|
New episode! I sat down with Jelena Curic for Episode 32: How a Viral Comedy Character Sold Out Her Debut Novel (Without Bookstore Gatekeepers). Jelena is a lifelong performer and singer who started making reels to promote her debut novel, Sing to Me, and ended up creating Teta Jela — everyone's favourite Balkan aunt. Her social media has gone viral as she explores Teta Jela's takes on life, and my favourite sketches are the contrast between Teta Jela's parenting style and Summer Breeze's mum. In this episode, we unpack Jelena's multifaceted artistic journey as a writer, comedian, singer, and cultural representative — from creating Teta Jela to the challenges of cultural representation in writing, the realities of the publishing industry, and what it takes to protect your creative freedom. We also get into midlife challenges, coping with anxiety and vulnerability, embracing confidence and authenticity, the risks of content creation, navigating online identities, and the emotional impact of menopause on relationships and storytelling. 🎥 Watch on YouTube or Substack 🎧 Listen on your favourite audio platform 🔗 https://www.amrapajalic.com/podcast.html 
0 Comments
I'm a subscriber to Jane Frideman's Electric Speed newsletter. Sign up below. https://jane-friedman.kit.com/posts/electric-speed-raising-prices In her latest newsletter she listed: Are you “in the weights”? In the Weights lets you type in a name and see whether today’s major AI models “know” who the person is—recognizing them from memory alone, without looking anything up online. AI models are built from billions of internal numbers (the “weights”), and some of what they absorb during training gets baked permanently into those numbers. So, a person the model can describe from memory is, in this site’s words, “in the weights.” It might be worth a look, whatever you think of AI. Keep in mind it’s a rough instrument, better treated as a curiosity and not a scorecard. (Yes, I am in the weights, as a publishing industry expert, top 3 percent.) So I thought I'd test it and see how well AI knows me. I'm attaching the information in the post and my commentary below. GPT 5.5 is correct GPT 5.4 thinks I'm a community worker Claude is accurate Claude Haiku is accurate Grok is correct Gemini light thinks I'm a social worker Kimi changed my short story collection from The Cuckoo's Song to The Cuckoo's Flight Deepseek is wacked and thinks I'm a social worker and completely changed my novel title GLM Flash thinks my novel is called The Bridge-I have no books by that title at all. Weird. Mistral is all accurate I was using Chat GPT, but have switched to Claude and imported all my data. I use AI to help me research, brainstorm, analyse novels or articles, help me with structuring novels and articles, write social media posts, write emails where I'm too angry and blunt to be trusted with a keyboard. I'm also experimenting with having Claude do a daily task of collect articles of interest that I can view and see if it sparks ideas. I also use it for teaching to help me differentiate, spark ideas for resources, etc. I've also been thinking about how to support Generative Engine Optimisation for my website and to that end have added some extra features like my media kits, questions and answers. If you use AI, what model do you use and what for? On school holidays and getting to properly immerse myself in my creative life. Spent all day writing an article I'm going to pitch next week. I haven't been writing much I wanted to pitch lately—mostly just writing for my Substack instead. There's no pressure there to fit a publication's standard, no thinking about whether it's commercial enough. It's become my little corner of the world where I can write whatever thought is in my head and just get it out. I love that freedom. But every so often something comes along that I feel deserves a wider audience, and that's when I'm motivated to write for publication instead of just for myself. This article is one of those. Was so deep in my writing life today I completely forgot about my hairdressing appointment. Keep your fingers crossed the pitch lands. If not, you'll get to read it on my Substack anyway—that's the beauty of having it. If you want to keep up with my musings, go to my Substack: https://amrasarmchairanecdotes.substack.com/  School holidays have given me some much-needed downtime, and I'm loving the chance to sink back into my creative life. I'm thrilled to share where things are at across the series: Book 4 — Echoes Among Wattle Pines is finished and available for pre-order now, releasing 1 August 2026. Yes, you read that right — less than a month until it's out in the world! 🎉 Book 5 — Whispers Behind the Wire is drafted and resting. This is my first series, and I'm learning that the way to go is to batch and draft books, then start the next one while the previous rests. That distance lets me return with fresh eyes, tighten story arcs, and make sure every thread pays off. Book 6 — Shadows Beneath the Crescent is my current work in progress, and I've just hit 32,000 words. Seka is really coming alive — lots of internal conflict and a cracker of a case. Writing long-form has been such a rewarding experience. I get to build a world, deepen my character, and craft mysteries that dig into Australia's history along the way. Which book are you most looking forward to? 👀 https://www.amrapajalic.com/seka-torlak-series.html    The Book Won’t Sell Itself: What Warren Rankin Taught Me About Memoir, Vulnerability and the Hustle29/6/2026  ✍️ New on the Substack: I've turned my conversation with Warren Rankine into a full written piece — for anyone who'd rather read than listen (or wants to come back to the parts worth underlining).
