From a Shared Love of Holidays to a Successful Business: a convo with authors Heather Macht and Lynne Marie

Get ready to dive into the enchanting world of children's literature with Heather Macht and Lynne Marie, the creative minds behind the hit platform, 'Seasons of Kidlit'.

Discover how their shared passion for festive holidays, especially the allure of Halloween, transformed into a thriving platform promoting children's books.

This episode offers a deep dive into their collaborative journey, highlighting key strategies in author marketing and community building. Learn how they've made a mark in the literary world, particularly with their unique focus on spooky children's stories and holiday-themed books.

Join us for an engaging discussion filled with insights on publishing, book promotion, and celebrating the joy of reading with kids.

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About the Authors

Heather is the Owner / Creator of #SeasonsOfKidLit.  She's thrilled to bring her passion to life and promote books with seasonal and holiday tie-ins. She's also the author of 15 books including The Mutant Critter Sitter (ABDO, 2024), a six-book chapter book series featuring #girlpower, responsibility, spliced mutant creations, and science-filled fun. The Woodlot Monster Mysteries (ABDO, 2023), a 6-book Chapter Book Series featuring less-common monsters, and promoting #girlpower, problem solving, and teamwork and more! Find Heather at: website, FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, 

Lynne Marie is a #KidLit Author, an Agent Mentee with The Seymour Agency, the Director of Rate Your Story and spirited lover of Holidays, Halloween, and all things spooky. As a child, her favorite book was Chase's Book of Days which lists all the holidays. Five of her published and pending picture books are all Holiday Tie-ins. Find Lynne Marie at: website, FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:30

Hi, friends, today we are thrilled to welcome authors Heather Mocked and Lynne Marie to the podcast. Heather is the owner and creator of Seasons of Kidlet. She's thrilled to bring her passion to life and promote books with seasonal and holiday tie-ins. Her favorite holiday of all, and one of the main reasons she and co-host Lynne Marie get along so well, is Halloween. Heather is also the author of 15 books, including the Mutant Critter Citter, a six-book chapter book series featuring girl power, responsibility, spliced mutant creations and science-filled fun. The Woodlot Monster Mysteries, a six-book chapter book series featuring less common monsters and promoting girl power, problem-solving teamwork and more.

Beth McMullen: 1:13

Lynne Marie is a kidlet author, an agent meantee with the Seymour Agency, the director of Rate your Story and a spirited lover of holidays, halloween and all things spooky. As a child, her favorite book was Chase's Book of Days, which lists all the holidays. Five of her published and pending picture books are all holiday tie-ins. I gotta say I get tired just reading everything that you guys are doing. I mean honestly, lisa and I were actually laughing about what slackers we are and welcome to the show.

Lisa Schmid: 1:47

It's so nice to see you in person. I know nobody else gets to see your beautiful faces, so I will say to our listeners they're quite lovely. Oh my god, you guys are amazing. You do so much Can.

Beth McMullen: 1:58

I ask a quick question about how you met each other. How did you because you collaborate across a lot of things how did you first come to meet each other?

Heather Macht: 2:08

That's what I was actually going to chime in with. Lynne Marie and I have been I mean friends for I don't even know how many years, but we met through a critique group, then transitioned over to rate your story, where I helped with some website design and helped with the judging. We worked kind of at a small press together and then I had the idea to open up seasons of Kiddlet and she said that she is on board and she loved Halloween just as much as I did. So of course it was natural, but she's a gem. I absolutely love working with Lynne Marie, love doing events with her and love brainstorming with her.

Lynne Marie: 2:48

And I'll add to that. And she lived out this part because she thought of seasons of Kiddlet and I was like man, why didn't? I think that I was like such a brilliant idea? So thank goodness she allowed me on board because we both really share that passion together and we do work really well together. So it just makes it so much fun and so there's so many facets to it. That makes it great. So we both love it and we've known each other. Gosh, I can't eat. For a long time I kind of lost track.

Heather Macht: 3:23

I want to say at least 10 years, because it was right around the time when my first book came out, which it's almost 10 years old now.

