Steve Cuden: On today’s story beat…

Sharon Virts: My friend Anthony McCarten, he wrote The Theory of Everything, he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic. I was telling him about the story of my house and there was a guy who shot the, had this duel and all this crazy stuff that had happened back in the early 1800s. And he says, I want you to write that.

I’m like, you’re mad. You’ve lost your ever-loving mind. Now, we have had way too many cocktails, okay? I’m like, oh, sure you will. And then within the next morning we saw him at one of the films and he said, listen, I may not make a screenplay out of it ’cause you know, I don’t have any control over that. He said, but you write it and I’ll help you.

So I did. 

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the Creative Mind Story Beat explores how Masters of Creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment.

Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today bestselling historical fiction author Sharon Virts, is a successful entrepreneur and visionary who after more than 25 years in business, followed her passion for storytelling. She’s received numerous accolades for her commitment to historic preservation, earning national recognition for both her business achievements and philanthropic endeavors.

Beyond her business acumen, Sharon is a gifted visual artist intertwining her artistic expression with extraordinary storytelling, to breathe life into intricate characters and vivid settings that captivate the heart and ignite the imagination. She’s authored two best-selling novels, mask of Honor and Veil of Doubt.

Sharon’s latest book, the Grays of Truth, was recently published. I’ve read The Grays of Truth and can tell you I was immediately swept up by the suspenseful historical murder mystery set in 1867 Antebellum Baltimore, where some of the city’s elite suffer mysterious deaths amid a backdrop of scandal. If you like historical thrillers, I highly urge you to check out the grays of truth.

So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great honor for me to welcome the outstanding historical novelist, Sharon Vert, to story beat today. Sharon, thanks so much for joining me. I. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. I’m just so looking forward to having our chat today. Well, I’m grateful to have you along.

So let’s go way back in time. What were your earliest inspirations and influences that got you into the business of writing books? 

Sharon Virts: So, I have always loved to read. I’ve always loved to write since I was like little, so little. I was reading, you know, five years old and, and started keeping a journal when I was six and just, I just enjoy writing.

I always have my father and my grandmother. We’re both storytellers. My dad had an eighth grade education, but that didn’t stop him from telling the, the wildest yarns about who lived here and what happened there always sort of a blend of history of the area that we lived in and the crazy people that lived in this house or lived in that house or did this with some horse.

Um, and I think that really had a huge impact on me, that sort of appreciation of history, but not so much, you know, 18, uh, 19 4, 8, 4, 14 92, the Columbus sail, the ocean blue kind of thing. But more of the people who actually lived someplace or did something, uh, and their stories, and not necessarily famous people, but just average people like you or like me, it’s really had a huge impact on how I.

First off, how I see the world. And secondly, and the, and the stories that I tell 

Steve Cuden: is that you are always looking for stories that have actually happened to real people. 

Sharon Virts: Absolutely. All of my novels so far, the, uh, three that I have written and the two that I’m working on now are all based on true stories that really happen in real life.

Uh, usually all of ’em so far and are in the 19th century. 

Steve Cuden: And how old were you when you started to not write these novels, but first start to write? You say you were a, a young person, a little girl. How or how, what age? 

Sharon Virts: Oh, so I was, like I said, I was reading around five, uh, I kept a journal. I have actually, it’s very funny.

I still have it. It’s a small little, oh my gosh. It looks like the size of an index. Of an index card, you know. Uh, and I have, you know, it rained today. I played outside. You know, that kind of thing. Um, since I was like in first grade, so, 

Steve Cuden: so you were recording things from really early on. 

Sharon Virts: And I still keep a journal to this day.

I mean, when I die, I, I don’t know, maybe I should go be through them before, uh, before that happens and throw the ones out, or pull the pages out. I don’t want my kids to read, but I mean, I have hundreds, hundreds of journals all over the place. And by the way, they’re not organized any particular date or anything.

They’re just everywhere in boxes in the basement, in my, in my bookshelves. I have ’em all over the place. 

Steve Cuden: Do you journal while you’re figuring out what the novel’s gonna be, whatever your book’s gonna be, 

Sharon Virts: right? So I journal my own life every day. I believe that we are all our own historians. If we don’t tell our own stories, who’s going to tell those, right? And so

Steve Cuden: that’s true. 

Sharon Virts: And I encourage all my followers on social media and my newsletters, subscribers. Uh, I have a journaling challenge I give to them every month. Uh, and, um, you know, I always, I give away journals every week, uh, to people for different, uh, occasions. And I journal every day. Uh, and I usually it’s just about what I did that day or what I’m thinking about, or some event that I’ve witnessed or just how I feel.

Some days I say, you know, what made me happy today? Um, I ate a chocolate I probably shouldn’t have had, so I wrote that down as, as something I, you know, I enjoy. Um, but I believe that’s an important, I would 

Steve Cuden: write that down every day, 

Sharon Virts: right? You know, that sweet in the evening. Um, but I think it’s a really important, um, part of our lives to record ourselves while I’m writing.

Uh, I mean, you know, my characters that do live in my house, uh, in my head, rent free. Um, and, you know, I do have to, you know, put them aside, but I don’t journal about them. I journal about, um, my own life, which I think is important for us all to do. So now your books tend to be mysteries, correct? Yes and no.

So the last two were, the first one wasn’t. It’s more of a, you know, a political fiction, I wanna say coming of age. But, uh, that book is being turned into a series. I’m writing the second installment of that now. But they all do contain some level of murder and some level of mystery in terms of, you know, the who done it or, you know, what’s about to happen next or who’s responsible for this, who’s really behind the scenes pulling strings.

But the last two have definitely been murder mysteries. And the one that’s coming out after the next one is also a murder myster mystery. So I kind of go back and forth 

Steve Cuden: and, and how did you get into mysteries? What, what trigger? Trixie Belden, 

Sharon Virts: um, I don’t know if you’re familiar. She was a, a grocery store version of Nancy Drew when we were a kid, and I just loved 

Steve Cuden: them.

I remember who Trixie, remember Trixie Belden? 

Sharon Virts: Oh my goodness. 

Steve Cuden: I, I remember the, I don’t think I ever read them. I read The Hardy the same thing, 

Sharon Virts: but I know who the name is. But I just love a good story, you know, and for me. It’s finding those real stories and then finding them sort of in the area where my, where I sort of live or close to where I live.

So my followers, which are concentrated, many of them in the Virginia, Maryland, you know, that sort of area of Pennsylvania. I have a lot of fans in Philadelphia, you know, so that people can relate to the places that I write about. So for example, I, I do walking tours in our town on my second book, veil of Doubt.

And I’ll start at the church and walk all the way through town and show them where in real life these characters lived. And sometimes I change their names, sometimes not depending on how much I change how they were in real life. But, um, I love that sort of integration of, you know, the murder mystery and place and, uh, time sense of time and setting all into the.

Into the package. And 

Steve Cuden: so your bio says that you were in business for 25 years. What, what did you do? 

Sharon Virts: I, um, when I was 29 years old, I started my own, um, government consulting company. And, um, I sold it in 2017. I was, what? Oh my gosh. When I 2007 we had, I think it was, you know, I don’t know, um, 50 employees or something.

Not very many. And, uh, I sold it in 2017. I had 5,000 employees. Uh, we ran Wow. This country’s back office adjudication support, uh, for our country’s legal immigration system. Really? Yeah. I had twenty, a hundred twenty seven offices nationwide. And so I sold in 2017 and said, I never wanna do it again. I want to, uh, you know, really live my life in terms of what I love to do, which is to write, uh, and to paint.

And I, I have a small gallery in our hometown and, uh, I spend every day writing at least four hours. 