Warren is the author of Fifteen Feet Tall, and our chat covered two threads I keep circling back to as a memoirist and an indie author. The first is the unsettling gap between memory and fact. Warren accessed his childhood welfare file through Freedom of Information, and what he found didn't always match the story he'd been told — or the way he remembered feeling. When it came time to write the book, he had to catalogue that entire file and calibrate, line by line, between what he recalled and what the records proved. It's the quiet, uncomfortable discipline at the heart of memoir. The second is the business of being an author *after* the book is done. Warren has run his own business for 21 years, and he doesn't sugarcoat it: the launch isn't the finish line — it's the starting line. A brand image, however polished, doesn't make a single sale on its own. The work that matters comes next: showing up, connecting, and (his words) never sitting down doing Sudoku at your book-fair table. I've pulled all of it together — the memory work, the marketing truths, the book-fair rules — into one piece. 📖 Read it now (link in bio). And if it resonates, I'd love for you to share it with a writer who needs to hear that the book won't sell itself. 💛 https://amrasarmchairanecdotes.substack.com/p/af54e27c-a009-42cb-a393-60eafc0f8c6f?postPreview=free&updated=2026-06-21T05%3A01%3A42.468Z&audience=everyone&free_preview=false&freemail=true Three episodes, Three artists, Three lessons I keep coming back to. Hosting Amra's Armchair Anecdotes means I get to sit down with people doing genuinely brave creative work — and episodes 13 through 15 reminded me why I love doing this. Lukas Kasper: "Motivation is going to be the biggest thing for anybody. It doesn't matter how talented you are." Demet Divaroren: "Just don't give up if it's something that truly speaks to you, to your soul and your heart, and it just gives you life. Just keep doing it." Nina Nikolic: "You can be as good an artist as you want to be, but if no one sees it, or if you don't tell anyone about it, no one's gonna know." I'm grateful to every guest who's been generous enough to share their process and their setbacks with me. I'll be turning these lessons into a graphic series over the coming weeks — a small way to make sure they reach more people than just my listeners. https://www.amrapajalic.com/podcast.html    Everyone in Australian publishing agrees on the same thing right now: too many books, too fast, quality dropping. What nobody agrees on is why. Buried in recent reporting is a detail that should be the headline: official counts of Australian books published each year don't even include self-published ebooks — "an area of huge growth." There's an entire population of working authors making a real living who aren't part of this conversation at all. I wrote about what gets lost when the "fewer, better books" debate only ever proposes fixing traditional publishing from the inside — and never asks why authors need a Big Five's permission to be treated well in the first place. Read on Substack.   Show notesWarren Rankin, author of '15 Feet Tall,' shares his journey from business to authorship, the emotional process of writing, the decision to publish, and the challenges of vulnerability and cultural representation in memoir writing. He discusses the role of editors and the response to his memoir from men and women, highlighting the growth and evolution experienced through the writing process. The conversation delves into the themes of compassion and connection, revisiting personal records, institutional trauma and freedom of information, separating craft from product, persistence in marketing and promotion, and belief in self and value creation. Warren's experiences and insights provide valuable lessons for aspiring authors and individuals navigating personal challenges. Takeaways
Chapters
Connect with Warren RankineWarren Rankine is author of Fifteen Feet Tall — a memoir written by a Ngarrindjeri man exploring childhood abandonment, foster care, trauma, identity, survival, and what it means to rebuild a life after growing up without stability. Warren’s story isn’t just the memoir itself, but the way he’s approached authorship. He’s not coming from a literary or academic background. He built a business first, then turned to storytelling, and has approached publishing with a really direct, entrepreneurial mindset. We’re talking about writing trauma honestly without becoming trapped by it, the emotional cost of memoir, masculinity and vulnerability, and the realities of marketing and direct-selling your own story in a crowded publishing landscape. Website: https://www.fifteenfeettall.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fifteen_feet_tall/ Feel so lucky to have had so many beautiful souls in my life who helped me celebrate my 49th birthday recently. Ageing in a privilege, and sharing these milestones with such good friends is everything.  🎙️ I sat down with two insiders from IngramSpark — Chris Munnery and Madeline Bush — and we covered everything indie authors need to know but often find out the hard way. The biggest misconception? That IngramSpark will market your book for you. It won't. But what it will do is give you access to 45,000+ global retail and library partners — if you know how to use it properly. We talked about: 📚 What actually gets a book stocked in a bookstore 🔍 Why metadata is your first act of marketing (and the free tools to help) 💸 How wholesale discounts really work — and how it compares to traditional publishing royalties 📖 Why skipping your proof copy is a mistake you only make once ✨ Exciting new features coming — printed edges, direct e-commerce, format conversion, and translations Whether you're on your first book or your tenth, there's something in here for you. Read the full article on Substack or at the link below 👇 https://amrasarmchairanecdotes.substack.com/p/19b5bc19-915c-43b3-9429-e5afcee85132  |
AuthorAmra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. She writes memoir, young adult and romance under the pen name Mae Archer. newsletterSign up and receive free books.
Twitter feedArchives
September 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed