Author Jason June is having so much fun and wants you to have fun, too.

NYT Bestselling Author Jason June joins us to talk about an early career pivot that led to great success, how to successfully think about and write across different genres, and what he wishes he'd known when he started out.

About Jason June

 Jason June is a best-selling author of young adult novels that celebrate queer love and lust and chaotically gay shenanigans. His works include Jay’s Gay Agenda, Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball, The Spells We Cast, and the instant New York Times best-seller, Out of the Blue. When not writing, JJ zips about Dallas, Texas, with his husband and their Pomeranian, Pom Brokaw. JJ is a tried and true Laura Dern stan, and he is actively looking for an Andalite friend. Find out more about JJ and his books at www.heyjasonjune.com.

Connect with Jason June

Instagram
X (Twitter)
Website
Substack Newsletter - Ventorship with Jason June!

Moonkarta

***The Guardian - Best Podcasts of the Week***
***Radio Times - Pick of the Best...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:30

Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmidt and we're the co-hosts of Riders with Rinkles. Today, we are thrilled to welcome author Jason June to the podcast. Jason June is a best-selling author of young adult novels that celebrate queer love and lust and chaotically gay shenanigans. I love that phrase so much I just want to keep saying it. Anyway, I won't. I'll keep going. His works include Jay's Gay Agenda. Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gabe Utaunt Ball, the Spells we Cast and the Instant New York Times Best Seller Out of the Blue. When not writing, JJ zips around Dallas, Texas, with his husband and their Pomeranian palm broke off. I'm still laughing. Jj is a tried and true Laura Dernstan and he's actively looking for an andalite friend. Find out more about JJ and his books at wwwheyjasonjunecom. Thank you so much for being here. I love your bio. Sometimes bios are dry and factual, but yours is fun and I appreciate that.

Jason June: 1:35

Thank you so much. Bios are actually one of my favorite things to write, which I think annoys a lot of writers, because they're hard right they are hard.

Jason June: 1:44

And then here's my gripe about bios. I love to create bios. For each individual book that I'm writing, whether it's a picture book or a chapter book or a novel. It has its own individual bio. But whatever software programs all the booksellers online use will only let you have one at a time. It won't let you have multiple different bios for different projects, which is so. It's like I'm married to a software programmer. I know it would be just a line or two of code. It would be so easy for them to fix that. So you'll get like occasionally, my porcupine cupid bio for my young adult novel. That's like completely different and that's frustrating, but that one's kind of my catch all on.

Beth McMullen: 2:20

And it feels like a mismatch because your bios have your voice in them and your voice is different project to project. Yeah, computer software engineers need to understand that this is important. This sounds like a vent. This does sound like a vent, and we want to talk about your sub stack, which we just discovered, which is all about venting. Can you tell us a little bit about it so our listeners know what we're talking about? It's so fabulous.

Jason June: 2:48

Thank you so much and it really means a lot to me that it's resonating with y'all because it's a whole new newsletter revamp that I did at the start of November so it's still pretty recent where I was super tired of just doing my Jason June newsletter because it felt very like this exercise of self grandiose verbiage and everything that was just bananas and I never would do it.

Jason June: 3:10

I would do it like once or twice a year.

Jason June: 3:12

So I switched it to the Ventorship with Jason June and this is just where writers can write into me at any stage of their publication process so they could be pre published, they could be newly published or about to be published or multi New York Times bestselling, whatever doesn't matter where you are in your author journey and just vent to me and I'll write your vents completely anonymously on a post and give you my take on whatever you're venting about and then also open it up for comments so that other authors who, if they want to remain anonymous, can also respond to that vent to through my email or just do it straight on the post.

Jason June: 3:46

And it's been really fun to realize like it's called the Ventorship as a play on mentorship, because obviously there's the venting and then the ship part, because at the end of it we realize really no matter where we are in our writing journey, we're all in the same boat that there's something going on. Whether it's like gripes with our agent response time or wondering if whatever the advance we're getting is right or comparable to what other people have gotten, or if we're having issues with marketing, that kind of thing, we really all have the same things to vent about. And that's been a really great source of connection and it's been way more fulfilling for me than just being like I have a new book coming out, or here's a cover that I used to do.

