Nalini Singh and her series obsession

Kiwi, Nalini Singh is the NYT bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling and Guild Hunter paranormal romance series. She also writes contemporary romance novels.

If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. You will also have access to bonus episodes and insider information. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            G’day, and welcome to Write With Love. Today I’m chatting to New York Times and USA Today best selling Kiwi author, Nalini Singh. Thank for joining me today.

Nalini Singh:                 It’s nice to be here. Thank you for the invite.

Sarah Williams:            No worries, and I always love talking to the Kiwi’s. Always just so amazing people, and you are just absolutely doing amazing things. Everyone keeps on telling me, “When are you gonna talk to Nalini?” I’m like, “I’m planning on it.” So let’s get into it. Tell us your story and how you got into this amazing career that you’re having.

Nalini Singh:                 So it’s a long process. I started writing quite young. When I was … and then when I was in high school, that’s when I got super serious. And I wanted to write novels. Until then, I had been writing already, but you know, shorter pieces. In high school for some reason, I decided that I would now write novels.

Nalini Singh:                 So I just started trying to write them, and I remember sitting in the kitchen. I must have been 14, 15 or something like that, and I had hand written this whole science fiction book. It had a prince, and he had lasers coming out of his eyes. I was reading it aloud to my mum going, “What do you think? What do you think?” You know, my mum’s cooking dinner, and she’s like, “Oh, that’s very nice dear.” So she’s always been wonderful, you know.

Nalini Singh:                 I just kept going, and eventually I moved on from handwriting and actually started typing out manuscripts. I was really into romance then. I found science fiction and fantasy first, and then I found romance. I really loved them all, and I decided I would try to write a romance. I thought I can do this just like everyone. Everyone thinks they can read or write a romance. I have an excuse. I was like 16 or 17. So you know when you’re a teenager you think, of course, this is easy, and this is fun. I can do this.

Nalini Singh:                 So I did, and I’m actually really proud of myself. I wrote that romance and no need to rewrite it. I sent it off to London. I submitted it. I found out how to submit, and this was pre-internet. So there was nothing online. So I actually rang up a distributor in Auckland, New Zealand, said, “How do I send this book to this publisher?” And they’re like, “Um, we have these guideline things they give us sometimes. Do you want those?” So they sent me the guidelines. They were lovely, and I followed and sent it off.

Nalini Singh:                 Immediately got a very quick rejection. It wasn’t even on full piece of paper. It was like this tiny little piece of paper. It’s like, yeah, this book is not suitable for our line, but I didn’t even care because by then I had started writing my second book. And I was like, okay fine. They didn’t like the first one. They’ll love the second one. Here’s a spoiler. They did not love the second one either.

Nalini Singh:                 So I don’t actually know how many books I wrote before my first sell, but I would say probably say seven to 10. I think all that writing, I just kept writing. I think it just made me a better writer because I was just producing so many thousands and thousands of words and writing all the time. Eventually I sold to Silhouette Desire. That’s my first book, and I’ve got the cover here. ‘Desert Warrior’ was my first ever book, came out with ‘Silhouette Desire’, and even though I started off submitting to London, I actually ended up selling to a New York publisher ’cause at a certain point I started submitting to New York as well.

Nalini Singh:                 I wrote six books for Silhouette Desire, but you know, I had this excitement at the start of my career which is, I thought, oh this is it. I’ve found my place, and I’m gonna write lots of these, but I never quite fit. And that was kind of a sad realization to come to. Also, quite debilitating as a young writer because I thought this was the start of my career, but I was having real trouble. So I remember I was just, okay fine. I’m just gonna write whatever I feel like.

Nalini Singh:                 So I wrote this crazy book with telepaths and shape shifters and this huge world and politics, and I just wrote it. I wrote it manically. I had a first draft in three weeks, and I was working full time. Then I thought, oh, what do I do with this now? So then I went looking for an agent, and yeah, my agent, Nephele Tempest. She sold to Berkley, and that was probably a real [inaudible 00:04:54] to my career because until then, I was just having such a hard time. Each project, so many revisions, but this Slave to Sensation, Psy-Changeling world, it just fit me. The editor at Berkley, Cindy, my editor, she loved it. I had the perfect storm. Sometimes people say overnight success, and I’m like, “Yes, after about 10 years.”