Steve Cuden: At least four hours. And do you paint every day too? I wish I had the time to do that, but no, 

Sharon Virts: I go on hiatus, I’ll paint for a couple days straight, and then I won’t paint for a couple weeks. Uh, I just don’t have the time.

Steve Cuden: So clearly, you know how to build a business that’s obvious. Did that influence the way that you think about how to write? 

Sharon Virts: Uh, yes and no. So, um, a lot of what, how I sort of built my business was I was unbelievably very good at writing proposals and figuring out what customers wanted and how to present our business case to them in a way which, you know, answered and address their underlying needs, problems, hopes, fears, what keep them up at night.

Uh, that sort of, we, I should call the factor, you know, what, what gives them heartburn? And, and so how do you solve that? And then I also learned how to put. 10 pounds of information in a two pound bag because in the government proposal area, you only have so many pages you’re allowed to write. You can only submit proposal 10 pages or a hundred pages or whatever their page limitations are.

So when I go before my editors now and they don’t like something, I don’t really get upset. It’s like, okay, I’d rather, I’d rather you know, do it right. And, and, and there’s no pride in authorship here. If it stinks, then tell me it stinks and then I’ll rewrite it. But, so I learned that discipline from that.

The other part of what I, and, and how to honestly sort of that character arc, but how to get into people’s heads and how to convey a message that, you know, addresses that a of that pain, that what keeps them up at night. And so when you do that with a character, what’s his real pain? What keeps him up at night?

And then how do you evoke that through the written word? You know, when you’re, when you’re trying to let the reader feel that same thing, it’s sort of, I dunno if that makes any 

Steve Cuden: sense. You have to, you have to learn how to be concise in any kind of writing. 

Sharon Virts: And then, and then also in the business sense, well, in, in the bus, uh, the company sense is that, you know, I had a lot of folks that were mail clerks and records clerks and, um, file clerks and data entry clerks.

I mean, it was, it was not, this is not adjudication supports all that back office stuff, right? Um, and, uh, fee collections and, you know, doing the research looking for fraud and employment and looking for fraud and, and um, you know, um, trafficking kind of patterns and things like that. And so, but what I would do is I would explain to people, you know, sort of like everybody’s job is so important, even if you’re in the mail room, if you lose a piece of mail that holds the application of some.

A guy that wants to go work, you know, on a, on a ship getting his mar merchant Marine, his license, or he wants to come, they wanna come to, their family, wants to come to this country because they’re being persecuted and you misplaced misfile, lose something, you know, a benefit delayed is a benefit denied.

And I would go tell those stories about how the, what the impact was of their carelessness or them not caring about what they did, or them thinking that their job wasn’t important. Every job was important. Every every everybody has a purpose in life. And, you know, I think Martin Luther King said it, you know, if you’re gonna be a street sweeper, then be the best street sweeper sweeper you can be.

And I sort of had that same approach to running a business, but through those telling of stories, how what they did impacted a person, a constituent in their lives and in telling those stories, I also learn how to tell those stories in my writing. Right? Everything that a, everything a character does in a story has to have impact, has to have meaning, whether it’s intentional or not.

Uh, and so details matter. And when you read my stories and if you’ve read Grays, you know, there’s not a single person that doesn’t have an impact on that story that I introduced in terms of characters. Absolutely. And if you can figure out in the first chapter why Rebecca Ketchum died, then you’ve solved the problem, but it’s upfront and then you have to unwind it as you go.

And I think, um, you know, those lessons I have from running that business in terms of the importance of details and people, uh, and how everything needs to tie together neatly, it really made a difference on the business side. That’s so, that’s busy. Yeah. And business side too. I’ve learned the publishing business is so chaotic.

I mean, it’s so, it’s so antiquated. Um, you know, I’m used to having metrics that I can evaluate performance, and if I, if I wiggle this knob, this over here’s gonna happen. Right? And in the publishing area, if I run an ad or the publisher runs an ad. You don’t get the results back in terms of the impact for like three months in terms of sales.

And so you kind, it’s really kind of hard to have cause and effect. So I, I do get frustrated on the, on that business side. ’cause I can’t run good analytics to understand what drives the sale of a novel or, or an ebook or the audio. Um, it’s just not as data-driven. 

Steve Cuden: Well, I would say that’s, I would say that’s rather uncommon for an author to even be thinking about that.

But you come from that world of business where those metrics are important and so they remain important to you. And I’m sure I make my publisher crazy with that when I ask 

Sharon Virts: these questions. I, 

Steve Cuden: no doubt you do. Were you, while you were in business, were you writing short stories or, or pieces of things, or were you gathering information or anything like that?

Sharon Virts: No, I always thought it’s interesting. I knew that when I retired, retired, uh, I was 54 when I, when I retired, if you will call that retiring. And I always knew I was gonna write, I was gonna be an author, but I thought I was gonna write a book about how some 29-year-old brat, you know, build a company as big as I did and, and teaching other women how to survive in a predominantly male oriented world.

And I thought I was gonna write one of those, sort of how to help books. And it didn’t work out that way. I, uh, I left, I, I retired a a we sold the company in, um, in June of, um, what was the year 2017. Sorry, it’s been a while. I sort of didn’t do a whole lot, but I sit on the board of this film festival and so.

That fall, we had the field festival in Middleburg. And my friend, uh, Anthony McCartan, I don’t know if you know who Anthony is. He’s a screenwriter. He wrote, he wrote, I know that name. The theory of everything he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, the Biopic. 

Steve Cuden: Yes. 

Sharon Virts: Uh, two Popes, um, the Darkest Hour. Um, he’s just a fabulous guy.

Steve Cuden: Yes. So 

Sharon Virts: he and I are, and I’ll tell some secrets outta school. We were sitting in a bar, it was late at night, and um, you know, and my husband and I were with him. And, um. I was telling him about the story of my house. You know, we bought this old historic home. It was part of the Mason family and restored it.

And there was a guy who shot had this dual and all this crazy stuff that was, that had happened back in the early 18 hundreds. And he says, I want you to write that. I’m like, you’re mad. You’ve lost your ever loving mind. And he said, oh, you can do it. Come on Cher, you do it. I’ll make a screenplay. Now. We have had way too many cocktails.

Okay? I’m like, oh, sure you will. And within the next morning, um, we saw him at one of the films and he said, listen, um, I may not make a screenplay out of it ’cause you know, I don’t have any control over that. He said, but, um, you write it and I’ll help you. So, uh, I did, I started, I started researching and I put pen to paper for the first time in February of 2018.

And, um, he helped me with, you know, just some basic structure. I mean, I didn’t know what a character arc was, honestly. I mean, I have an engineering engineering degree. I have no anything about anything about any, uh, English stuff. But anyway, he, um, 

Steve Cuden: he, I, I’ve got, I’ve got news for you, Sharon. Most writers don’t know anything about a character art either.

So, 

Sharon Virts: but anyway, he, um, helped me with it and, uh, you know, gave me a lot of advice and then did the edit on the prologue, which I really appreciate him doing. And also when he went through and did a quick read, he cut most of my introductory chapters, uh, introductory paragraphs on every chapter is, it’s too much writing, you know?

So that’s how I. 

Steve Cuden: So that, that’s very interesting. Was there a point as you were going along, including with his, uh, help that you actually thought to yourself, you know what, I am pretty good at this. Did you have that epiphany at any point? Well, I’m humble, uh, that way. 

Sharon Virts: Um, I do like some of my, I I’m good at dialogue, and so what I will do is I read some of the stuff I’ve written and I give it to my husband.

I say, oh, look at this dialogue. Look at this conversation. So I get excited about dialogue. I don’t like transitions. I don’t like descriptions. I, I do it because you have to. But I, I actually outline a book in dialogue. I have the conversations in my head, I can see the people saying the words, and so I just write down what they’re saying to each other as I do an annotated outline of the whole story.