Lynne Marie: 3:28

So you know we just, we just like very. We both love holidays and spooky things and creepy things and you know it takes a special someone.

Lisa Schmid: 3:40

Well, I think when you take on a project of this magnitude, it just like with you know, with writers with wrinkles we get along really well. And you have to have a certain chemistry and a certain dynamic for a partnership to work and be cohesive, and the two of you clearly have that.

Lynne Marie: 3:57

Yeah, thank you, and Heather, really Heather's the nicer one, just so you know wait, wait, beth, who's the nicer one between the two of us?

Lisa Schmid: 4:07

Me, what?

Lynne Marie: 4:11

Yeah, heather, heather's no comment. No, she's so great to work with. Like if I say something, if I'm being picky, she always hears me out. She never gets offended. She always has, like, really great ideas, and then when I have great ideas, she lets me have my great ideas. So it's just a really good give and take and it's fun to work with her, but she's also super nice.

Beth McMullen: 4:38

These are all the hallmarks of a great partnership. We get a lot of questions on the show from people who want to collaborate or work with somebody on a project, and I think all of the things that you just said are the foundation for that potential success that you need to be in sync, you need to be having fun, you need to be able to navigate the stuff where you disagree. So that, I think, is really a nice little encapsulation of the things that you need to launch a successful partnership. I want to, because we've been talking about seasons of Kiddlet. Can you first give us an explanation of what seasons of Kiddlet is for the people out there who don't, who aren't familiar with it?

Heather Macht: 5:18

Absolutely so. Of course I love Halloween and just starting or going back to the start of it all was I had did a post on Twitter now ex encouraging people to put a picture of their book and pair it with a candy. For you know, the Eastern Spring holiday and it took off and I was realizing that there are so many downs in publishing. It'd be great to have more games to play as a community and, in a way, that's what seasons of Kiddlet is. So the first big event was Halloween my favorite holiday of all, if you don't know me, that is, I watch Halloween movies year round and I read Halloween books year round.

Heather Macht: 5:57

So I thought that would be such a great way to celebrate would be do a month long event focusing on spooky books, including prizes, including critiques and books, and Lisa was so wonderful to give out a bag of candy, which I'm so jealous because I love candy cord. But you know, that's really what started. It was just wanting to have more community and the Kiddlet to give other people a platform. It's hard to even get your book on a blog right now, but to give more of an open platform and help celebrate people.

Beth McMullen: 6:26

So, in terms of marketing, using seasons of Kiddlet as a marketing effort, do the people who participate feel like they get more exposure than they would if they were just posting into you know, into the ether? And also, how has the changes at Twitter slash X, et cetera affected this project? There were a lot of Kiddlet authors on Twitter and I know that a lot of them have migrated elsewhere or off of it in recent months. How has that affected your ability to continue to do this successfully?

Heather Macht: 7:06

Of course I'm an IT manager I think I said that at the beginning but I run analytics. I will say, even though a lot of people left, I've noticed that we had a huge spike in participation this year. I'm going to contribute a lot of that to Lin-Marie's awesome seven spooky sentences idea. That was our biggest hit. Again, it was just a game getting everybody involved, like, hey, just share seven sentences and no judging, but let's see if we can win a prize and get everyone's creative juices flowing. But analytics showed that, even though people did leave, the number one source of our visitors to the website came from. First it was email marketing, because we have a lot of subscribers now and people that are subscribed to our newsletter, but after that it was Twitter. Lin-marie, full disclosure.

Heather Macht: 7:51

Facebook gives me anxiety. I don't know why I cannot do Facebook, but Lin-Marie is the Facebook queen. She posted so many times on Facebook and then, after that, instagram. We hit several different areas to have social media. I'll let Lisa speak, because I think that after the first year, lisa, you had reached out and said that you were so glad to join seasons of Kiddlet and that you noticed that you did get exposure for your book. So do you feel like that was a good marketing tool? Oh, absolutely.

Lisa Schmid: 8:18

I looked at all the comments and there were several. I think there was like 25, 30 comments. The book's not out yet, but I think I've seen, like because I go on and check every once in a while, and I did see a little spike in sales in October. So I attribute some of that to you guys. Of course, I always get a little bit more because it's October and it's a ghost story In regards to. I think it's been nothing but beneficial for me. I'm wondering how is it for you in marketing your books, Like, do you find that your marketing efforts with like seasons of Kiddlet, do you feel like it impacts your book sales?

Heather Macht: 8:53

I know I had a lot of people reach out to me privately and just say they're really interested in my books and where can they check them out. For and I mean, before seasons of Kiddlet I was just the Florida girl. I mean I would post pictures of like lizards and things that I found Another reason why Lynn Marie and I get along so well. She also likes little critters, but I feel like that really helped shape my platform and let everyone know that I am. You know, I love Halloween, I love monsters and of course all my books, especially the 12 coming out, so the six with the abdo this past season and then the six more coming out next season they're all have Halloween tie ins. So I really do feel that that helps people get an idea of who I am. Like I said, I've had a lot of people reach out to me and say, oh, I love monsters too. And where can I check out your books? Can I order them from a library?

Lynne Marie: 9:42

And I'll let Lynn Marie speak to her and to yeah, so I don't follow the analytics as much as Heather, I just kind of roll with things. I do think it helps us to brands because both of us, like, as you know, love holidays and we write holidays, and it just gives us some authenticity because when you see us and see how much we love holidays and then you, like, might be more apt to want to check out our books because you can see the passion and then I just think it all supports each other for people to get to know us, people to get to know our books, us to make connections, and it's very important to read and read in your genre. And if you're going to write holiday books, you need to see how other people write them and integrate the holiday and also make it stand alone. And we also read and review the books too. So we're staying like really on top of the holiday game and like we really know our stuff, we know what's out there, we know who wrote it, we know who published it.

Beth McMullen: 10:49

So everything just feeds everything else and it's just been a wonderful experience and it sounds like you have such a coherent brand which I know sometimes you struggle with us and author, what are the themes that are running through my work that I can showcase? So it sounds like you are both kind of exactly in the place you need to be to, because you love the holidays, because you're writing about it. It lets you pitch them, it lets you help other people. It's great. Such a great thing, so exciting.

Lisa Schmid: 11:22

Well, that leads perfectly into our next question and, heather, this one specifically for you, because I'm really interested to hear more about your publishers. So you have the Woodlott Monster series and it's with Abdo, educational publishers. They're very different kind of publishers Now. Aren't they geared more towards schools and libraries? Is that correct?

Heather Macht: 11:42

They are yes, okay, talk to us about that. Yeah, absolutely. The entire process with them has been almost like an author's dream. So I came up. Well, let me go back.

Heather Macht: 11:54

I saw that they had some openings and they had different imprints and they gave some specific requirements for them. So my first six books coming out with them is with, or that came out with them last year was with Spellbound, and those books were early beginner chapter books. They gave it criteria they wanted them to be no more than a thousand words, they wanted them to be geared for grade two, but then after that, oh, and they wanted strong character development. But then after that it was them asking for you know, you to submit just a story. So, naturally, first monster that came to mind was Chupacabra. I love Chupacabras and they're just not enough representation of Chupacabras and picture books or chapter books. So I wrote a four chapter book for them, geared specifically towards them and their call that they had.

Heather Macht: 12:47

And I noticed that my agent, lynette Novak who's amazing, by the way, she is like on top of her game sells books all the time. But I noticed that she had just had another six book sale with Abdo and I'm like, hey, you know, I happened to write this based off a call. Would you be familiar or comfortable with submitting it over to them? Initially I only pitched four books and the only thing she asked me to change she's like well, you know, they really like six books and I'm like, oh yeah, no problem, they're all out another two and they ended up picking it up. So I mean, it's a very typical process. Other than having a more of a guideline to go by, it was a pretty standard submission process. They ended up loving the story, of course, signed the contract and it was interesting to stay within the guidelines. And then when I got the manuscript back because it goes with a common core type standard for education, certain common core words for the Woodlop Monster Mysteries are bolded and they're almost animated in the book it was just really cool to see the final product.

Heather Macht: 13:45

And then the Mutant Critter's Sitter series that's coming out. It's actually for the next age range up, so it's for third grade. Very similar process. I stayed within a guideline. They asked to go up a grade and then this time it was 7,500 words and 10 chapters apiece. So I had strong character development. I had, of course, a love-putting female leads, but strong female leads and some science type themes in there. So, yeah, I mean they, they're definitely educational, but what I love about working with them, it's still your idea and your vision for the series.

Lisa Schmid: 14:19

Are those available for purchase in the general in bookstores, or is it just specifically geared towards schools and libraries only?

Heather Macht: 14:28

I know they're available on Amazon. As far as being in bookstores, I personally haven't seen them, but I definitely know that they're making their way in a lot of libraries and a lot of schools.

Beth McMullen: 14:37

That is very interesting. I had not heard of this publisher and Lisa was like you got to check this out. It's really interesting. So you own the IP for that right. Even though you're writing to specific guidelines, they're not giving you story suggestions.

Heather Macht: 14:49

Correct. Now I think with the contract I should have to go back and look to be honest, but I think it's that they bought the idea for me or from me, so that was. I guess I was like a little bit different than like, let's say, some of the traditionally published books. I had Right, but I still came up with the idea and you know the characters and everything and they edited it. So it was. It was actually a really fun process.

Beth McMullen: 15:12

Yeah, that's really interesting and it seems like they're asking for big character development with a thousand words.

Heather Macht: 15:18

That had to be challenging A thousand was way more challenging than 7,500. But it was. I'm always up for a challenge, so it was. It was definitely a fun process.

Beth McMullen: 15:28

I'm going to find those books, because I'm super curious about that a thousand word, because it feels like you'd have to employ some of the same stuff that you use for picture books and that big bang for your buck in every word. Really, it must have been a really interesting exercise for you too, as a writer to have those limits, definitely. Our next question is actually for you, lynn Marie. So we love the concept of rate your story. I mean, we were talking about submitting to you our crazy little picture book, but we want to hear more about the program and how it started for all of our listeners out there who have not heard of it or not used it.

Lynne Marie: 16:03

OK, so rate, your story was originally started by Miranda Paul. I used to be in a critique group with her a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and she ran it for five years and handed it off to Sophia Gools, who ran it for five years. And now I have it and basically what it is, it's a ratings and feedback service where you can get the eyes of a traditionally published author to give you feedback to help bring your project to the next level. Basically it could be some line edits, it could be big picture, it could discuss whatever the reader feels is most would most help you to bring it to the next level. So we have a membership that goes from January till November 30th and you get 18 ratings and feedback. But we also and that's that was the premise always when Miranda had it and when Sophia had it. But when I had it I had to go play around with the format because I had been an aspiring writer and then I was a published author and I was a judge and now I owned it and I'm like I realize that people don't always know how to navigate the feedback. So I kind of integrated that there's these writer aids and webinars and things to help people improve their craft and get the feedback they want, because that's probably one of the things that is not.

Lynne Marie: 17:44

People don't always get the feedback they want or expect and I think that could be discouraging. But meanwhile you have gotten feedback from someone who's gotten past the gatekeepers and you should really try the feedback on for size and use it. So I wanted to make them able to use it more. Like you know, you're not going to just sit there and feel bad about it. Okay, you can come to help desk and we can talk about it, or you can attend the webinar we have on picture book structure or whatever. So hopefully people don't get discouraged. I mean, it's just the nature of the beast people are if they don't get what they expect. But I do think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations of the feedback they're going to get, because maybe they showed their mom or their friends or their husband or their critique group who they're now best of friends with and everyone's so supportive and loving, and that's great. But you know you need an objective like unbiased, honest feedback to really make progress. So basically it does that.