Nalini Singh:                 I’ve got the covers for these too. This is the first Slave to Sensation cover, my purple guide, and this is the reissue after 10 years. So the series was 10 years old in 2016. So they did a reissue for the first book. So that’s kind of like a long story.

Sarah Williams:            Yes. So you’ve been about 12 years now as a published author?

Nalini Singh:                 Yes. So my first book came out in 2003. So almost 15.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Excellent.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah. Yeah. From September 2003, I think. Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Fantastic. So you’ve definitely had a lot of success as a paranormal romance, and you also do some contemporary as well.

Nalini Singh:                 I do. I mean I’ve always loved contemporary. I didn’t start out in trying to write contemporary just because I thought that’s what I could be published in, you know. I truly enjoy contemporary romance, and the ones I wrote at the start of my career, I still love those books. So I’ve always had a joy for contemporary romance even though probably paranormal and [inaudible 00:06:34] fiction of every kind is probably my home. I’ve found … It’s that collision of all the things I love. Science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery. Paranormal romance as urban fantasies have all of that. So that’s fantastic, but every so often I also still like to tell that contemporary story.

Nalini Singh:                 So a few years ago I had this idea for a rockstar series, but I just wasn’t … I didn’t feel like I could do it justice then because it’s quite a gritty series. It’s not a light series, and then I got to a point. I was like, “Yeah, I think I can actually write this now.” So I did. Then it flowed on to my rugby players. So it’s fun. I also think as an author who has been in the industry for a long time, that it’s good to just have different things to excite you and interest you. And then each new project is different and is a challenge. So I think it probably goes in cycles. Every so often I need to do something different and rejuvenate myself because I love my paranormals. I absolutely love them, but now, with doing the contemporaries as well, I’m just so much more excited to go back to the paranormals after that break. Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s talk about some of your series. You’ve got a few different series there. That’s brilliant. So your Psy-Changeling series, tell us what was going on in those books and why you wrote those ones.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah. So that was the book I wrote when I couldn’t sell anything. So that was the book I wrote when I was so angry, and I was like, “I can tell good stories.” It actually built over a long time. As I said, I’ve long been a science fiction and fantasy fan as well, and one of the things I always interested in as a concept was the idea of mental abilities, telepathy and telekinesis. Not just [inaudible 00:08:36] true ability. We could have this conversation, but you would be in Australia and I’m in New Zealand. But we wouldn’t need any technology because we could talk to each other with our minds.

Nalini Singh:                 So that was the kind of thing I was thinking about, and I was always fascinated by the idea. I did a lot of reading on it, actually, in high school and just fell down the rabbit hole of all these research studies that people had done. The guy who could be in spoons. Sort of found out all about him, and tried to do a science fair project on telepathy. I don’t think the science teachers were too impressed, but it was just something I found fascinating. The idea of the human brain, and what if there’s that potential there? What if we just don’t know how to access it?

Nalini Singh:                 So I came up … I had these people and said, “You know, they would have amazing abilities. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to have telekinesis, for example?” And then, just [inaudible 00:09:33] what if it drove you mad having that much power, mental power? Having telepathic voices coming at you every minute of every day. What would you do to survive? That was the birth of the psy, and so what they to survive was they decided that if they eliminated all emotion, it would allow them control over their mental abilities as well. They wouldn’t get angry. They wouldn’t lose control. They wouldn’t hurt the people they love. They somehow thought it would stop insanity caused by their abilities.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah, that was the psy, and as for my shape shifters, my changelings, you know, it’s funny. If I had actually stopped to think about what I was writing, I would have thought this is really weird. I’m putting telepaths and shape shifters together, but I didn’t. I was just telling the story, and I was just caught in the grip of it. I wanted to know the end, and in the end, it just worked because my changelings, they’re the warm heart of the series. They’re passionate. They get angry. They’re very physical. They are the polar opposites of the psy, and they just came out of my love. My shape shifters love to shape shift. They are not … It’s not a curse. It’s not something that happens with the moon. It’s a part of them. That’s why I call them changelings because they are as animal as they are human and vice versa.