Beth McMullen: 4:28

I was laughing out loud. It definitely resonated for me as things that we all want to say and we aren't saying. So I would not be surprised if this thing just took off like crazy because we have a lot of gripes. Yeah, it's going to blow up.

Jason June: 4:45

Thank you, I really hope it does just strictly for the fact that we can have this moment of connection. The idea was birthed from this moment where I wrote on an Instagram post my sales numbers for the first week of sales for the SpellsWeCast. I had 482 copies that were sold for the first week. I wrote in that post every first week sales numbers for all of my novels and talked about how they're just going down. It had about 1,500 for JSK Agenda my debut in 2021. I had almost 2,500 for Out of the Blue, which was the week that I made the New York Times Bestsellers list, which was an amazing moment, and then for Riley Weaver, in the beginning part of this year, may 2023, I had 587 copies sold and then the SpellsWeCast, which just released in October, was 482.

Jason June: 5:34

And I just wanted to be transparent about that, because it's like I'm doing the same thing every time. I'm creating pre-order goodies, I'm announcing the same cover moments, blurb moments, all the things and regardless of the same tactics. I'm like seeing the drop. Part of it is we're all seeing drops in sales right now and I wanted to be frank that maybe I had worries that people were getting JJ fatigued because I've released a novel or two novels a year for the past three years and when I posted that and I had dozens of authors reach out to me either on the post or privately, just saying I've never seen an author specifically name their sales numbers before and that meant so much to me and it put mine into perspective and so I was like we have to do this, we have to be more open with each other.

Beth McMullen: 6:19

Because you don't have any idea, right? If you are new to the game, or even if you've been in it for a while, it's like telling people how much money you make. Yes, it just doesn't get done so, then you're operating in this vacuum and you don't know if you've done well or if you've done somewhere in the middle, or if you've done poorly. And then I remember my first adult novel and this was years ago came out and did pretty badly in its beginning, but I didn't know what was bad.

Beth McMullen: 6:49

And then, I remember my agent saying to me well, now we got to dig ourselves out of this hole, and I was like I didn't even know there was a hole. Yeah, so just to be able to have some framework to think about those things in is enormously helpful for people who are at the beginning or somewhere in the middle when they just haven't you just don't know, and it's hard to be in that darkness.

Jason June: 7:12

Completely and it's made me realize, like every time I get more information, I'm going to post it through Vectorship when, like I think for around my Christmas time post, I'm going to just show the proposal I sent that sold. Riley Bieber needs a date to the Gabie Tom Ball, because I find a lot of like either second or third or fourth book authors want to get to the point where they're selling on proposal but don't know what that looks like. So I'm going to show what that proposal looks like and just every time I get royalty statements, I'm going to share what that is now and like how far I have to go. Like my first picture book that came out in 2017, I got a $10,000 advance and it still has not earned out. There it is, we have it. Hoover Hoover under my old name, jason Gallagher.

Lisa Schmid: 7:54

It's so cute, it's adorable. Ok, so I have to tell you a little side story. We have met before. Yes, at SEWI. Yes.

Jason June: 8:03

Did I tell you already you haven't told me the story, but I remember meeting you.

Lisa Schmid: 8:07

You do Of course Lisa.

Jason June: 8:09

Oh my gosh, I fully remember you.

Lisa Schmid: 8:12

This just made my day, but anyway. So I met you. I was just starting to write my chapter book series and then I saw you because I was obsessed with your picture book Hoover, whoever. It is so funny and the ending just cracks me up. And I came over and, as usual, costed an author that I really wanted to meet, which was you. In that moment I was like Jason. Anyway, I'm so delighted that you remember me. That's amazing.

Jason June: 8:41

Absolutely Just. You have an amazing energy and personality. How can I?

Beth McMullen: 8:45

forget Lisa. I'm just going to be on Cloud 9 forever now you just made her week. That is awesome.

