’s supposed to be and our downtime, often because it’s something we do in and around our paid work.

You know, it’s supposed to be that rejuvenation, that we’re looking for that creative stimulus. And so I love the fact that your book has come out of come out of Montessori, essentially, and been influenced by that. And that, although as you kind of said, at the end of putting all those images and stories and characters together, it was a big old mess.

You had fun doing it. And it was joyful, and it brought you a lot of happiness. And I think this is something we often forget about. And so I love the fact that you’ve reminded us that that’s important. But you’ve also sort of highlighted something else. I think a lot of new writers mentally struggle with the idea that this first draft, this first coming together of characters and story ideas, is a big mess.

It is a jumble that even even if you’re a big plotter, you’ve got to start with this jumble of ideas and jumble of characters before you put them into some kind of order. And it’s certainly something that students have said to me before that it’s it bogs them down, it worries them and possibly unnecessarily, but it does feel like this big old mess.

I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit. You know, does it is it just through reading and re-reading the work through revising the work continuously that those those sort of tangles strings kind of begin to unravel?

And the storyline and the character development eventually comes? rises to the top? 

Ruby Peru  24:10

If it’s different for every writer, so there’s no like, set answer I can give you and also, it’s weird because when I wrote that book, I knew nothing about marketing. And now I do publishing and marketing for people on books and I in a way I wish I was still that person who knew nothing about marketing.

Because the that book was a pure expression of creativity was no absolutely no compromises being made for the sake of attracting any particular reader. People say Who was your audience? I say my audience is myself. I wrote it for me. I wanted to have fun. I did have fun.

I hope other people have fun when they read it, you know? But then when you’re looking at it from a marketing perspective, and a lot of writers have looked into the sale, the potential sale of their book, way before they’ve actually written the book, and that, it I’m not gonna say it’s a mistake, I’m gonna say it does inhibit your creativity.

But it could be helpful for you for sales. So who am I to say that you shouldn’t do that? You know, because obviously you want to sell, it sort of depends on whether you have a purist mindset where you just want to be a person who has a pure creative expression.

Or if you want to gear towards sales, and there’s a lot of research, you can do that to give you an idea of exactly what people are looking for, and, and to write towards a market, you know, but if you’re, to answer your question, if you’re working from a place of pure creativity, and you’re just putting all these ideas on the page, it helps to be familiar with all the different formats that are out there.

Because if I had known, like, part of the reason my book doesn’t qualify as a, as a, as a children’s book, is because it, it has way too many subplots, you know, it’s also 100,000 words. That’s another reason it has way too many subplots, and children aren’t expected to be able to follow that many subplots they do all tie together, but you have to remember some things as you go through because it sort of alternates the different characters until the characters start to coalesce in the story and come together.

And if I had known that there are formats out there, you can write a series of novellas you can write, you can write animated stories that you post on online on certain sides, you can write so many different formats exists nowadays, other than the classic novel. And the shorter formats tend to sell better, especially if you have a series, if you think of it as, okay, I’m writing all these, these crazy different threads, right?

But instead of thinking I’m gonna don’t do, okay, don’t do what I did, which is you take all these threads, and it’s like at the end of this 100,000 word book, all the all the subplots are gonna coalesce and it’s gonna be one big dramatic ending. That’s great, but it’s hard to sell a book that long.

So if when you’re writing, you think of it, you think of it in terms of creating endings within the story, creating an ending, wrapping it all up into an ending way before you get to the point where it’s a huge book, you know, say you’re at 30,000 words, create an ending, wrap it up a little, write another 30,000, create another ending, wrap it up, that will enable you to, to break it into pieces, and market it as a series.

You know, right? If you let all the threads drag out and drag out and never coalesce, you’re going to end up with a very long book, which is not intrinsically bad. That’s what I ended up with. And I love it. But you’ll get more readers if you write a series of short books. 

Emma Dhesi  28:14

Mm hmm. It does seem to be the big way at the moment, are loving series, especially fairly rapidly released. And series. it’s enjoyable. No, the one thing you haven’t done though, is tell us what the story is about. I’d love to hear maybe one or two of these subplots.