Most of my annotations are just bits of, of dialogue, and most people don’t write that way. I write really strangely, I guess, but I, I write, like, I paint, I paint what I see. I don’t interpret it. I just see something and I paint it the way I see it. And then I use colors that you probably shouldn’t use to do things.

I, I use a lot of, I don’t cut my colors. Um, and I, you know, I’ll paint a mountain green if I want, uh, or blue or purple or pink or whatever. And storytelling. I write what I see. I write what I hear. So in my head, it plays like a movie. As I’m, as I’m crafting the story, 

Steve Cuden: you ought to think about becoming a screenwriter as well.

I don’t even know how to start. I, I wouldn’t even know what 

Sharon Virts: to do. Well, 

Steve Cuden: trust me when I tell you, you can be taught and learn the mechanics of screenwriting in, you know, in a few hours, but the mastery of those mechanics can take a long time. But the storytelling is the key. If you can tell a story and you already know how to tell a story, then you’re like 90% there.

The mechanics are the least part of it though. Though you have to learn those in order to sell it to people that, that are willing to make it. I, I just learned the novel bit. Well, well, but you’re saying you’re good at dialogue. And of course, the truth is, screenwriting is a visual medium and you have to understand how to, how to tell a story in visuals.

But the dialogue part of it is really key. At least today. It is. Unless you’re, uh, trying to figure out how to write a silent movie, which obviously you’re not gonna do. Um, Anthony 

Sharon Virts: Anthony said to me one time, he said, you need to write dialogue. You need to write lines that wins actors Oscars Absolutely correct.

So when you think about writing your book, write those lines that if a, if an actor is going to play the character, he’s gonna wanna say those lines and those lines are gonna win him an academy award 

Steve Cuden: first. You’re first. So that’s how I 

Sharon Virts: think of it. 

Steve Cuden: If you’re looking for a star, you absolutely want to be sure they’re, they’re on the last page.

Sharon Virts: Right. 

Steve Cuden: You don’t wanna kill him. Walk halfway through. 

Sharon Virts: Well, gray, when you read Grays of Truth, you uh, saw some of that dialogue, uh, and some of those exchanges I 

Steve Cuden: did. I did. And, and in fact, I think that would make a marvelous movie or even a series. So, you know, a limited series. So, uh, you just have to figure out how to get that put together or get Anthony McCartney to write it for you, which would be very helpful.

I’ll call you Anthony. Yeah, 

Sharon Virts: Anthony. 

Steve Cuden: You never know. Sometimes that’s what happens, especially if you’re friends with him. So let’s talk about the grays of truth in detail. Um, tell, tell the listeners what the story is about really. 

Sharon Virts: So it, it, yes. So it is, uh, it, like you said, when you opened, um, uh, it’s set from 1867 to about 1871.

It is based on a true story. Um, of a woman who believes her sister-in-law is killing off members of the family, and she is telling people, she’s telling her brothers, she’s telling her sister, she’s telling individuals that there’s, there’s this, these deaths that are happening in this house in Baltimore are, um, suspicious and they’re murders.

They’re not just random illnesses and no one believes her. And no one believes her because she spent time in an institution, uh, for Debil and debility back then is Code Ward for crazy. So if you couldn’t get outta bed in the morning, you were, you, you were suffering from debility. If you were anxious and you then you were hysterical.

But for the most part, she was suffering from debility, which was, might be depression, but who knows? And, uh, because she had spent time in an institution, no one believes her. So the book, uh, really does go into sort of the tragedy of this woman’s life. So it’s made up. So that’s not what I do know about her.

Uh, but a lot of it has to deal with, you know, her own struggle, with her own sanity, um, trying to unwind. Who’s responsible for these murders or these deaths, and even questioning herself as to whether she could be responsible. At least you as a reader might think that for a bit. Uh, so that’s kind of what it’s about.

And, um, the, the, the rivalry between, between these women, the nastiness that goes on, uh, is based on some things I read that happened in real life and some things I experienced at one of my, you know, my ex-husband’s, uh, um, family, family dinners. So some of the scenes I could relate to. 

Steve Cuden: How did you come upon this story?

How’d you find it? 

Sharon Virts: So, um, uh, it, it came from my second book. So my second book, fail of Doubt, is about a woman who went on trial for the murder of her four children, her husband and her aunt. And during her trial, the chemist, the forensic scientist, if you will, with the guy who did the, uh, postmortem analysis on the body of that little girl in the first, in, in Veil of Doubt, he is the same forensic psychologist or, or chemist, uh, Dr.

Uh, William Tory in, uh, in Graves of Truth. So when I was researching that book and putting the first book together, veil of Doubt Together, I stumbled upon Tory and I said, he’s an interesting guy. And then the, in the trial testimony, the Wharton. Trial was mentioned as part of the testimony he was giving in the, in the Bail of Doubt trial, the Emily Lloyd trial.

So I, uh, so he’s interesting guy. Let me research him. I love research. My goodness, Steven, if I, I could spend all day on the computer in the library researching stories. I, I mean, I, I’m like a, I go down rabbit holes, I get distracted. I need Adderall or something to keep me straight. But it’s one of those things, you know, you’re all over the place.

So I went and, and, and, and when I learned about him, which is really kind of cool, and it came up a little bit in Grace. He married Anna Ott. Anna Ott was the daughter of Mary Ott. Mary Ott is the woman that was hanged for her involvement in the, uh, assassination plot on President Lincoln’s life. And once he married her, within five days of his marriage to Anna Rut, he was fired from the surgeon General’s office.

He was ostracized from Washington, dc uh, and he moved to Baltimore. And so I thought, oh, what are the cases that he’s worked on? And I haven’t really found any other than this particular one that I thought was really interesting. But that’s how I found the story. And then when I found out that it had all the characteristics.

I love and a good story. Had a dysfunctional family with a lot of money, love dysfunction and money. Had a lot of murders that you couldn’t explain, had a lot of unsavory characters that, you know, any one of ’em could be involved and you had motive, uh, for murder amongst a lot of them in real life and a and a botched up investigation and a thwarted, you know, a trial that went all over the place.

I, it’s just my kind of story. You, I mean, so who doesn’t love that in real 

Steve Cuden: life? So I, I had never heard of this story before I read your book, and so I, I guess the further question about research is, is, was there a lot of material about them available to you? 

Sharon Virts: Uh, you, well, thank God for the Baltimore Gazette at the time, which I think might be the Baltimore Sun now, but thank goodness.

And, um, so they, there was, um. A lot of articles online that you can get through newspapers.com and, and also there was, somebody wrote or pulled together a little booklet of trial notes that you could buy on Amazon if you really search in those old archive stuff on that Wharton case. So I bought that. So I had just a lot of the clippings of newspaper, no story written, it’s just the clippings of newspaper articles.

And then the police chief, uh, a guy named Jacob Fry had, um, written an autobiography and I found that somewhere somehow I just was searching on random people. And I said that he had a autobiography written. And so there was a section in his autobiography that talked about this trial and a lot of what Mrs.

Wharton, Ellen Wharton, uh, did to try to bribe him. During this trial and how he suspected her, um, all, you know, throughout the whole thing before, and he was thwarted from arresting her. He also gave a lot of in, uh, input in terms of the gangs and the influence of the gangs in Baltimore at the time, if you’ve ever seen the movie, the, uh, the Gangs of New York.

Yes. After the gangs of Baltimore were purged, for the most part from Baltimore, they moved to New York. So it’s the same gangs. They just moved the pug, ies and I, they had some horrible names. I can’t remember what they all were, uh, at this point. But, um, bloody tubs. So, uh, all those pieces together. And then, so what I do, my method is, so I, I researched research and I find all this data, and then I come up with some really key characters, right?

Characters that I think are gonna be really important to the story. And I put them on these colored post-it notes, and I write down different events when they’re born, whatever. And then I put ’em on a wall. I. You know, timeline and then I see how things go and whose story’s developing and then sort of develop a story from, from that.

Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s a really weird process. 

Steve Cuden: And are you constructing a story in your head or on paper as you’re researching? 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. I mean, I can feel it. I can see it, right. The hardest part is to tell, well, you have, when you have all these dysfunctional people, you gotta figure out who’s gonna have the best arc, who’s gonna go from point A to point B with a lot of drama in between.

And so that helps you pick your protagonist or at least your lead character. Mm-hmm. At first I thought it was going to be the police chief. I thought, you know, how can I take him through this? Because I know it certainly couldn’t be one of the victims, but I can’t call the victim. ‘

Steve Cuden: cause he would, he would naturally be the person to solve a, a murder mystery.

Sharon Virts: And so I thought it was gonna be him. He was really interesting character. And when my husband and I were talking about this story, he said, Hey, why don’t you, um, do a series on, on this guy? And I’m like, oh, for God’s sakes. This is a police crime thing. Um, but when I learned about Jane Gray Wharton and I, and I, you know, all the people that were being killed were around her, either related to her, you know, and so I just sort of felt in love with her.

It’s the first time I’ve written a female protagonist. So it was a little, you know, more, more difficult for me to do. And, um, and I didn’t know why I, why was it more difficult female? ’cause never, I, I’ve, I’ve always written the last two books were before that were written from the male male point of view.

And I guess as having come up through business and having, you know, been so tough in my life, uh, I had a hard time trying to relate to someone who was, I guess I. Not, not as loud spoken quieter, and there’s less information about women out there. And I like to try to stay true to their character and it would be harder for me to research, but then I realized I’m gonna have to make some stuff up, which is the first time I’ve really had to do that.

I mean, for the most part, I’ve kind of gone with the character’s personality as they were in real life. And Gr Jane Gray I didn’t know a lot about. So I had to do a lot of work on who she was, which is new for me. 

Steve Cuden: Were you already familiar somewhat with an, the Antebellum South and post Civil War Life and that sort of thing?

Sharon Virts: Yeah, so, uh, most of my, um, the last two, my last, all my books have been set in that 19th century. Um, yeah, the technology, I’ll, I’ll tell you, it’s easier to write stories when you have trains and you have telegraphs than when you don’t have trains and telegraphs. Um, because then you have to think about how you’re gonna get messages back and forth to people.

Yes. How that all works. Um, so yeah, I have a lot of, and you know, a lot of stories my father would tell and my grandmother would tell were about, you know. Some relative, some great-grandfather who after the Civil War did this or right during the Civil War, did that. And so, you know, I have a lot of the stories and I grew up in an area, uh, you know, that’s pretty thick in Civil War history.

Um, and I have an interest in that period. I don’t know a whole lot about, you know, the 17th century or 16th century or 18th century, but I do know a good deal about the 19th. That’s just fascinating by, well, are those, 

Steve Cuden: are those centuries that you wanna research and do stories in? 

Sharon Virts: No, I’m gonna stay with 19th and early 20th, um, just because I like that period and mm-hmm.

It’s easy. It becomes easier for me. I am, um, a gal of little patients, so, you know, having to learn a whole new period. Um. Unless there’s some compelling, great story that I want to tell there. I, I think I’m gonna sort of stay with where I have stories. I have like six stories all lined up to go. I just need to have the time to write them all.

Yeah. Well, 

Steve Cuden: well that’s nice ’cause that’s now you have a little confidence that you’ve got stuff to rely on as you’re going forward. Uh, what would you say is the most challenging aspect of doing research? Is it finding material? Is it actually getting to places is I love it. Uh, there’s 

Sharon Virts: nothing I find I love old graveyards.

Oh my goodness. They’re my favorite thing. I, um, I spend a lot of time in ancestry.com, you know, trying to, so if I’m looking at a character, I wanna look at who they were in terms of who were their parents. How old were their parents when they were born? When did their parents die? What? What’s their birth order?

Um, how close were they in terms of siblings? Did they, did, did siblings die? Were they a twin? Did they lose a twin? When did they get married? How old was her husband? They got married. What children, how many children did they have? Did they lose their, did she lose her first three children? All those things help me say, um, shape a character.

I love it. I don’t think I find anything. Trauma. I love the research. I get frustrated when I can’t find information. Mm-hmm. Um, I get frustrated with things I don’t understand. So I got a D in chemistry in college all and so there’s a lot of chemistry in this book and yes, and I really worry that I may get it wrong.

So I have some friends who are chemists and friends who are pharmacists and friends who are doctors, and so I have to consult them. I guess my challenge would be. Getting it wrong, you know, um, how, how do I know I’ve got it right or wrong other than asking people I know or people that can help me with that.

So I think it’s, of course, it’s the science and not knowing what they knew or they didn’t know. So for example, um, it’s so funny. There’s someone always, and they’re always so sweet when they do it. I had one of my readers in my, in the Bail of Doubt, um, email me and he was a, a mortician or a, a guy that does dead buddies, you know, one of those people, a funeral home director and history buff, and his name was William.

And he emailed me and said, do you realize that in 1871, no one buried anybody in a vault? The ground, they just put the pine box in or the, and just drop ’em in the ground. And that’s the way it was. And so I have a vault. I’m telling my stories out of my mistakes outta school here, but I have a vault in that story.

You know, where they were tapping on the vault lid when they were digging up the grave. And uh, so it was a mistake I made because I don’t know, you know how they used to bury people Exactly. In 1872. So that’s my biggest fear. 

Steve Cuden: You’re describing, um, the way that writers frequently have to write is you don’t know what you’re gonna write about and then you have to go figure it out and talk to people and research.

And do you also go to these locations and spend time there? Oh, yes. 

Sharon Virts: Oh yeah. So in, um, in, um, in this book, in, in Grace of Truth, so I live in Virginia and not, you know, about an hour from Baltimore. And so, uh, my husband and then from Philadelphia, and a lot of these people are buried in Philadelphia because they came from Philadelphia originally.

So we were visiting all the homes they grew up in so I could get a sense of, you know, how they lived and, um, and got the addresses, you know, because you, what you do is you have to do all that research and figure they lived in Poplar Grove and where was that then? And, and ran around and did all that great stuff.

And that’s where I get a lot of the descriptions of, you know. If they see a sunrise or if they’re looking at a field, I, you know, I, I, I kind of am there, but we go to the graveyards and so we’re looking for Ellen Wharton’s grave, oh, you’ll love this. And, um, it’s in Bryn Mawr if, if you’re from that area.

And so we go to Bryn Mawr, it’s this little church. I say, oh, we can’t do that hard. So we, we pull up and we see this little small little graveyard in front of this, this old church. And this is one of the cases where oftentimes they’ll tell you what, you know, what lot number and grid and row. And so you can find what section it is so you can find it when you get to the cemetery.

This particular cemetery didn’t have any of that online, or didn’t have it available as to where she was buried. So we pull up, it’s like, oh, cool, we’ll find it right away. It’s not gonna be a big problem. Right. We pull up and then we see behind the church acres and acres and acres of headstones, and it’s old, it’s December.

And my husband’s like, there’s no way we’re gonna find this woman. I’m not doing it. And, um. So we get outta the car and I go, oh, come on, come. Let’s just, let’s take a quick look. So we get out. I swear, goodness, Steve. I walk three rows back, four stones over. I go, here she is. He’s like, how did you do that? I don’t know.

She’s calling me. 

Steve Cuden: You were, you swear were being, uh, you were being summoned. Hmm. I spent a lot of time in graveyards. 

Sharon Virts: So, yeah, I like to go to the places, um, and see the, um, so I can describe what it feels like walking down the street and when I can, I can visualize what it is to, to smell the place, to feel the place to, to know what it is.

And in the old homes, uh, particularly in Veil of Doubt, um, I went to, every one of them have been in them, talked to the owners, so I get a sense of how the rooms were laid out, just to know, it just makes it more real for me. So I can see it in my head and then I can write what I 

Steve Cuden: see. Is that what helps you set tone?

’cause your, your story is wonderfully toned. 

Sharon Virts: I sit in those places and just think, and oftentimes let the character come to me. Mm-hmm. Uh, in my first book, there is a chapter I wrote that I started writing. My husband was outta town. I started writing at five 30 and I finished at two in the morning. I have no idea how I wrote it.

I, I didn’t write it. I believe that, that, that character, ’cause I live in the house where the, where the, um, the book was set, came out from someplace and possessed my body to write that chapter, and my editor would tell you, it’s the only chapter that doesn’t sound like me. It, it does some sounds like someone else wrote, she even asked me who wrote this?

I said, I did. She goes, there’s no way. It doesn’t sound like you. I said, and then I explained it to her and she goes, you’re crazy. I don’t even wanna know. But, um, I do, I do think, you know, sitting in the place, walking in a place helps a writer visualize it. And I know I’m not the only one that writes this way.

I know a lot of authors do that. You know, I’m friends with Mark Sullivan and I know he goes to the places that, um, he writes about and, um, experiences it so he can share that with whoever has, you know, with his reader. 

Steve Cuden: Well, I’ve clearly spoken to a whole lot of creative people on the show and I’ve, I’ve known writers my whole career and I’ve done a lot of research on creative people.

And one of the things that is true for lots and lots of people that are inventors, scientists, creative people, artists, et cetera, is that they say that the work is not theirs. It comes through them. It does. 

Sharon Virts: It’s crazy. That’s what you’re 

Steve Cuden: saying? 

Sharon Virts: Exactly. You, I feel, you know, I dream about these people. I mean, I do.

They like in my dreams, and they tell, I wake up in the morning at four o’clock and I’m like, okay, I got it. And I go write something down real quick and I go back to bed, or I just get up and start typing. Um, but I feel like they speak to me in my sleep. Sometimes. I unsal, I solve mysteries in my head at night and I’ll say, oh, now I know why he did this.

And what’s really fun is, um, for me, we talk about research is you get pieces of a puzzle, right? And I, it’s always the why, why somebody did something. Mm-hmm. So, for example, in my first book, Jack McCarty is the, he’s the prota, uh, he’s the protagonist and he is the wealthiest. Man in the county in this period of time is 18, 16, 18, 20 time period.

He’s the wealthiest guy. He’s unbelievably attractive. I mean, there’s nothing, I mean, he’s got a lawyer. He is a politician. He is got everything going for him. And there’s this woman, her name is Lucinda Lee, and she is of the Lee family. And she is without a dowry. She’s got, you know, the family name and the, and the, and the credentials.

The pedigree. But her father died, left them without, with a lot of debts and not, not a penny. And she was having a hard time finding a husband, right? Because no dowry in that world. You’re kind of, uh, up the creek. And Jack McCarty had asked her to marry him in real life, and she had turned him down. And for the life of me, I’m like, why would she turn him down and, you know, why would you turn him down?

And when and when I figured it out, I said, because he cheated on her, or he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. He was, you know what I’m saying? He, he was not faithful. He did something. And lo and behold. That’s what will happen. And, and you know, and you’ll through the book to figure out how it, it it goes.

But she does take him back and they do get married eventually, but yeah, he had screwed it around and, and you know, the, the asking the why behind certain behaviors really helps you sort of crack the code of what really drives a story or, or what could really be, um, you know, a lightning point or a turning point or something really cool in a story.

The twist, when you can answer the questions of why, when you don’t have all the data, when just when you fill in that, that, to me, with answering those questions to understand people, people’s motivation. 

Steve Cuden: And even more so in a mystery. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah, exactly. I love that part. I mean, that, that, and it drives me crazy.

Why, why, why would he do this, the stupidest thing ever? Why would he do this? And then when you answer those questions, you go, or, or you come up with those, the glue in between then, then you create the twists around it, you know? Um, that’s where a lot of these, these twists come from. 

Steve Cuden: Exactly. You need that motive.

That is for sure. How do you, um, structure your stories? I know you got lessons, I assume from Anthony McCartan, uh, but what do you, how do you sit down? Do you actually draft an outline? How do you, what do you do structure your story? 

Sharon Virts: I outline. I outline, so I always, so I do what Anthony says, um, which is number one is, um, know your ending before you start.

’cause we don’t know where you’re going. You can’t get there, right? So you have to know where you’re going. 

Steve Cuden: So it’s just like taking a, it’s just like taking a cross country trip. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. So I write the ending first and um, and then he tells me, um, wait, wait, wait. 

Steve Cuden: Let’s stop there a second. You write the ending first.

I do. That’s very interesting. That’s super interesting. Write I, I reverse engineer 

Sharon Virts: it. 

Steve Cuden: I I’ve never done that where I write the ending first. I figure out the ending, but I don’t write it until I get there. So That’s interesting. Oh, I write it and 

Sharon Virts: now it’s ugly. Uh, and it is gonna change. It’s gonna twist, but I write.

That’s okay. 

Steve Cuden: That’s 

Sharon Virts: see that last scene? And, and, and I write it first. And so I see how every book’s gonna end first and I write it down. Um, and I write it on my laptop and it’s ugly sometimes, but it’s usually just dialogue and bits and pieces and stuff. But it’s written. I’ve got it there. So I’m going there.

And then if your pig is going to fly in the Olympics, right, and that’s the end of your story your pig makes to the Olympics. He is gonna fly. Um, then all the way up to that very last page or close to that last page. There’s no way that pig is flying in the Olympics. So you want your reader the whole time not to believe where you’re going.

And so in grace of truth, I’ve done that. Right? You have no idea, right? You, you think you know what’s going to, and, and it turns out maybe it’s not that way. Uh, veil it out is the same way all our stories. You, you know, you don’t think this guy’s gonna get the girl, you don’t think this person’s guilty. You don’t think, you know, you think this person is guilty, and then you find out something in the end.

So that’s another one of his tricks that I kind of do. So I reverse myself into those. So then I gotta have to build a story that looks like, you know, if, if my pig is going to fly at the end of the book, um, then there’s no way that pig’s gonna fly all the way through. So my story’s about how he wants to fly, but there’s no way it’s ever gonna happen because, and maybe he gets close and then it just never, it just falls apart.

There’s no way he’s ever gonna get there. Um, and then, you know, you find out in the end, he, he actually does. And so that’s sort of how I structure it. I try to do things in, um. Uh, sort of the classic I used, uh, when I first started writing, I bought Don Moss’s. No, no, it’s not, which is called, um, well, Don Moss’s, you know, uh, breakout novel book.

But I also, the one about, uh, character arcs from, what’s her last name? I can’t think of her name right now, but, um, you know, 25%, 50%, 75%. What are those big, huge turning points? You get committed to the story right up front at the 10% mark, but then, you know, 70 25, 75. Those places in between making sure you’ve got those big turning points, those big events that, you know, keep the reader wanting to turn the page.

And so I craft my story that way. And what’s funny, Steve, when I put those post-it notes up, if I find they’re all bunched up in one area, then I move ’em around to those marks in the book. Uh, and then I have to, I have to change the timing of some things, or I have to change characters around in order to be able to make the pacing fit.

That’s why I begin to lose, quote, the truth of the story. Um, you know, I, I deviate from the truth and I’ll tell you in the end where I deviated in order to make that pacing work, to keep 

Steve Cuden: that action moving. Um, is your development in the way you’re talking about the same for all three books you’ve written and the ones you’re going to write, do you have the same process?

Sharon Virts: Y yes, I do and, but I’ve structure them a little differently. So the first two, well the first one was done in three parts part, you know, that classic act one, act two, act three. And then unveil of doubt, it worked out that I had one year, so I had four, uh, four seasons, you know, spring, summer, fall, winter, and so, mm-hmm.

It became sort of a four act kind of play because I did it around that. And then, um, the, this last one I had five years and so I kind of did it like a five act sort of thing and I made sure I moved some things around. So for example, in Grace’s, there was one year and I think it was 1870 or one of ’em, there wasn’t a whole lot happening and I was like, can I just skip 1870?

And my editor says, no, or whatever year it was, or 69, you have got to make some things up there. So I moved some events around and have some more concentration there. I have a hard time with structure when you ask me, you know, what’s my big challenge? Research is not it. It’s how to structure that story.

It’s also where to start. I always know where I’m gonna go. But where do I 

Steve Cuden: start? That’s a classic writer’s dilemma. Aristotle’s the one who said that, you know, you wanna start not before the story begins, and you want to carry on until the story ends and not go beyond that. But what does that mean? So where do you start?

So what you’re talking about is a classic writer’s dilemma, 

Sharon Virts: right? So, um, talking about the two murder mysteries and veil, you, I the same thing. Do I start at the beginning? I go through each kid’s death and I’m like, no. Then I met this woman’s head too much. I don’t wanna be in her head. So I decided to start at the end.

The last kid, the last kid kid dies right at the beginning of the book, right? Uh, in Gray’s. I did it the other way. I I started with the first death and moved all the way through because I was in a different protagonist’s head. And, and I wanted to see it from her perspective because, but it took me a long time to get there.

Um, at first I thought I was gonna write it from, um, like I said, Jake’s point of view, but then he was gonna start too late. And then you wouldn’t have any emotional tie to the victims. And in Veil of Doubt, you don’t really have an emotional tie to the little kids that were, that were killed, uh, because it wasn’t about that.

It was about something else. But in this book, I wanted you to feel what Jane Gray felt as each person dies throughout the story. And the only way you can do it is make you as a reader, fall in love with the people that she loved. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. 

Sharon Virts: Right? So that when those folks died, you felt her pain. That’s, that’s what I try to do.

How do I, how do I, you know, I love the general Ketchum character in grace of truth, but how do I make you really love him too? I can’t make you love him from his perspective. It was from how Jane felt about him. Sure. Or how other people felt about him. 

Steve Cuden: Sure. Do. Do you think that, um, as you’re writing along and writing along that you know that it’s working?

Or do you need to finish the whole thing before you can look back and tell whether the story really works or not? 

Sharon Virts: I know when it’s working. I, I do. And I, and I, and I’ll stop writing for a while. I’ll just go, okay, I can’t do anything right now. I gotta, I gotta back off. I gotta go. And that’s why I have three books going on at the same time.

’cause I start writing on another one and then I’ll come back to it. Um, so I do that. But once I have that flow, once I know, um, I write it and what happens, you know, it’s like building a building. It’s a scaffolding, right? So I’ll scaffolding, I’ll, I’ll structure it, I’ll start writing it, and then all of a sudden something’s not working.

So the one I’m working on now, the ending, even though I had that written, the things that led up to it seemed to feel like it was being dripped out and dribs of drabs. I’m like, that’s not gonna work. So I had to. Crush things together all toward a, you know, a caic sort of point. And I think that happened in a lot of the stories.

You know, you, you sort of develop more twists as you go. I don’t have them all work out in the beginning. Um, but I do know, I know instinctively if it’s not working, I, I do. And then I’ll send a chapter off or I’ll ask my husband to look at it and you’ll say, you’re right, it’s not working. And I go, what do you think I need to do?

He’s like, kill this one or kill that person. Or, you know, so I do tend to get feedback from other people, but I know if it’s not working, I do. 

Steve Cuden: So, you know when it’s not working. But does that mean you also know when it is? 

Sharon Virts: I think so, uh, it’s trickier, um, because what may have great impact on me may not have great impact on a reader, right?

Mm-hmm. I try to think of, I try to be more commercial. I try to think about, you know, how an audience is going to read it. And even though I may like something, they may not like it. So I oftentimes will have, I have a group of beta readers, about 10 people I know, but they’re not my friends. These are people that I have in my book club that I run across this country.

I dunno if you know, I have a book, I have a 3000 person book club that I run across the us No, 

Steve Cuden: I didn’t know that. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. So it’s called Read With Sharon. Hashtag Read With Sharon. Read with 

Steve Cuden: Sharon 

Sharon Virts: and anybody can join. It’s free. And, um. I read only, I pick all the auth, all the books. We only read current release, historical fiction, and I typically have the author that comes in and talks to the group at the end of the month on the fourth Thursday of the month.

And we usually have about 60 people that join us on a Zoom call. They come in and out. I’ve got some regulars that come in every month, but, and then we record it and, uh, people can listen if they want and it’s great. Uh, we have, we have Marjan Kamali this month for her book, uh, the Line Women of Teron, who we have coming up.

I’m Jenny Walsh coming up. I have Susan Meister coming up. I’ve had Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, uh, come in and join us. 

Steve Cuden: Wow. 

Sharon Virts: I started this during the pandemic and it’s been going gangbusters ever since. So 

Steve Cuden: you, you, but I have about 

Sharon Virts: 10 readers from that 

Steve Cuden: group. You clearly can’t help yourself in con continuing to make business.

I know. 

Sharon Virts: I love it. It’s my favorite. I listen, you got enough time to sleep when you’re in your grave, you gotta be busy. So 

Steve Cuden: I, I agree. I agree with you. Yes. So 

Sharon Virts: I’ve got 10 readers from that group who. I will shoot copies of things out and have them, I have them tell me honestly if it’s working or not, sometimes when I’m really far along.

But I think, you know, I’ve got a good sense of it, I think. And then I have editors that really will beat me up by the head and the, uh, head and shoulders and say, no, it’s not working. But, and usually it’s either tightening a chapter. My trouble. I seem to, I have too many subplots sometimes, which a lot of authors do, and I’m grateful for my editors that say, mm-hmm.

No. What, so for example, in grace of truth, uh, Jake, uh, fry had a lot of trouble with the politicians in Baltimore, and he had a lot of problems with the gangs in Baltimore at the time. And, uh, I wanted to tell that gang story, uh, and I was telling it, I had that in the original draft, and my editor came back and she said, it’s distracting.

It’s gotta go. And I fought her and she was right. So we, yeah, we shortened it. But she was right. It was, it was taking me down. And you would’ve lost the thread of the Jane Gray story. So I’m glad that she don’t, she did that. 

Steve Cuden: You needed to stick to your protagonist. Yeah. Yeah. So 

Sharon Virts: that’s sometimes a challenge.

I think that’s, you know, people have a, 

Steve Cuden: that 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. And I know a lot of my author friends who overwrite, and I, I won’t tell ’em because that’s what they have their editors for. They won’t be my friends anymore. Um, but I, I don’t wanna overwrite Are 

Steve Cuden: you a big rewriter? Hmm? Are you a big rewriter? Oh my gosh, yes.

Sharon Virts: I rewrite all the time. I rewrite as I go. How many 

Steve Cuden: drafts? 

Sharon Virts: How many drafts? I have no idea. I I do it as I go. I mean, so oftentimes I get lost in a story. Um, you know, you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re kind of stuck in it and it’s hard to step back. And so I’ll put it down for a day or two and then I start reading it from head, from beginning to end to see where I am and, and what I’ve missed.

And then I’ll spend four days, you know, editing and rewriting phrases. And I like a lot of, um, cadence in the writing. I like it to be sing-songy, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like poetry and, um, rhythm. Rhythm. And um, if I don’t have that rhythm, then I get mad and I have to rewrite stuff.

And so I, I spent a lot of time working on that rhythm. 

Steve Cuden: I think that’s important. So you work with an editor, I assume? Yes. Once 

Sharon Virts: I 

Steve Cuden: finish the manuscript. You talking about editors? 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. So once I finish the man, finish the manuscript. It goes over to my publishing company and they have an outside independent, um, uh, development editor that will get a hold of it and then tear it apart.

So, and usually I think I get two rounds with her and then they do the classic line edit, copy, edit and everything else, but, um mm-hmm. And, and, and they’ll tell you, listen, you haven’t got enough this, and there, you need more of that. And then I have to go back and write it. And they usually give me a month or so to fix those issues.

Um, which I can do. I, I, I write pretty quickly and, and, and has it always been very helpful. Oh my gosh, yes. Love my editor. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, I, I couldn’t do without it. I mean, and I, and I really get upset when I read some of the very famous authors, and it looks to me like sometimes, and it happens. I, I told Anthony this, I read his last book.

I said, dude, you need to pay your editor more or listen to them more often. He’s like, what’s wrong? I said, you overwrite the damn thing. I’m sorry. Um, but you know, it, it happens to all of us though. We do, I mean, because we love the story and we, we know so much about the topic. You wanna put more of it in there, of course.

And then sometimes it gets lost. And so it’s just, it’s tough for someone to tell someone that the baby’s ugly. But I’d rather for my editor to tell me it’s ugly. Then my readers will tell me it’s ugly. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s not, sometimes it’s not just ugly. It’s a, it’s, you go back to Faulkner’s famous maxim about you just have to be willing to kill your darlings.

Sometimes it’s stuff you’re writing that’s brilliant, but doesn’t fit in the story, and you’ve gotta get rid of it. 

Sharon Virts: What I said, um, I was writing an article for someone not long ago and I said, you know, the key to the, the, the ugly balance of writing, um, is you have to know when to kill your sacred cows and then which ones to save.

And which ones to say that’s true. And, um, what I love about my publisher is that, you know, a lot of, uh, I have a lot of friends who tell me they get so frustrated when they write and they’re, they have an editor who’s like, you know, all of 30 years old and, you know, we’re all in our, whatever we are, and we’re more sophisticated and we got some 30-year-old telling us what’s gonna sell as opposed to what we, we think is gonna sell.

And, um, my, my publisher is really good about having people who, you know, are a lot more experienced, um, you know, that really kind of understands what I wanna call, you know, a more sophisticated read, uh, and writing like that I write. 

Steve Cuden: What do you think that you do now that you didn’t do in the beginning?

That’s a big, you know, helpful change. What did you do in the beginning that’s you knew, you eventually learned, didn’t work well, and now you do differently? 

Sharon Virts: Um, adverbs, um, adverbs. I use a lot of adverbs when I first started writing, um, and I wrote a lot of expository language, use a lot of expository language, and I did a lot of telling and not showing.

And so I’ve learned really fast because it, you know, no adverbs, very rarely do I use an adverb and I, I try to show versus tell. Um, and, uh, you know, uh, and just not a lot of, I use a lot of action and dialogue to sort of tell the story as opposed to that back writing. I don’t think I would like writing first person for an example.

’cause I think that’s an excuse for you, for you to use expository language, um, because, you know. You get to talk about what’s in someone’s head and instead of it, you know, I don’t wanna be in their head, I wanna be in their, in their, in their actions. I wanna see how they react and how they feel. 

Steve Cuden: Um, so for the second time in this show, I’m gonna say to you, you should write screenplays because showing and not telling is the main maxim for most screenwriters.

You have to learn to show and not to tell. And that if you can do that through action, you would make a very fine screenwriter that, right. I what I’m talking my, I have a, my daughter-in-law’s 

Sharon Virts: a screenwriter out in la so we’ll see. 

Steve Cuden: I know you, you’ve clearly gotten lots of notes over time from various people.

You are open and willing to hear those notes, which, oh yeah. Some writers are afraid of, but you are open and willing to them. Um, how do you handle those notes? Do you take every note? Do you consider them, do you immediately get rid of some? How do you handle notes? So you talk about in a manuscript, when I get it back.

Right. When you get, or, or even somebody like you give it to Anthony to read and he gives you thoughts and notes. How do you handle notes? Do you accept them all? Do you immediately knee jerk react? Some of them away? How do you handle notes? 

Sharon Virts: Well, some, well, if it’s a real, if it’s something really stupid, um, like really stupid, um, I’ll, I’ll go, oh my God, that’s stupid.

But then, but then oftentimes I think, wait a minute. Maybe if it’s not so stupid, maybe I’m the stupid one, so I should think about it. Um, um, but no, I listen, I read at, I listen. If they have that question, then that means a reader could have that question. So I take ’em all seriously, even though sometimes I go, you gotta be kidding me.

Um, where I get angry, angry, I get agitated is when, um, an editor. Was reading the book and then says, wait a minute, you know, so and so, such such. And I go, wait a minute. If you’ve read the book, you’d see that that was actually explained three chapters ago. So either it’s too subtle or you missed it, or what have you.

So that kind of bothers me. I guess the, the one note I don’t like, and I had this from one of my agents, um, which I don’t have anymore, is, um, when they ask me to change something that’s not in character for a character. So for example, I’ve had a situation where, um, Jack McCarty, who is this sort of flippant rake, you know, he is putting notches in his bedposts kind of thing of his, of his, you know, his, of his captures or whatever you wanna call it.

And she suggested that we needed to get him more sentimental and that maybe when he’s riding his horse, pass a tree, he remembers his first kiss. There I go, are you kidding me? That he’s not that kind of guy, you know, he’s, he is, he is. That’s not. That’s not how he’s wired. You know, you don’t understand, you’re, you’re not getting into the character.

But then I thought to myself, wait a minute, maybe she’s thinking that because I haven’t done a, a good enough job of showing what an impassionate, impassionate, you know, shallow kind of guy he is right now. And so just the fact that she, I thought it irritated me at the time, but okay, then maybe I need to deepen the character so that she doesn’t th they don’t think that, so every, like you said, everything has a purpose.

Everything is a, a question. I ask myself, why, why is she saying this? Why is she recommending this? Maybe it’s not what she’s saying that’s the problem. Maybe it’s the reason why she’s saying it. I haven’t done something. Um, so I typically listen to everything. I don’t necessarily accept it. And I ask myself, is the story better with the recommendation included in the note, or is it, does it just detract and.

Then sometimes I may not have the answer, I may be too close to it, so I’ll ask somebody else to read it and get their opinion. And I tend to listen to my, my beta readers if they tell me, you know, she’s right, uh, or no, she’s, you know, she’s, she’s at, she’s way off. Um, and, and that’s how I, how I float. And some editors, um, particularly there’s one in particular I have at my publishing company who I respect and whatever she says nine times.

95 times out of a hundred I’m gonna do because she’s just so good, you know? Um, 

Steve Cuden: and you learn to work with people. I think it’s, I think it’s great that you are open and willing to listen to notes and to consider them and, and then to try to figure out whether they actually work or not. Those are all good things for a writer to have as part of their toolkit as opposed to any number of, I think newish writers sometimes tend to feel protective of the work and push back and don’t want anyone to touch it.

You, on the other hand, are open and I think that that’s exactly the way it should be. 

Sharon Virts: I’m telling you my, so my entire career before I did this was you, uh, this is the gude. You can either listen to me, you know, and I would do a lot of the reviews for other writers as well. And do whatever we say, um, or not.