Nalini Singh:                 Then caught in the middle were humans, and so then I had this triumvirate of this world that I had to figure out.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Fantastic. So how many have you got in that series so far?

Nalini Singh:                 So what happened was, I did what I call season one. So I had finished a complete story arc, and that was 15 books.

Sarah Williams:            Wow.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah, and I’ve just had … So I’ve started the second season, and the second book in that has just come out which is, ‘Ocean Light’.

Sarah Williams:            Lovely.

Nalini Singh:                 But if somebody hasn’t read the series and is kind of put off by 15 books, they can start at ‘Silver Silence’ which starts off the second season of the series. I think it’s a really good place to start because it’s another beginning for the world. So we got to an end, and I had originally thought that would be the end of the series. But I got to the end, and it was like, oh, okay. Now what? Because the end actually turns out to be a different beginning. So yeah, there’s so much to explore. It’s fun, but yeah, you can definitely dive in with ‘Silver Silence’. I don’t think you’ll be lost at all.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Well they sound like something which would make an awesome TV show at some point.

Nalini Singh:                 [inaudible 00:12:16] from your lips to a producer’s ears.

Sarah Williams:            I know. Right. Fantastic. So you’ve got some other series as well. There’s the Guild Hunter series. Tell us a bit about that one.

Nalini Singh:                 So my Guild Hunters … So I had been writing the Psy-Changeling series for several years at that point, and I was writing two Psy-Changeling books a year. I thought it would be really good to do some stand-alones in between. Because I had worked full time for so long while also writing, I ended up quite an efficient writer in terms of my output because prior to that, I was going to law school and also writing. So I got very good at using tiny blocks of time to just get out as much as I could, and so when I became full time, I just though, oh my gosh. I can actually write more books because I have all this time now where I don’t have to go to a job or don’t have to go to university.

Nalini Singh:                 So I thought no, I’m already doing one big complicated series. I should do a stand-alone. So that was the plan, and I started writing. I had this … I saw this archangel in a tower in New York with a cell phone, and I thought, hmm, that’s not quite the image you think of when you think of archangels. Then I started writing, and my archangels are not biblical. They are another species. They’re true immortals, and I think that was a core idea I went in with. I had read some stuff with immortals, and I felt like they acted too human. I thought if you’re 10,000 years old, you are not going to care about this measly human that you can crash under your boot. That’s gonna be dead in the blink of an eye to you, and so my immortals are very, they’re deadly. They’re dangerous, and they don’t act human. They are truly inhuman.

Nalini Singh:                 That’s where I began, and I just started writing. Suddenly I had this guild hunter who retrieved, and there were vampires. It all just somehow worked. So the Guild Hunters series is much darker than the Psy-Changeling series. The Psy-Changeling series has quite a family heart. It’s got a warm heart. The Guild Hunters series by contrast is quite dark. There’s a depth of sensuality to it. There’s also a lot of violence. It straddles the line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. So a lot of people call it urban fantasy rather than the paranormal romance. I think it depends on you as a reader, but definitely if you’re more into action oriented stuff, that’s the series I would nudge you towards.

Sarah Williams:            Fantastic. So another series you’ve got, Hard Play.

Nalini Singh:                 Hard Play, yes. So the Hard Play series is a spinoff from my Rock Kiss series. The Rock Kiss series was four books and a novella. So it was about a rock band, contained series, and then one of the people in the series had brothers. I never actually intended to write about them, but everybody fell in love with the romance. So I was like, oh. I fell in love with the brothers too. So I thought okay, well now I’ve got to write all the brothers.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah. So the first book in the Hard Play series came out last year, and it was ‘Cherish Hard’. It’s my gardener hero. He’s a landscape gardener. I mean, they’re contemporaries. They’re fun. They’re romantic. As I said, the Rock Kiss series is slightly darker, grittier, but if you want something lighter, try the Rock Hard which is my sort of … He’s not a rock star. He just kind of happened to get into the series because it was a connection through another character. [inaudible 00:16:15] book and everyone’s like, you have to write this book. So I did, and then ‘Cherish Hard’ and the Hard Play series, they’re a bit lighter. There’s again, it’s that family focus. It’s people finding love in a contemporary world.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Oh that’s fantastic. So there’s definitely plenty to choose out of all of those ones. And of course then you’ve got some stand-alones and everything else. Wow. So yeah, full time writing now. How many hours a day do you reckon you spend writing.