Ruby Peru  28:31

Okay, so I started out with this theme almost like Alice in Wonderland, but in a kind of post apocalyptic. Not apocalypse. It’s kind of like a futuristic world, where Elizabeth Ann’s, his 10 year old character, and she’s in this world where it’s a police state. It’s it’s futuristic, there’s a lot of control.

Her grandma’s this wild and crazy hot rod driving lady. She’s the character that is a combination between my landlady my boyfriend, and and they have this dog. I don’t know why I included that I just wanted to because I was just thinking, what would the kids like? Oh, a dog, you know?

And they go through, they go through a whole kind of like Alice in Wonderland going through the rabbit hole, right? So they go through this portal into another world. And in this world. The scenario is grandma has been to this other world before. It’s called Bumble green. And grandma has been there before and they had this was not a pandemic story.

I wrote this in 20… I finished it in 2017. But it’s a pandemic story, because there was a blight on the land and it killed people and animals and everything. And they were trying to figure out what was causing it. And grandma was brought there because she was a scientist to help them figure it out. And she figured it out.

But nobody believed her and everybody thought a different thing caused it and so she trained Elizabeth and her whole young 10 years old life to come to Bumble green and somehow save this world. And so it, Elizabeth Anne had no idea she was being trained for this. So she gets there, and she’s on her own.

And she has to solve some very big problems finding people that have been in hiding, because they know the true secret of the land, and how to solve the problem and how to save everybody. And she has to go around finding clues, meeting all these people trying to figure out who will be her ally who’s against her.

And there’s this, one of the diseases is that animals turn into people. And that’s also a theme. That’s one of the silly bits that’s in there, but it’s also very deep. Because, um, because animals are so serene, they don’t ever worry about things, you know, and I just envy them so much, but that’s why we have pets. They’re just so great. There’s, there’s so much better than us.

They just hang out and have fun every moment never think about the future or the past, you know. And when these animals become people in the story, they’re tortured by all these neuroses that humans have. And it’s so horrible. And they’re like, Oh, God, when will I turn back into an animal?

You know, so. And yet, and yet, there’s also one animal, and I won’t tell you who, who chooses to become a person, for the sake of true love. 

Emma Dhesi  31:28

Oh, romance never goes back. There, you have mentioned that you wanted to have this beautiful look to the book and reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland and 1001, brilliant Arabian Nights.

And so you find an illustrator and beautiful, the gorgeous, the illustrations, and a couple of questions around that would be how did you find your illustrator? And then how, what was it like working together? Was it? Did you give them a brief and they went away? worked came back? Did you work together? How did that relationship evolve? 

Ruby Peru  32:06

Okay, so it was interesting. I found this guy on Etsy, I was looking for somebody to do pen and ink. And I didn’t know where to go. But I found myself on Etsy, and I, and I found him there. His name’s Philip Harris. He’s brilliant. He’s British. And now he’s with an agency.

But I asked him if he wants to do these illustrations. And I said, Yeah, but what I did not realize was he’s dyslexic. I was hoping that he would read the chapter and then be like, here’s what I’m inspired to draw. But he said, like, we had this, like, weird conversation, where he was like, I’m not gonna read the whole chapter. And I was like, why, why not? Why it makes such a big deal of it.

And so finally, it was like, well, I, I guess I got somebody read it to me. And I realized, Oh, my God, this poor guy, you know, that’s why he’s such a brilliant illustrator, because he’s very focused on that side of things. So he got somebody to read to him. And then we discussed it, and I, and then I had to come up with there’s a Elizabeth and as a 10 year old girl, and then there’s another girl who’s a queen, who’s 13.

And they are very different. And so he wasn’t getting it, right, and the illustration, so I just went online, and I created a Pinterest page of pictures of little girls who are the right age, you know, and to have the right kind of look about them, for each girl so that he could sort of amalgamate these different images and go, Okay, I get the idea.

And then also, costumes, like the Queen wears is very elaborate costume. So I described it, but I also tried to take pictures, take images from things that I found online and put them into a Pinterest page for him. So he could see all of my ideas, and then just put them together in his own way. 

Emma Dhesi  33:51

What a great idea because clearly, he’s he’s much more visual person than kind of a words person. And so having those visuals there to inspire him or take ideas from imagine that were Yeah, worked really, really well. A great idea. 