Lisa Schmid: 8:54

Because most people, when I tell a story about how I met them at SEWI or you know, they just sit there going yeah, I don't remember you.

Beth McMullen: 9:04

No, they're much more polite about that. But you can tell from their facial expressions that they're like oh yeah, no honey.

Lisa Schmid: 9:11

No, didn't sink in.

Jason June: 9:12

Didn't get it, were you again. Yeah, that's the worst, when you realize it's not cooking. I love that.

Beth McMullen: 9:17

That is really fun. I'm glad we got to have that moment.

Jason June: 9:20

That was awesome, all right.

Beth McMullen: 9:22

So we have you here. We do not want to keep you forever and ever, even though that would be fun, so we have some questions for you that Lisa is going to launch into now.

Jason June: 10:02

Bring it on.

Lisa Schmid: 10:03

All right, okay. So you started writing convinced you were going to write middle grade fantasy, but after five years and three complete and rejected manuscripts later, that wasn't in the cards. How did you mentally dust yourself off and move in a new direction with Jay's gay agenda, which I love? Everything about this title about. Like the book, like everything, so go.

Jason June: 10:31

Thank you so much for that, jay's compliment. One fun thing is typically my story is start with a title and I've been so lucky that so far the publisher has never asked me to change my title, which has been really great, minus the spells we cast. That came to me and we'll talk about this later as an IP proposal and they had a different title, so we had to come up with a new one together, but anyway. So, yes, I wanted to start my journey as a middle grade fantasy writer. I love middle grade fantasy and I wrote three manuscripts that went nowhere and the switch to young adult actually came with me trying to just sort of cleanse my palate after the third try at middle grade fantasy and getting, like you know, my hundredth rejection. I just needed to read something that was unattached to middle grade, so I didn't get that little bit of like writer jealousies like I know I can write this too and I wish somebody would pick up my story.

Jason June: 11:21

And I started reading contemporary young adult and I was reading things like Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Lattich Smith EB Zaboi's works I love. I was reading Mary HK Choy and I just had this like pivotal aha moment where I was like All of these writers are writing about the magic of life. I've been so short-sighted to think like the only type of magic you can write about is like what we consider literal, quote-unquote magic of you know, witches, wizards, fairies, goblins, all that. It's like there's other kinds of magic I can be writing about, the magic of your personhood and like coming into your own. And what specifically those writers were doing that I thought was so Like what's the word I'm looking for? Not transformative, but so like Transportive maybe is the word I'm looking for that where they were writing about their own experiences, but through fictional lenses, but their own communities.

Jason June: 12:18

And I was like there is magic in coming into your own as a gay person and that's where the seat of Jays gay agenda came from.

Jason June: 12:27

As I just I remembered that time. The little seat of truth from my life in Jays was being the only out gay kid at my Rural Eastern Washington high school where I was like accepted by my classmates but I had no actual way to be gay, like there was no one there I could date, I hadn't held somebody's hand that I wanted to hold their hand for. So I felt like this Emotionally stunted sixth grader where all of my 18 year old senior classmates were way more experienced Romance-wise than I ever was or could be. And then I remembered in my first year of college just how great it was to finally get to like explore myself. And so I, minus a year, made it senior year of high school and found the fund in that and created Jays gay agenda and was realizing like I'm still writing about magic, just the different kinds of magic that we make in real life, and that was what, how I got into young adult.

Beth McMullen: 13:17

I Love that story.

Beth McMullen: 13:20

I love that so much and it's so cool that you can remember the little kernel, the little spark that set you off on that path, because a lot of times you look back and you're like, oh, I don't know, it was right around here, but I'm not entirely sure what it was. It sent me off. That's cool to be able to really be able to pinpoint a Moment in your experience that sent you down this new, this new path. Yeah, so you also. You are the kind of writer who Lisa and I bring on the show and then we have Lots of envy for, because you write all over the place. I do. You write picture books, you write chapter books, and these are both a complete shift from Novels in many ways. So what is the process that you go through? Tips or tricks that might help people who are making a jump from, say, novels to chapter books or to picture books, like what helps every word sing.