Nalini Singh:                 It depends. I’m more like … I’ve never measured my daily achievement in my writing by hours spent. I’m more of a how many words have I written? Or how many chapters do I need to hit it? Because I don’t like that stress of that last minute trying to finish a book. I just feel like I don’t produce my best work if I’m trying to do that. So I like … I’m one of those people who needs slow, steady progress and get my book in on time kind of thing.

Nalini Singh:                 So what I do is, for example, I know I have to turn in a book at the end of November. So I will have it broken down what I need to achieve each week. Right? The reason I do that is it’s so easy to waste time and say, “Oh, I spent two hours at my writing today.” And really all you were doing is fiddling with your chat here and looking up names there. Some days, mainly I’d say I would have to do 3,000 on a draft every day until I have my draft, and some days 3,000 words maybe takes me two hours. And it’s done, or even less. Others, it’s 2:00 o’clock in the morning, and I’m still sitting here because I’ve got three of those 3,000.

Nalini Singh:                 So it just depends on the day and how the writing is going, but [inaudible 00:18:11] speak to any writers who are listening. For a long time career, you’ve also got to give yourself downtime, especially if you write full time because just like with any job where you’re self employed, it’s so easy to work all the time. You’re desk is always there at home, especially if you work at home, and we love what we do. I love being a writer. I can’t think of anything else I would rather do. So it’s easy to just work all the time, but I’ve found that if I give myself those breaks, if I do have the weekends off, I give myself time to read other books, or watch some television, or go traveling, whatever. It just makes me so much more energized when I’m back at my desk. So I’m still writing multiple books a year trying to have a little bit more balance.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s brilliant. So the Romance Writer’s of New Zealand conference is coming up in just a couple of weeks, and you’re going to that one.

Nalini Singh:                 I am. I always go to the New Zealand conference. I think I missed, since I joined, I think I’ve only missed like maybe two or three. Most of those were when I was living overseas in Japan, but yeah, I love it. It’s a small little conference. Even the Australian conference, I think, is several hundred people bigger than the New Zealand conference, but the good thing about a smaller conference, and when I say smaller I would say probably between a couple of hundred people, is that you really get to know everyone.

Nalini Singh:                 Most of the guest speakers, and we have some amazing guest speakers, you can get one-on-one time with the guest speakers. You don’t have to be pushy or anything. Just because it’s a smaller group and they’re out there. They’re hanging out. You can join in, and everyone’s really friendly as well. I think that’s another outcome of having a smaller group. It just feels friendly and sort of intimate, and you can join in groups. And no one’s gonna be like, “Oh. Who are you?” They’ll just be like, “Oh, hey. What do you write?” And off you go.

Sarah Williams:            That’s it, and I know there are a lot of Australians who are coming over this year. I think personally, I think it was Bella Andre and Nalini Singh. So yeah, I think it’s gonna be a fantastic conference, and I’m really excited. You’re doing a presentation, aren’t you?

Nalini Singh:                 I am. I’m giving a presentation on how to write series.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Excellent.

Nalini Singh:                 So I have this problem of not being able to write stand-alones. Sometimes it’s a virtue. No, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve written most of it already, and the only problem that I’m having is that’s too long. So I’m gonna tell everyone no questions. I have 60 slides. We’re gonna have an hour. It’ll be like a slide per minute.

Sarah Williams:            Oh my gosh. It’s gonna be fantastic. I’m pretty sure, wasn’t you were going to be a stream so, so many people could come, and then they said, “No, no. Everyone’s gonna want to come.”