Lynne Marie: 18:56

And then this year we had a member forum on Facebook, which worked really well. We had a resource group and a membership group and now we actually have a whole forum on Mighty Forums. So we're very excited about that and we have. We have other things that I do. From time to time I'll do a first pages event, record it and post it in the resource group so people get to actually submit their first pages and then, if yours was unpicked like you, still get to learn from it. And we have a book chat every Sunday night, because reading is very, very important aspect of you know learning your genre and learning what works, what doesn't work, being able to ask questions and all that. So we have a mentor text talk every Sunday night. Now anyone could go. You don't have to be a rate your story member, but only the rate your story members will get the benefit of the replay.

Lynne Marie: 19:58

So yeah so there's a lot going on, but it's like multi faceted, so like, depending on what you need, you can pick and choose. Like maybe you only need feedback on like 10 manuscripts but you need, or even less, maybe four, but you need to watch the Crab videos and do the other little exercises we have and things like that. So yeah, so there's something for everybody and it's well worth the price. It is a paid membership.

Lisa Schmid: 20:28

So this sounds like such a well rounded program. I I've got to imagine because we do have a lot of listeners that are aspiring picture book writers and I think that I remember when I was first starting to write a picture book years ago and I took it to the scbwi conference and I did one of those intensives and it was, you know, the editors like put it up on the screen or like editing it in front of me and I just like it was all really bad critiques. I mean they was. It was a horrible manuscript and I like walked out of there Like the walk of shame. I was just like this is really bad and I never look back, I never.

Lisa Schmid: 21:11

I never wrote a picture book after that and I thought this is just too hard. So my hat's off to you. But I just I think if there was something like this because I remember at the time searching for like some type of you know some classes or something that was well rounded to get me through it and to teach me the craft of writing a picture book I would have loved this if I had known about this. So I'm that's why I was so excited when I saw that you did this.

Lynne Marie: 21:37

Yeah, thank you, and we also do have independent one off like you could get a speed pass for rating and feedback without committing to the membership. I personally would be the person who would sign up for the 18 ratings and feedback and do the webinars like no matter, no matter how long, like I watch webinars all the time too, like even though I have many books. So I would do that. But for those that don't want to do that, you could get a one off speed pass which is rating and feedback, or you could get a critique which is full fledged, line by line, big picture and everything, and we have a query letter critiques. So we have like options if you don't quite want to commit. But it really does make sense to commit in my opinion, even with just the replays of the book chats.

Lynne Marie: 22:26

Some of the book chats are so amazing and we also do have authors come read their books sometimes and answer questions from our members, or you know our book chat attendees, and that's really helpful. It's really helpful to understand why a book does what it does, why it works, why it doesn't work and it gets expensive. I know to. You know, really buy books. So, like we do always encourage, we always put out links to buy. We always encourage people to leave reviews to, to gift and all that, so we're always promoting that too. It hopefully works out for everyone.

Beth McMullen: 23:07

I think I read that you use volunteers to do the assessments and things, or how do you, how do you find the people who are doing the critiques in the background?

Lynne Marie: 23:17

Most of them have been with us for a really long time, like I was a rate your story judge for a little, really long time and I still am. So that's the model that was set up, that Miranda set up and then Sophia continued and then I continued. I like to give gifts. The pandemic was tough, you know, but I am giving gifts this year for Christmas, like thank yous, and I do.

Lynne Marie: 23:47

I do go out of my way to promote the authors that are readers, because you know, and they have also the option for even more promotion, like everyone's busy, so it's hard, but they can write guest posts that we will publish in any one of our social media forums. We interview them a lot. We, you know they get first chance at being authors from March on with Mentor Text, which is another big promotion that we do. We'll put them in our newsletter. For example, we have, like, the books that are coming out from our judges. We have a graphic and then, just as an example, kristy Mahaley is going to be our January interview. She just wrote a little golden book about Mel Brooks, which is really fun, and you just want to know more about writing for little golden books, for one, and also how to make a topic, you know, kid friendly. So there's just always opportunities. We also just interviewed Lauren Christine, who writes a lot of sell books, remembering Saturdays with grandpa, so like if you have a book coming out like, we will celebrate it and it's just like a whole nother avenue of promotion for you.

Lynne Marie: 25:04

I think it pays off. I mean, I like even if I didn't own it, I would still be continued to be a judge and I also love giving back and I also love seeing what's out there, because sometimes Heather will tell you you'll get like a whole bunch of turtle manuscripts to write, or a whole bunch of like everyone's writing grandma manuscripts, or it kind of like informs you like not to write about those things. Or you know, you're like this is here but it's going to be submitted and it's like OK, I have to raise the bar on my own stuff and make it really different, because you know kind of what's in the pipeline. So there's like stuff to take away from, not just seeing what everybody's writing.

Beth McMullen: 25:51

You know the trends as they're actually happening, probably before the publisher knows the trend. You know the trend because you're getting this stuff first, so you'll be like turtles everywhere. 2025 unicorns. There's another one.

Lisa Schmid: 26:04

Well, you know what's interesting is that and I write ghost stories and fortunately, my next book is that I'm working on is time travel, so I've kind of moved away from it. I feel like every story that's coming out right now, every book deal I see, is a ghost story. I noticed a lot of those two. I just think that's interesting and I'm wondering how long before that little bubble pops, because it just all, all of a sudden it started and it started picking at pace and now I just see it. Like every time I see a book deal on, it doesn't matter if it's middle grade or early chapter books or YA or adult fiction. There's always a ghost, which I love because I'll read all of Well.

Lynne Marie: 26:41

I also do mentoring and so I get to see a lot and like, for example, with the grandmother books, like agents are not wanting to see them, so I'll get them and they'll be like, should I trash this? And I'll be like. You know, you can't exactly write to trends. You just have to make it new and different. So I said you're not going to never want to have any grandma books come out, you just want to be the one that's good enough to ignore the fact that it's over saturated with grandma books already. So you need to read like a hundred grandma books, whatever out there and write when that's different. I don't think that you should give up what you want to write. You just have to make sure it's different, it's fresh and new and it's marketable.

Lisa Schmid: 27:29

So I'm going to throw this back over to Heather. Let's go back to seasons of Kid Lit, because I'm still fascinated with this and it's such a huge endeavor and you guys clearly enjoy it. So what advice would you give people wanting to partner in a marketing project like this, because it is a huge task and a huge ask of somebody.

Heather Macht: 27:48

I would say, the biggest thing to do. So if you're looking to create a platform, if you're looking to start something like this, make sure it's something you're passionate about and to partner on it. You got to make sure you find someone else that's passionate with you. So this is where it's been great to partner with. Len. Marieher and I both love holidays. We love celebrating To me that whiskey is finding someone that's just as passionate to go in with you on it.

Lynne Marie: 28:14

Well, I'll jump in and say also find someone who have such a shortcomings, because Heather's like amazing, like with websites and web design and analytics and things like that. So there's a lot of things that we split the duties very happily though. But yes, I mean, if we weren't such a good match with splitting the duties, it would be hard.

Heather Macht: 28:40

Yeah, I definitely agree. Len Marie is awesome at marketing and promotions and I. That is not my strong suit, so I really appreciate that. I went to school for Fine Arts and Graphic Design, so that's where, like, creating a lot of the graphics and stuff comes from. And then, of course, you know the IT background for the website, but I wouldn't know anything about marketing and reaching out to different groups, and she's so great at that it's interesting advice because that feels very similar to Beth and I.

Lisa Schmid: 29:08

We have very. Our relationship is very similar. We started this because it was a passion, but in her strong suit is she's the driving force and she's really good on the editing and ideas and just everything. She's you know, and I'm over in the corner and kind of like oh, this is fun, let's do marketing.