Jason June: 14:15

So I kind of try to separate it into Levels of complexity is way too simple of a way to say that, because picture books can still be very, very complex. But what I mean by that is more levels of complexity of what it is that I'm exploring and what it is I'm trying to get out on the page. So with picture books I think of one singular facet of life and hone in on that on around. You know 500 words or less, or whatever it is they say for the industry standard. Typically with my picture books I want to be Funny and I hone in on what it is that I want to have Making my readers laugh. So, like with Hubert Hoover. It's a dunce detective, owl detective, who's solving the murder of a possum and we all know that. You know possums are playing possum, so I just wanted it to be. I'm focusing on murder, which was a really fun thing to do for kids, to talk about funny ways that an owl can envision other forest creatures killing a possum. That's what every single like new culprit accusation is. I'm just honing in on Hubert's specific flamboyant need for justice. That's the one thing I'm honing in on. Or like with my one very unjj like book which is called never forget Eleanor and it's my picture book about Alzheimer's. I'm honing in on the relationship between Elijah and his grandmother and how Alzheimer's is going to affect that. That's the thing specifically. So it's like naming what that relationship is, how it's established or how they've gone about interacting with each other and then how that changes with Alzheimer's.

Jason June: 15:49

So I'm getting in on the nitty-gritty of one facet of life for my main character with a chapter book. I'm expanding that. I'm still gonna have my one protagonist, but we're gonna get, we're gonna get some Secondary characters in there. And instead of one facet of that main character's life, I'm honing in on one overarching theme of life that my main character wants to explore, because I have a little bit more Space there. So it's like like my murmur cornyland chapter book series, lucky wants to explore feeling left out and feeling Stunted, so to speak, and that he doesn't get magic like the other. Murmur corns are getting magic. So he's like what does this mean?

Jason June: 16:24

And honing in on that thought of like in the real world when a kid is like Okay, I'm trying an instrument for the first time and I'm terrible about I'm terrible at it. Or we're going out on the playground and playing kickball and I can't kick a ball to save my life. How does that make me feel? What are the insecurities that come about that and explore that one little theme of life or experience of life and how, how that kind of opens up a young reader's heart to the first time about an overarching idea about things and a greater, a greater acceptance and understanding of this interaction or types of interaction you're gonna have in life, like you wouldn't make fun of somebody because they can't kick, the same way that you can Try to find the other strengths that that kid has, that kind of thing.

Jason June: 17:07

And then for a novel we go even further, where it's like we're talking about all the layers, that we're not not just one layer anymore, it's all the layers that intersect. So, like, most of my young adult novels are Rom-Coms. And so I'm talking about the layer of love. I'm talking about the physical sensations that go along with that, the emotional sensations that go along with that, adding the layer of your friends being involved in how that changes your friendship. Then adding the layer of still being Technically under your parents rule and how that affects the interactions you can have or want to have. All those things come together. So then it becomes this big old tapestry as opposed to just one like little picture that we're drawing, and it's just the complexity that I talk about in each age group is just in terms of what you're really honing in on. How big is the full picture of your book, start to finish, if that makes sense?

Beth McMullen: 18:00

Oh my God. Yes, I almost want to pause so people can grab a pen and write down that idea that you encapsulate so perfectly, talking about picture books, that you're taking this one. There's this one kernel of truth to it and that's what you're focused on. For that, the length of that book and the duration of that book, and then it just grows as you go through, as you move from picture to chapter to novel, etc. That is such a great way of thinking about it and so clear People can understand that. I think it's like I was thinking because Lisa and I are kind of working on this picture book, which is a whole different story, but like I feel like that is a really great way to frame the work that you're going to do on a picture book.

Lisa Schmid: 18:47

The whole time you were talking about the picture book. I was just because we're doing this. We wrote a picture book a while ago and we thought it was really funny.

Beth McMullen: 18:58

It is really funny.

Lisa Schmid: 18:59

It is funny, like we think it's funny, so anyway. So we've decided that because we both, you know, like I do chapter books, but picture books are like that's a whole different ball game. That is so hard.

Jason June: 19:12

They are really hard.

Lisa Schmid: 19:13

And so we decided we kind of just shelved it. And then we had this gal on Lynn Marie from Rate your Story and Seasons of Kindlet and she does this thing called Rate your Story where authors can submit their picture books. They can get critiques. So we sent ours in. We're doing a whole new segment called the Big Picture, where we are letting people follow our journey of receiving the critique which we did yesterday and then reviewing it, and then she's given us homework and then we're going to go. Our agents gave us the okay to sub on our own so that we could take our listeners all the way through the process.

Jason June: 19:53

I love this.

Beth McMullen: 19:54

It's that transparency thing, right Like this is transparent. This is what it looks like. It's a little bit crazy.

Jason June: 20:01

Totally. Oh, this is amazing. I love this so much.

Beth McMullen: 20:04

Yeah, but what you just said really stuck in my head is like okay, we're not doing that on our book, we need to do that on our book.

Lisa Schmid: 20:10

Exactly that's what I was thinking. I'm like, hmm, I've already seen our problems.

Beth McMullen: 20:16

We are always learning here, writers with wrinkles. We just keep learning, always, always, always. You want to hit the next question? Yeah.

Lisa Schmid: 20:25

So what aspect of writing have you most improved in over time, which is a big question, because we're always learning and improving, just like we did just now. But what resources also helped you in this area? Because I think our listeners are always looking for resources and those big moments are where can I learn more? I'm always hungry to learn about. Where can I learn more?

Jason June: 20:50

So for me, I think probably my biggest weakness is describing the setting of where everything is. I love dialogue. That's my jam. It's also why I really like script writing where it's just basically dialogue, with the occasional directional bit thrown in there. So I've had to hone the skill of figuring out ways to describe the place that they're in and how that place affects the action that's going on, without it being like pause. We're talking about the setting here, right, because it can be so jarring.

Jason June: 21:25

And, to be honest, I'm not very good with craft books because I get very I'm very type A, I'm a very Virgo Virgo and I have my routine. I eat the same thing for lunch every day. I do all my I don't. It's in a broke, so I ain't going to fix it Like that kind of thing. But when I am broke with my writing process or know there's something I need to do, I try to just read other books that I think do what I'm trying to do well. So for me, a lot of high fantasy right setting super well, and even though I don't really write high fantasy or lyrical fantasy by any means, I try to find ways to get the information that those books are giving us and their beautiful pros, but then deliver it in my campy contemporary JJ way. That doesn't seem very helpful now that I've voiced it out loud.

Lisa Schmid: 22:16

No, it really does, because and I think this is I'm the exact same way I don't think I've ever read a craft book. I don't absorb information that way. I'm kind of like what you were saying. So I read, read, read, read, read, read. And that's really how I learned how to write was just through reading other people's work and saying this person does this really well and highlighting things and taking notes, and that's how I learned how to, how to write to even when I get stuck, if I'm feeling writer's block, I pick up a book and then that really it helps like an edge those little brain cells into action. We're the exact same way.

Jason June: 22:54

So whenever I have writer's block, I just am like, oh, I'm going to read a book. I'm like, okay, I got to put my project down and just read something. It's not to then copy what we're reading it's just to let your brain totally shut off and escape into another world. And subconsciously your brain is working on escaping into your world and figuring out those plot holes Exactly. I totally get it.

Beth McMullen: 23:12

Yeah, I find craft books intimidating, right? You're like, wait, I'm not doing that. And then writers were all insecure, right? So the first thing we think is well, then I must be wrong. And this, whoever it is writing this book. And sometimes, if you look to see what that person has actually written, there isn't anything. So why are you trying to take advice from somebody who's not done the practice? And now you're feeling insecure that, oh, you screwed it up because you're not doing it the way that they said it.

Jason June: 23:42

Yes.

Beth McMullen: 23:43

Where. If you really want to know, like you guys both said and Lisa says this all the time just read the books. Read the books in the genre you're interested in, Like you said, reading a genre that does something specific well, so you can learn. It's such good advice. I hope that if people get nothing from our show ever, I hope they get that Like go and read books. It is, you know, everyone is its own little MFA for you.

Jason June: 24:06

Yes and like embrace your style and embrace who you are. And like to go back to the lyrical thing. I always tell people I will never write lyrically. If you like lyrical fantasy, do not pick up the spells we cast. My name is Ganycee Bell. It's a contemporary fantasy. It's very campy, it's very over the top. That's how I love to write. I'm like I'm like a gay Hallmark Channel movie. So it's pokey, it's cheesy and it pokes fun at that Like it's. There's some self-awareness in my work where we know it's cheesy and that's the fun thing about it. And that's not for everybody. It's like I don't go flocking to the movie theater to go see the Fast and the Furious movies. That's not my thing, but I'm so excited for the rock and Vin Diesel and all the people that are in those films. I want them to have this big mark on culture that they've had and I celebrate them. I just don't need to go see that. And so if somebody's like listen what you write, jj, it's not for me. I'm like you know what, that's OK.

Beth McMullen: 25:01

Yeah, but again, what you're saying about voice, and you've reached a level, obviously in your profession where you are confident and comfortable in that voice. So you know what you do well and that's what you're going to do, and I think people are striving toward that and it's a lot of left and right turns while you're trying to get there, but to be able to get there and be comfortable with your voice.

Lisa Schmid: 25:23

It's funny. I just had somebody say this to me and I won't say who it is, because I don't know if she'd want me to say her name, but somebody. We were talking about something and I just she's like you know what? You're never going to win a literary award. But you've got the middle grade voice down and I'm like I'll take that.

Beth McMullen: 25:42

You know what I mean? That is its own win, right there.

Jason June: 25:46

Yes, I fully get that. I'm like, listen, you don't expect a Hallmark movie to win the Oscar. Right, I am going to win a massive, huge literary award, but I hope that people will still buy my books and be like I can count on JJ to entertain me and let me escape, and it's like that's what I'm doing it for.

Beth McMullen: 26:02

All right. So you are a seasoned vet in this publishing gig and you've written all over the spectrum all kinds of stuff. So what do you know now at this point in your career that you wish you'd known at the beginning, that you think would have been helpful for people to know who are right at the beginning of their writing journey?

Jason June: 26:21

if you will, yeah, I wish that I had known that there are. What is it? What's the cliche Like peaks and valleys in the industry, that? So when I first got my very first agent, it was like everything moved super fast when I decided, ok, I'm going to do this and this is going to be my thing. I'm going to be a writer.

Jason June: 26:50

I took a few picture book classes because at the time I was assisting at a literary agency and every time I read, I would read picture book manuscripts. I would be like how do you tell a whole story in 500 words? I would not. I was terrible at sifting through picture book queries. So I was taking writing classes to get better at the format and I was like, wait a minute, there's something here. So I started writing this whole portfolio of picture books and after doing that for like six months I submitted to an agency. I'd met the head agent at a writing workshop and she was like yes, I want you at this agency. My picture book author slots are pretty much full. But would you be interested in another agent here? And I'm like, totally.

Jason June: 27:31

So I got my first agent. We submitted my first manuscript. It's sold within three months. Then my option book with my option picture book with them also sold and I was like this is going to be a breeze, I'm just going to keep on it. But then after that option book sold, I did not sell anything for four and a half years and that was like, oh, wait a minute, this is not going to be the breeze that I thought it was, and I wish at the time I had known more red flags, just in terms of the way I like to operate and how I work and how my agent at the time operated, and that's not to say like they're a terrible person by any means, just that our work personalities were very different and I wish I had seen that sooner.

Jason June: 28:16

But the good news was, in that time where I wasn't selling anything, I never stopped writing and I'm not one of those people that's like you have to write every day and it has to be to set them out and blah, blah, blah. But I just kept letting my mind percolate on new manuscripts and I would jot down ideas in moments where I didn't feel like I was fully ready to dive in yet. I just kept things going little by little, and that's one thing I say to people all the time, like, if you write even just a hundred words a day, you will have a middle grade manuscript by the end of the year. That's a hundred words a day. You can do that while you're standing in line for coffee and it doesn't have to be consecutive. It can be little disjointed things that you put together. It's totally doable.

Jason June: 28:55

If you do two hundred words a day, you have a young adult manuscript. Like it's a totally doable thing. And even if it's just writing little paragraphs for yourself to come back to later about ideas, it all adds up it all. Eventually you'll hit that moment where you're like, oh now we're really cooking with gas. But I wish I'd known at the time it's not always gonna be full steam ahead, both for your writing and both for your successes in terms of, like, getting books picked up by a publisher, and that's totally okay that you're gonna hit your stride eventually, and when you do that might slow down again, but it's just gonna all come back around, so don't freak out.

Beth McMullen: 29:32

That is good advice, because it really is bits and starts and I feel like I've been doing this a long time and it still fits and starts and that's just. That is the normal. And some people it just starts and goes gangbusters forever, but I think that's a slim minority of folks. For most of us, it's yay, oh my God, yay, oh my, it's very, it's very up and down, as you said.

Jason June: 30:00

Yes, and I think you really hit the nail on the head there and like an easier, more succinct way to say it than my ramblings before would be that that we are the vast majority of us like 99.999, whatever percent of published authors are mid-list authors. There are not just like, oh, a dozen best sellers in any given group of random selections of authors. It's not that way and even though, like technically, yes, I am a New York Times best seller because I hit that list one week, it was one week and my sales numbers now are not as big as I know. People who are not keyed in the industry would think they are from that. So it's like we're not all TikTok sensations, we're not all fourth wing selling, you know, half a million copies in one week, which would be amazing. And I'm so happy for her success. I'm reading the sequel right now. She is the exception and not the rule and I'm so happy for everything that she's getting and I wish I could get that too.

Beth McMullen: 31:00

See, but this is all part of your radical transparency thing, right With your sub-stack where you're talking about what is actually true and going on, and the people who are sending you things about stuff and publishing that they feel like, wait, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be, because all people hear about is this person sold a half a million copies in one week. Well, isn't that what happens for everybody? Like they don't realize that the space between a B-list author and that person is enormous.

Jason June: 31:30

And most likely, we did exactly the same things on our path to publication in terms of interacting on social media, in terms of trying to get any word out about the book before it was published. The author input was most likely exactly the same and it was just all the powers that be aligning for one certain book and you can't begrudge that person that Like they deserve it as much as you deserve it. It's just how it goes and hopefully someday we all experience that.

Lisa Schmid: 32:02

Yeah, no kidding, it's just. It's good to hear all that because a lot of times when you're you know and you can't help it, but when you see other people on social media and you just feel you know, people get, you, get insecure and you're like, oh my God, they're succeeding here, they're succeeding there and they don't realize like all the highs and lows behind the scenes and it's just, we're all going through it. But what we often face forward is put out something very different because, you know, we just don't want people to see that dark person rocking in the corner crying.

Beth McMullen: 32:37

That struggle is real, it's real for everyone.

Lisa Schmid: 32:41

And so yeah, that's such good information, so okay. So now we have the big question, and this is something new that we're doing, because we're always looking for ways to serve our listeners, and so we want to know did you have like an aha moment in writing, for example, something that you learned about craft that flipped a light switch on in your brain, or something that helped you get over the hump of self doubt as writers we all share?

Jason June: 33:09

So for me it was with the process of making out of the blue a book. I originally wrote out of the blue, I think, technically before yes, before I wrote J's Gay Agenda, but I wrote it trying to be somebody else. I wrote it as trying to be a lyrical YA, trying to be deep and trying to be like sad, where I had two Merpeople come on shore instead of just one and they were on their journey together and one got really addicted to drugs and partying and drinking and died at the end of the novel.