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah, no. I think it kind of booked up straight away, and people were like, “But I wanted to come.” So that was kind of nice, and then they said, “Oh, can you do the main?” And I was like, “Oh, that’s fine.” I just had to … I was gonna do it on a white board ’cause I thought it would be a little room, but then now it’s a big room. So I’m putting it on slide show. So it’s gonna be fancy and have graphics and stuff. Don’t get excited though because I’m terrible at PowerPoint.

Sarah Williams:            Oh, I’m just so excited. I just can’t wait. I think Romance Writer’s of New Zealand, Auckland this year, it’s just gonna be awesome. So what have you got coming out in the next couple of, well the next, almost the end of the year already. So what have you got coming out this year?

Nalini Singh:                 Okay, so I just had a release in June, which was ‘Ocean Light’, and then I will have a contemporary come out … We haven’t got the specific release date yet just because just wanna make sure it’s absolutely set in stone before I announce it ’cause I would hate to say it’s this date, and then have readers expect it and not be able to deliver. The book is done. It’s with the copy editor. So it’s definitely coming out this year. Probably I would say in our spring. So that’s the American fall. I should have an exact date for that in the next month, and then after that, I have my next Guild Hunter book which is ‘Archangel’s Prophecy’. I have the two most amazing covers for that. So please, please go to my website and have a look. I’ve got a British cover and a North American cover. So the British and the [inaudible 00:23:12] cover and the North America, and they’re both fantastic.

Nalini Singh:                 They’re just beautiful, and I love them to pieces. And I cannot wait for the books to be out so then I can display them everywhere. Just randomly leave them places so people can admire my cover. The book itself, I mean, I love the book. I think that so much happens in this book. If you want to start series, this is one series I would say definitely start at the start. ‘Angel’s Blood’ is the first book, and it’s not as long as my other series. So you can jump in, and it’s kind of a critical book in the series because it just puts all these things in play for the end game which isn’t quite yet. But it’s coming, and so, things are building to a crescendo.

Sarah Williams:            That’s awesome, and I should just add too that I saw you have audio books which is brilliant. I love audio books.

Nalini Singh:                 I’ve just actually got into them this year myself, and I really, really like them. The funny thing is, I can’t listen to my own audio books because it’s … I just can’t, but I love people’s audiobooks I love.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, I always find I’m reading completely different things. So where I’ll read pretty much nothing but western romance and cowboys and rural romance, when I’m audio, it’s no. I’ll be listening to paranormal. I’ll be listening to erotica or something like that which is really interesting to listen to on audio with four kids in the car. But yeah, no I just love audio, and I definitely think we’re just moving forward into the future of what’s gonna be next.

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s … yeah, it’s going to be interesting what’s next because there’s all this … because I like technology. There’s talk of automatic audio where there’s a robotic voice that sounds human doing the reading. So I can’t imagine that.

Sarah Williams:            They’ve trialed something the other day. I remember listening on a podcast, and they said, the person that this robotic voice is having conversation to. Couldn’t tell that it was a robot answering really good questions. It’s so exciting. In translations as well.

Nalini Singh:                 Yes.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. I know you’re translated into a lot of countries, and congratulations ’cause that is a big achievement. So it’s onwards and upwards, and you’re definitely leading the way. Congratulations, and I can’t wait to see you in Auckland.

Nalini Singh:                 You too. I can’t wait for the conference. Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            It’s counting down now. I just can’t wait for a few days away from my kids really. So where can we go and find you online and keep in touch with everything that you’re doing?

Nalini Singh:                 Yeah, so the easiest place to find me is my website which is NaliniSingh.com. N-A-L-I-N-I-S-I-N-G-H.com, and all my links are on there. I’m on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and it is me on all those three platforms. My assistant helps out sometimes just on Facebook, but she’ll always sign it as her. So other than that, it’s me that you’re talking to online. I really enjoy that interaction. Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Well that is brilliant. Well thank you so much for joining us today, Nalini. That was really great.

Nalini Singh:                 Thanks Sarah. That was great.