Ruby Peru  34:06

But one thing that I did in the book, I have a fan club for people who love the book. And if you read the book, and then you decide to join fan club, you get a free little PDF that I created two of them, actually, that show you the process of creating these illustrations, the first illustration Philip did for me, and then how I asked him to change it, and then he changed it.

I mean, even the bad ones are great, you know, they’re amazing. And so you can watch the changes in the character through these, these, the sequence of illustrations that he did, and that, even though there’s another one, the other PDF is about creating the cover which has many of the characters on it.

And so we went from his initial idea to like, tweaking every little character on the cover and so that you can see all the phases that it went through before it became the ultimate. That’s really cool.

Emma Dhesi  35:02

Oh, that’s lovely. Well, I’ll put a link to the, the fan page if people are interested as well, so they can check it out. And yeah, cool. Um, no, I want to just slightly change tack and move on to the other thing that you do when you’ve mentioned it briefly at the beginning, but I know you help writers, kind of with their own writing through editing.

And then also you mentioned that you help them to publish their books. So can you tell us a little bit more about the services that you offer for writers and how in the ways in which we’re able to help them? 

Ruby Peru  35:34

Yeah, I have a I have a small imprint called pangloss Press. And that has a website that you can see from some of the books that I published. But not all the books are on the website, because I also help people who don’t want to be necessarily published through my my thing.

And so essentially, when you’re, when you’re doing indie publishing you, you need to sell but you can’t just stick it up on Amazon and expect people to buy it right that you have to go through a launch process where you do a big push to you to promote the book at a discounted price, get it out to a lot of readers who will then hopefully recommend it to their friends.

And then you do overtime, you do more promotional things, where you, what people typically do is you raise it back up to a normal price. And then you’ll have a phase where it’s like for one week, it’s only 99 cents, and then you do a special promotion.

And there are lots of different promotions out there that appeal to lots of different email lists that exists for people who have expressed interest in ebooks of different types, you know, so I’ve created this giant database of promotions, so that whatever type of book you have,

I can find the promotions that will seek out the the lists of people that are interested in that particular thing. 

Emma Dhesi  36:51

Okay, excellent. You help people in all different genres?

Ruby Peru  36:55

Yes, all different genres. Yeah. nonfiction is much easier to sell than fiction. Because if you need a book about such and such, you already know, you know, you go and you look at all the books about panda bears, or whatever it is you want to buy, and you go, Oh, this is a good one.

And you buy, you know, fiction is something where you have to like really pique somebody’s imagination, and you have to, you have to appeal to them emotionally and get them to be like, Oh, I really want to know about that. Or, you know, it’s not a real thing. It’s a fictional story.

But, and of course, there are people who are just absolutely love romance or who absolutely love science fiction. And that’s one way of appealing to people when you’re in a genre like that.

But if you have a book, that’s not really a particular genre, it’s just really interesting book, those are harder to sell. But because of a glue for punishment, those are the kinds of books I love to sell. Because I like to help writers like me, find readers, you know, it’s really great. And when you succeed, it’s amazing.

Emma Dhesi  37:55

And but you also do editing as well? 

Ruby Peru  37:58

Yes, well, I mean, I go straight, I edit, I do all that stuff. And typically, when you have, when you have a book that’s seeking publication, I’ll look at it. And usually it’s like, okay, we need to do some editorial stuff. If it’s all ready to go, maybe all you need is a proofread. And that’s, you know, very simple, just make sure all the T’s are crossed, and all the i’s are dotted.

Or you might, you know, as a person with as much experience in writing as I have, I often will give somebody a developmental edit, where it’s like, Okay, let’s try to work on this plot a little bit and make it a little bit more suspenseful, or make it a little bit more, take out some of the slow parts and tighten it up a little bit, you know, so I help people with that, to get the manuscript ready for then the publication phase. The next phase.

Emma Dhesi  38:45

Yeah, I’m just out of curiosity. So from your experience, how long do people need to? How far in advance should people be thinking about if they want to hire an editor? Because it’s not one of those things? You can say, Okay, I finished my draft.

