Sandra Tayler, Dawn Wells, and Kenny Pike  take over the ‘cast with some coaching from Dan (and heckling from Howard)  to talk about what it’s like to live with an artist. We cover the ups and the downs, and share embarrassing anecdotes because we know you want to hear them, and we’re not afraid of the fact that the Internet Never Forgets.

Beyond the fact that Sandra and Dawn are stay-at-home moms, and Kenny is a stay-at-home Dad, the three of them each have important roles to play in their spouses’ careers, and those roles go far beyond mere cheerleading and moral support. We talk about that, and then Sandra, Dawn, and Kenny offer advice to those who may find themselves as significant others to creative types.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: Wings, by Aprilynne Pike, in which a 15-year-old girl discovers that she’s a fairie, and it’s nothing like the storybooks suggested.

Writing Prompt: From the desk of the Fake AP Stylebook — write something involving a blue, Italian, rocket-propelled, monkey-piloted dirtbike.

Bit Jordo Accidentally Left In: IRS agents will delight in the dirt that runs from 10:43 to 10:54. Whoopsie!

Spanish Pun We Didn’t Use Even One Time: “Writing Esposas.”

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key points: Watch out for mood swings. Be aware that it’s a long process, and scary. Support your artist! Space and time and working together.

[Apologies ahead of time — I had trouble distinguishing Dawn and Sandra just from the voices, and may have mixed them up. Sorry about any confusion.]

[Dawn] 15 minutes long because you’re in a hurry.
[Kenny] And we’re not that smart.
[Sandra] I’m Sandra.
[Dawn] I’m Dawn.
[Kenny] And I’m Kenny.
[Dan] And I’m Dan. We decided it would be fun to shake things up this week and get the other half of the story, what it is like to live with an artist or an author. Sandra is Howard’s wife. Dawn is my wife. Emily and Brandon are both in Atlanta right now for Jordancon, so we have Kenny Pike, husband of Aprilynne Pike, the New York Times best-selling author to round us out. Which ended up I think being very good because then we see that this is not a gender specific thing. It is neither male nor female. So let’s start — get the bad stuff out of the way. What kind of sacrifices have you guys had to make? What are the onerous trials you have overcome being the spouse of an author?
[Sandra] I would say the hardest thing that we encounter, Howard and I, is the fact that as creative people we go through biorhythmic mood swings. There are depressive days, there are happy days, manic days. It works great when one of us… when we’re both manic, those were great days. When one of us is high-energy and happy, and the other one is depressed, we can kind of balance each other out. The days that are the hardest ones are the ones when we’re both feeling really blue and like it’s all not going to work and everything is crashing down and we both have to work in the same house with each other.
[Dan] Do you have any great stories that you can tell us about Howard and a depressive day or a manic day or something like that?
[laughter]
[Sandra] Well, let’s see. Specifically… and this is where I…
[Howard] Apparently, she doesn’t. [Garbled]

[Dan] Let’s ask another question, then. What about the long process? It takes forever for a lot of people.
[Dawn] It does. The day that you and I met, you told me… I said, “What’s your major?” “English.” “That’s great, what are you going to do with that? Oh, you’re going to be a fantasy writer.” I’m like, “Oh, great, what are you going to do until that happens?” I’m really glad that you actually got jobs and had a steady income for our family because we had four kids before Dan was able to quit his job. By the way, he quit his job like a month after our fourth child was born. I made him wait that long because I needed… we needed health insurance. You’re not really insurable if you’re eight months pregnant. No one will take you for self-insurance. He had to wait like four extra months after getting a really good deal before he was able to quit his job because…
[Because you were terrified.
[Dawn] Because I was terrified and I didn’t want to spend like 5000 extra dollars in addition to what we’d already put into our health insurance that was going on. So health insurance is a big thing. Getting your own insurance. That’s kind of hard. Being self-employed. But…
[Sandra] There’s a lot of things that are just terrifying when you first face them. We spend a lot of time… I can’t count the number of times when I’ve just gone to bed and cried because I’m scared that it’s going to stop working. That’s just hard.
[Kenny] That’s why you’ve got to work to make it not ever stop working, please.
[Sandra] Oh, yes. You scramble and work…
[Kenny] I think that it’s interesting this perspective, because my perspective was… I actually did a little bit of creative writing as an undergrad, and it was something that I was always interested in. But because I had children, I had to do the right thing and try to get a real job. So I spent three years in law school while my wife wrote. Then she hit it big while I was still in law school, so I felt like, man, that was kind of a waste. I should have just written, or told her to get writing sooner.