Beth McMullen: 29:28

This is an underselling, of course, of Lisa, who does all the like, booking of guests and all the marketing and all the graphics and all the stuff that I'm, like, hotly allergic to, so I think that's really a good thing to point out. Though, if you're going to partner with somebody, you want to look for skills that are going to complement each other, because you're going to need a range on any project involving anything. So if you can get individuals who bring certain things to the table that are nicely aligned with each other, that's like putting you one step ahead, so that you're not, if you have the same exact skill set, you're going to run into trouble at some point. Can I ask you guys a bonus question? Okay, so we have established Halloween is your favorite holiday, so what is your second favorite holiday? We are coming into like well, we started with Halloween coming into like big holiday stretch at the end of the year, so what do you once Halloween is done? What are the other? What's the second favorite holiday?

Heather Macht: 30:25

You go first, Lynn Marie, and I'll think about that.

Lynne Marie: 30:28

I have to say I really do love Christmas and Hanukkah, like for different reasons. So I love winter holidays. I feel like the winter would be horrible without them. I really need to say all the holidays.

Beth McMullen: 30:44

I like the fact that you're like I'm not answering this stupid question of one.

Lisa Schmid: 30:49

You're scrolling through every holiday.

Beth McMullen: 30:52

I like this one and this one and this one and your question. Forget it. That's very funny, but I, when I was reading your bio, you were saying that you love all the holidays and I was like, all right, I got to ask to see if this is really the thing, and you do, in fact, love them all I love them I do, except for Thanksgiving, is a little bit my least favorite because of the mass massacre of her turkeys.

Lynne Marie: 31:12

But I do like being thankful, though, and I do like getting together at family, so there's that.

Lisa Schmid: 31:17

I've never thought of Thanksgiving in that, quite in this terms. The massacre of turkeys, Okay.

Beth McMullen: 31:23

Heather, I'm going to say, yeah, I want it Now, I can't wait to see my mother's going to die.

Heather Macht: 31:30

You know it's hard because I was going back and forth between Thanksgiving I really do love Thanksgiving and then I was going back and forth between that and then the entire month of December. We don't get much of a winter here. Let's be honest, in Florida I always like to tell people like the coldest we get here is when the iguanas start falling down at the trees and we get that weather advisory. It's a real weather advisory, by the way.

Lisa Schmid: 31:49

Is there any picture books on that? There should be. There should be.

Heather Macht: 31:54

I've seen many. That makes sense. I'm not a fan of Black Friday. I don't understand being thankful and then going through mass shopping and elbowing each other to skip from Thanksgiving right to December. That's like my good mix right there.

Lynne Marie: 32:09

Didn't we celebrate chaos day or something we did.

Heather Macht: 32:13

We celebrated World Chaos Day on November 9th. Isn't that every day? Yes, absolutely.

Beth McMullen: 32:20

Well, thank you for indulging me and answering that question that I did not give you beforehand. That one came out of the blue. Lisa, do you have a favorite holiday?

Lisa Schmid: 32:28

You know what? Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and, as you know, my son was born on Halloween Makes it extra special. It is extra special, but I've always, always, loved Halloween.

Beth McMullen: 32:39

This is such a well-timed episode. Honestly, I didn't even realize that until right now, because we're coming into Thanksgiving, we're coming into December. We just wrapped Halloween. So yeah, thank you guys, so much for taking the time and being here and talking to us about your projects and sharing your experiences with us. We are very grateful.

Heather Macht: 32:59

Thank you so much for having us. This was so much fun. We were excited to get the invite.

Beth McMullen: 33:04

I'm so glad that it worked out and, listeners, remember you can find out more about Heather and Lynn Marie and our podcast notes. I'm going to drop links in there to all their socials and the websites and all of the services and efforts that they are into that we've talked about today so that you can easily find them and get in touch. And, as always, thank you, listeners, for tuning in. Please visit our Writers with Brinkles link tree or the podcast notes and find out how to support the show by subscribing, following and recommending, and we will see you again next week, december 4th, for the new Top 5 Deep Dive episode. We love those episodes, so please join us for that and, until then, happy reading, writing and listening.