I’ll send it to an editor tomorrow, roughly kind of how long do you need people people need to plan for that? Is it three months, four months, not just for your own services, but your own experiences of hiring editors as well? And what’s the kind of what’s the word? I’m looking for the…

Ruby Peru  39:19

Well, I mean, um, no, it’s not three or four months. It shouldn’t take that long. Well, I did have somebody hire me recently, like three or four months in advance, because I didn’t. I was busy. But there are a lot of editors out there so that the time situation is just depends on how busy any given editor is, you know, it means just different for different people.

You may find somebody who’s having a lot in their business and they can start right away. The main thing is to look at work that they’ve done, you know, and say… Okay, would I like my book to turn out like this? Do I like the way that you want to know what not a lot of people don’t know what type of editorial help they need.

And let me just give you a really quick rundown. proofreading is just like grammar and punctuation. A proofreader will not fix your plot, if it’s slow or drags or whatever. There’s just grammar and punctuation. You have a copy editor, which is sort of the next step up, who will look at your sentence craft, look at your paragraphs and go, yeah, I think I could rewrite this paragraph, make it a little bit tighter.

So they’ll rewrite things for you. And then you have a developmental edit, which is where somebody who knows how to write books and plot books, and create stories will look at your whole story, read the whole thing, and give you advice in terms of like, Okay, look, this chapter, you don’t even need it, cut it up, or like, either the ending should be at the beginning, the beginning should be at the end, or this character is flat, they should either cut them out or give them a little bit more depth.

And here’s the way to do it. The thing about working with a really good editor, especially in terms of developmental is that then they can not only pinpoint your problem, they can tell you how to solve it. So it’s much better than working with a writing group of other amateurs. Oh, sure.

They’ll pinpoint your problems, but they don’t know how to solve it. So when you’re working with an editor, it’s just a lot quicker process, they’ll pinpoint your problem, and they’ll teach you how to solve it.

And you can get as much help from them as you want or can afford. Or you can have them just give you advice, and then you do it. You know? 

Emma Dhesi  41:44

Yeah, when I had my first book, edited, that was the biggest surprise to me, I knew that they’d be highlighting what was wrong with it. But it was also an amazing lesson in craft and structure and all of those things because of the advice and the suggestions that were given by that editor as well.

I think I learned more in that one report than I did in, you know, three years of evening classes. It was Yeah, amazing. Ah, so people can find more about that editing service and publishing service on your website. Is that right?

Ruby Peru  42:17

 Yeah, rubyperu.com

Emma Dhesi  42:19

Cool. Well, we’ll link to that, too. So you mentioned that a little bit earlier on that you are working on your own memoir? How’s that coming along? Can we expect that anytime soon? 

Ruby Peru  42:30

Ah, I don’t know about. I don’t know about anytime soon. I have to do it in my spare time. But I’ve got to have the stories written and it’s, you know, it’s probably gonna have 20 stories in it or something.

So it’s called sleazy peach. And it’s not it’s not out yet, so don’t go looking for it. But if you’re interested in finding out just join my fan club, and then I’ll update you on all the next upcoming stuff. 

Emma Dhesi  42:55

Fantastic. Fantastic. So tell us where can where’s the best place for listeners to either find out more about the work that you do or connect with you online? 

Ruby Peru  43:05

Rubyperu.com, r u b y p e r u .com. And then that’s where you can join my fan club. If you like bits of string too small to save, or you can get on my newsletter, which just tells you gives you updates on whatever blogs I put out.

You can read about my work as a ghostwriter. You can, you know read all about whatever I’m up to. And then if you get on get on either of those lists, I’ll update you on everything I’m doing. 

Emma Dhesi  43:35

Fantastic. That’s lovely. Well, Ruby, Peru, thank you so much for your time today. I really loved chatting to you. 

Ruby Peru  43:42

Thank you, Emma. I’ve really enjoyed this as well as I really appreciate you giving me a chance to talk to people.

Emma Dhesi  43:50

Thank you for listening to today’s show. Now if you’d like to find some more ways to write, you can download my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write by going to emmadhesi.com/30 top tips.

If you’d like to connect with me, you can find me on Facebook at Emma Dhesi Author. And if you’re enjoying the podcast so far, please don’t forget to leave a review wherever you download your podcasts.

It really does help new listeners find the show and of course I appreciate your support. Until next time, keep writing.

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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.