[Dan] Now what have you guys had to give up in your life being married to an author?
[Sandra] Well, you gave up law school?
[Kenny] No, I graduated. I had to give up the pain of going to work day after day.
[Sandra] Sounds horrible.
[Kenny] Yeah, I had to give up being away from my family and children. No, I live the dream, man. Life is good.
[Dan] You are the stay-at-home dad?
[Kenny] I am. I am the stay-at-home dad. Also, I do at work for her and I do or website. But I watch the kids. Usually when she’s full time, she’s writing six hours a day and I’m doing household stuff during that time. I’m the world’s most overeducated househusband.
[Dawn] That’s great.
[Sandra] That’s awesome. I would say for me, the biggest thing I’ve had to give up, and I continue having to sacrifice this, is my own creative pursuits. I [garbled] blog, I have books I want to write, I have things I want to do, and they end up being backburnered a lot of the time because of the needs of the family and the needs of the business. Like Kenny, I do a lot of work with Howard. I’m the back end of the Schlock Mercenary business. That really sounded bad.
[Laughter]
[Sandra] I just realized that if Howard had a mic right now, that totally would have been a straight line. Anyway… which, by the way, yes. The tricks and things that he pulls on Brandon and Dan, yes, he does that at home to me too, which is another thing I have to deal with. All the time. He makes fun of me.
[Dawn] One thing for me was, the 10 years that Dan was writing before he got published and was able to quit his job, he was often writing in the evenings. He would do Nanowrimo. I always believed in him. I thought, from the first couple weeks after we met and I read his writing, I was like, “You know, he is going to be a writer. And he is going to be great.” So I wholeheartedly supported his dream. With a couple of my pregnancies, I mowed the lawn until I was like nine months pregnant, so Dan could write all Saturday.
[Dan] I’m really not as big of a jerk as she makes me sound.
[Kenny] But I think it’s really good that you were with him right from the beginning. I admit, I was not always as supportive as maybe I should have been. I did get in some trouble from time to time early on when she was writing and I sort of thought it was something… it was something that I thought she was good enough at, and it was something that was fun for her to do. But she did sort of get after me at some points… I know there’s a lot of different ways different spouses treat the writing differently. I get really into edits. I’m her first editor. I used to say that I was her biggest cheerleader and also her biggest critic. That was before I read what YA book bloggers had to say. Now I just say that I’m her biggest cheerleader and her smartest critic.
[] Very nice.
[Kenny] At one point, early on when she was writing, it was interesting to talk about how… well, you may have heard this or seen this online. Poncho Meyer, when Twilight came out, he had never read it. On the other hand, David Lee Eddings, in… I think it was The Redemption of Atholos, he acknowledges her name is on the book, but really she’s been here all along. The involvement of spouses really varies from author to author.
[Sandra] It really, really does. I know lots of authors where the spouses don’t read at all, and I know lots of spouses where they’re very, very involved.

[Howard] We’d like to take a break for a moment to do a quick ad for this podcast’s sponsor, audible. Kenney, we’re going to talk about Aprilynne’s first book, Wings. That’s the first one, right?
[Kenny] That’s right.
[Howard] Awesome. Wings is available@audiblepodcast.com/excuse. You can go out there, sign-up for a free trial, and have a listen to Aprilynne Pike’s first novel, Wings, in which a 16-year-old protagonist…
[Kenny] 15-year-old. A 15-year-old girl who discovers she’s a fairy, but it’s nothing like the storybooks would have you believe.
[Howard] Awesome.

[Dan] Now we’re back. Let’s take the second half of this podcast and talk about all the wonderfully perfect wonderful things about being married to an author. What has it added to your life? How has it improved your life?
[Kenny] We work from home. I love it. I love being at home with my wife. My wife is there all the time. Even before both working on something, I’m working on the website, she’s writing, whatever. We’re both around, something happens, something needs to be done, we make our own schedule. Working from home is awesome.
[Dawn] I love that Dan can be home a lot, and work from home while I need to take the car in to get fixed when the baby sleeps, so I don’t need to haul the kids down to the place. Anyplace that I need to go, I can… he can be home when I need him to be, and he can be working in the office.
[Sandra] I agree, the flexibility is wonderful. I love that I also really, really enjoy the people I have gotten to me because of what Howard does. He gets invited to conventions, sometimes I get to go with him, and it’s just amazing. All the people I’ve come to know through this whole creative process and building community and networks with other artists. Getting to do cool things like be on a podcast. It’s awesome.
[Dawn] It’s been really fun because we’ve been able to travel. We’ve gone to New York and Montreal. We just went to Germany in March, and got to meet lots of wonderful people and see all kinds of cool things. Then Dan went to England and… we also, last summer, we drove to LA and Dan went to the World Horror Convention there. We got to write off our miles going down there. Then we went to Disneyland when he was done with the convention. So we made a fun family trip.
[Howard] Jordo, can you edit that bit out for the IRS?
[Jordo] No problem.
[Kenny] I think it’s good that you guys enjoy the people, but it’s funny. I happen to love it, I’ve always enjoyed being in the writing scene, and meeting authors in things is fun for me. But I have met authors’ spouses who don’t. I won’t name names, but I was over at one author’s house. We’d seen him at many events, but we’d never met his wife. We thought… Aprilynne and I thought it would be great to meet his wife. She says to me… now at this point I was in law school and I sort of was looking the part… she sort of looked at me kind of conspiratorially and she says, “Yeah, but… I don’t go to these things because… you know… I mean you know what I mean… these authors… there are… well, you know… they’re kind of off.” I just had to laugh because I loved it but she apparently avoids all of her husband’s events because she thinks authors are scary.

[Dan] We totally are. Okay. Let me… we like to focus on advice specifically in this podcast. So for this episode why don’t you guys tell us advice you will give to the spouses of all the aspiring authors and published authors out there in the world who might be listening. What do you want to tell them?
[Sandra] I want to tell them for starters what… the three people who are talking here are all in very established phases of an artist’s career. In the early phases, it’s very, very different. I would say you have to start by organizing a space for your artist to create in and a time to give to that person. You have to be able to believe in them, and allow that space and time to exist, because all of these big fun travel rewards meet cool people stuff is based on years of having a box full of cartooning stuff on your kitchen counter because that’s the only space you’ve got. And your husband cleaning off the kitchen table every evening so that he can sit down and cartoon and complain about the spoon dents. Constantly.
[Howard] The kitchen table doesn’t get cleaned so much anymore now that I’ve got my own drawing table. And a microphone. I have a microphone.
[Dan] Howard, you’re not allowed to use a microphone. Okay. Other advice?
[Kenny] I would say be ready to be a team. Aprilynne and I work closely on a lot of stuff. Obviously, she’s writing and she’s the creative force and everything, but I’ve taught myself how to program in Flash or I’ve taught myself more about web programming or I’ve gone through and carefully read her books doing technical edits. Boring kinds of stuff, but there are times when just being able to work together saves our bacon because we just have too much to do to be at odds.
[Sandra] You have to be willing to become something you didn’t expect to be. I didn’t expect to be an accountant. I graduated in humanities. And I’m an accountant.
[Dawn] Me too. I was an English teacher, and I do the accounting and the book work and all the office stuff and the shipping and… I like it, actually.
[Sandra] Exactly. I didn’t expect to ever like that stuff, but it’s been rewarding. I never expected to do book layout or design, and I do that constantly. So I’ve had… in the process of supporting my artist, I’ve had to become things I never expected to be.

[Dan] Wonderful. Let’s close by asking… maybe this is a repeat, but we’ve talked about all the stuff you have to go through, all of the trials. What makes it worth it in the end? To buy into this dream of your spouse and go with it?
[Kenny] My wife is never happier than when she is writing. She loves it, and she’s happy, and that makes me happy.
[Dawn] Same here. Like when Dan first quit his job and he was working, just writing every day, he came home and he was like, “I feel so bad. I get to play all day long and write.” I like, “No, that’s great. I love it when you’re happy and writing.” It’s wonderful he doesn’t get ulcers or anything. I mean the stress isn’t like his other jobs. It’s wonderful that he loves it and is living his dream. That makes me happy and that’s what I’ve always wanted.
[Sandra] I’m going to agree on the happy Howard thing, but I think… I like that he’s happy, and I like being happy, and I like being part of that. Another thing that I really like, though, is when we get an e-mail or somebody comes up to us at a convention or… and says that what we did, that all the work that we’ve put together for Schlock Mercenary or Writing Excuses or whatever made a difference in their lives. I love that. The fact that we work hard, we get to do something we love, and it’s actually beneficial to other people.

[Dan] All right. I think that wraps it up for this week. We’re going to close with a writing prompt which Howard is going to give to us.
[Howard] Can I use blue Italian monkeys?
[Dan] [hesitantly] Yes…
[Howard] Okay. Your writing prompt comes to you from the AP style book… the fake AP style book. Something involving a blue Italian rocket-propelled monkey piloted dirtbike.
[Maniacal laughter]
[Dan] You’re out of excuses, now go write.