Lisa Schmid: 33:47

Oh my God, this sounds horrible.

Jason June: 33:51

It's awful. And I tried to have this moment of like yeah, I can be deep and dark too, you know. And then, you know, with feedback from my agent, it was like this is not it. And there was like what do you mean? And then, rear, it was like no, it's totally not it. And so when time came for my book two, after I sold J's Gay Agenda, I was like I'm gonna revamp out of the blue and it's gonna be completely me. And then it just became what it is today and how it should be, where it's a rom-com.

Jason June: 34:22

It's full of just cheesy tropes and really leaning into the flamboyance of life, and that is what I'm supposed to do. And that's when I really realized like, okay, this is actually my voice, this is my brand, this is how I write. And that's when I really I leaned into I know I've said it so many times already I leaned into the hallmarkness of it all Each year, hallmark's not going okay. Now, how can we switch up the movies? They're like no, no, we know the vibe, the feel, the formula, the almost the dialogue every time that needs to be said in these movies. We're just gonna switch a few things up because they know that's what people are coming to them for. I just need to embrace that myself, that people are coming to me for the flamboyance, for the camp of it all, for the larger than life, unrealistic, like God, this would never happen. Yes, we know this would never happen, but isn't it fun to think about what if it did happen? That kind of thing.

Lisa Schmid: 35:13

So that it just it sounds like just embracing your authentic self is going to be the key to success for writers. Because I think you do see that sometimes, where I remember a writer friend was obsessed with a certain author and she sent her a manuscript and I felt like she was trying to embrace that style and I'm like that's not you, Like you need to be you, Like this is not resonating and it's because she just loved this author's style. But if it's not you, it's not gonna work, because readers will see right through it Exactly.

Jason June: 35:46

You've just gotta be you. I'm currently in the process of I say in the process of it. I haven't even started outlining my seventh novel. It's the first time I haven't had anything under contract in a while. Both of my next novels that are coming out next year are now off to copy edits and so I get to like start thinking about what's next and I don't have the pressure of a deadline and I'm gonna try my hand at an adult novel for the first time. So I can get really freaking spicy and I'm just telling myself over and over but don't try to be some other kind of adult novel you've read. Embrace your camp, embrace your flamboyance, but then turn that adult and have fun with it.

Beth McMullen: 36:25

I am so there for that book Big way. I want you to write that book. That is so fun. I'm exactly in the same place that you are. I am without a contract for the first time in like a decade and I actually am kind of loving it because it gives you this sense of freedom that I had sort of forgotten.

Beth McMullen: 36:44

You could get where you can try things and then be like, nah, I don't like that, I'm gonna redo it, and not feel like, okay, no, I have to make that work because that's 5,000 words that I wrote down and I can't delete it all because then I'm gonna be behind and I'm gonna miss this deadline. So it is liberating, which I think you're gonna end up having a lot of fun, and I can't wait for the book. Thank you, thank you. So, jason, june, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us and share your experience with us. I feel like there are a lot of nuggets of gold in this conversation that our listeners are going to be very happy to have.

Jason June: 37:23

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you all asking me to be here and, like you, are testing the limits of my Botox. I've been smiling so much today. Ha, ha, ha ha ha ha.

Beth McMullen: 37:33

That is the perfect place to end we are all happy smiles here and listeners.

Beth McMullen: 37:39

Remember that you can find out more about Jason in our podcast notes and I'll drop links to all his socials and his website there too, so you can easily get in touch. I'm also gonna put the link to the sub stack, which you definitely want in your life. So, as soon as this episode ends, go to the notes, find sub stack and sign up for Jason June's newsletter, because I was literally laughing out loud and having so much fun and I want you to laugh out loud and have fun too, and, as always, thank you guys for tuning in. Please visit our Writers with Wrinkles link tree or the podcast notes and find out how to support the show by subscribing, following and recommending. We have one more original episode for season two dropping next week, so please join us for that and until then, happy reading, writing and listening.