And if you, if you listen to yourself, you can have the government or the client tell you why you lost to the debrief, and you’ll find it’s the exact reason why I was telling you to make the change, right? So if it makes the work better, if it makes the work win, if it, if it sells, um, that’s what’s most important because you can have the best story in the world, but if no one reads it, if no one buys it, it’s just your story.

But it’s the world’s story if the world reads it and the world’s only gonna read it if you write it in a way in which they receive it. 

Steve Cuden: I think that’s, uh, extremely valuable information. Um, I’ve been having absolutely one of the most fascinating conversations, uh, with Sharon tz, the historical novelist, uh, for close to an hour now.

And we’re gonna wind the show down a little bit. And I’m wondering, uh, in all of these experiences you’ve had, whether with your government, uh, business or writing books or whatever, can you share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat strains, or just plain funny beyond the ones you’ve already given us?

Sharon Virts: Well, you know, you asked me this and I mean, I’ve got plenty of them in business. My gosh. I could, I mean, I could go in for hours about some of the stuff I’ve had to deal with with in business. But, um, in terms of just kind of quirky, um, you know, I, I think I told you earlier on, I do these walking tours around, uh, town, uh, to explain where so and so happened and.

Um, and there’s this large, we always end up in this very large graveyard. And, uh, I spend a lot of time, uh, in that graveyard. So when I was writing my second book, I would actually go out there, it was during the pandemic. Everyone’s got a pandemic book. And I would sit on the grave of one of my protagonist and I’d talk to him.

You know, I’d say, okay, pal, why did you do this? Or Why would you, why did you argue that? You know, why did you, why in the world? And, um, okay, that’s what I did. And so I was out there in the graveyard. This is recently, like less past summer, and I get lost out there. So what I would do is I give those like little pink flags you use to mark, like, um, like Miss Utility uses to mark lines and stuff.

You know, those little flags Sure. They put in the ground with little. So I would take those out there and I would mark everywhere I needed to turn when I would take my walking tour. And whose grave was where? And, uh, and so I’m out there doing that and this guy named Tony, he’s the central, he’s the guy that manages the, the big graveyard out there.

And he comes out there and he says, you are the one putting these little pink flags on the graves. And I said, hi, Tony, how are you? He goes, what are you doing? I use pink flags to mark where I’m, I’m, I’m about to dig a grave, and they’re all of my graveyard. I said, I, I put him out yesterday. I’ll, I’ll get him up tonight after I finish the tour.

He was fussing at me. He says, I swear to God, I’m out here seeing how many graves do I have to dig? They’re everywhere. He was upset about that, and he says to me, so help me God, Sharon. He says, if you don’t get all those pink flags out of my graveyard, I’m not gonna let you come in here and talk to dead people anymore.

He thinks I’m a loon. 

Steve Cuden: What does he mind if you use a different color? 

Sharon Virts: No, I just gotta make sure I pick ’em all up. But it was just, you know, he’s got, he thinks he’s got all these graves that they get. Someone’s put pink flags like, I’m losing my mind. How many graves are there? And then he says, you, I’m not gonna let you come sit on people’s graves and talk to dead people anymore.

I’m like, you must think I’m nuts. So I thought that was pretty funny. Um, you know, it’s kind of quirky. I’m the crazy lady that sits in people’s graves and talks to dead people. 

Steve Cuden: Okay. No, I think it’s, I think it’s great that you have no fear of the graveyard. 

Sharon Virts: I love a good graveyard. Um, I just do. And I, I just think that, you know, however you get in touch with characters, I, I don’t think I could, I’m creative enough to write a character that didn’t live once.

Uh, I, I like to have something to go from. I love that mystery of unwinding them. And I hope that one day when I get to meet them, they can tell me how wrong or how right I was, or if they, even if I got them wrong, which I’m sure I did, they, they can at least say, Hey, but you’ve made a good effort. Thank you for bringing me back alive or something.

Who knows how that’s gonna end. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s a wonderful, that’s a wonderful way to look at it. And I, you know, hopefully you will get to meet those people someday. 

Sharon Virts: Well, it depends on 

Steve Cuden: which 

Sharon Virts: way 

Steve Cuden: we go, 

Sharon Virts: which character? If 

Steve Cuden: you know that’s true. That’s absolutely true. All right, so last question for you today, Sharon.

You’ve already given us a very significant amount of advice along the way, but I’m wondering if you have a solid piece of advice that you like to give to those who are starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to that next place. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah, I, you know, for me, I think the best advice is that you have to write the characters and the stories that you love.

If you don’t fall in love with them, no one else will. And um, and you know, a lot of people have these great ideas about stories, but I think, you know, they’re really plot driven. But at the end of the day, it’s about the people. They need to be people driven, and you have to really know and love that character.

And if you don’t, then you can’t. It’s very hard for you to, to convince anybody else to, it’s kinda like the whole love yourself thing. You gotta love your guy or your gal. And, and then we as readers will find out, um, that they love them too. And then the last thing about that too is that, you know, um, I was gonna say this and I think I already said it.

You know, don’t be afraid to, to fight for your sacred cows, but also know which ones you gotta kill off. And that’s a really tough balance, especially when you love your characters and you love your story. Uh, and I think people have to be open to do that because again, if you don’t, um, if you don’t write, uh, a story that people are gonna buy, then it’s just your story.

It’s not the story for everyone else to enjoy. And, um, I guess lastly on that whole subject is. You had a lot of patience. This is a, this is a business that, you know, it’s a hurry up and wait business takes forever to, to write a book. And then, you know, you wait and wait, wait. And the rejects you get, as you, I’m sure you’ve had many authors say, how many times has a story been rejected or you’ve been rejected.

And you just have to keep at it and don’t give up. Um, but you have to also be willing to change, you know, in order to be able to make your stories more commercial. And I think that’s really hard for a lot of people. 

Steve Cuden: It’s very hard for a lot of people and it’s extremely wise advice because, uh, the business is not, uh, based to, based on everybody gets in.

It’s, it’s based on who gets to earn their way in. And so that can take a long time. Sometimes, sometimes it takes a long time to develop. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. And you know, what’s interesting is that, um, you know, everybody, I have so many people that come up to me, oh, you’re, you’re a writer, you’re an author. I wanna write a book.

I’m like, well, good luck. No, I mean, but you know, a lot of folks that said, they’ve started writing a book and I’m, that’s great, but you gotta finish it. And, you know, you can’t just, it’s not the old days where, and I wasn’t around those old days. I’m sure, you know, you have that experience. I don’t, I was working in, in a different industry.

But, you know, where you can just put a concept out and people just, your, your publisher will just buy it or what have you. You have to actually, your first book. It’s gotta be completely written. It’s gonna be perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. And to sell it. I mean, it’s just, it’s really hard. Now, I now am fortunate I can float an idea with my publisher.

I could give ’em three paragraphs. They’re like, go, go do it. You know? And it’s done. I mean, because they love me and, and they, we work together well. But if I’m not selling books, they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna keep me either. There’s that whole thing, you know? Well, 

Steve Cuden: you’ve, you’ve earned their trust.

Sharon Virts: Right. But that’s not the same thing for some new writer when they first get started. They, unfortunately, they don’t get to sell the way we, they don’t get to write the way we do. They have to write the whole thing, of course. And it’s gotta be perfect. Uh, and it’s really hard to do. Uh, my first book was tough, and then selling it was tough.

I mean, the whole thing was just tough. It was awful, actually. Well, 

Steve Cuden: you, you said that you have folks that come up and say, I want to be a writer. I’ve all, I, I’ve had many people say that to me. There is a huge difference between someone that wants to be a writer and someone who writes. And I’ve always said the only difference between a non-writer and a writer is that the writer writes.

And the only difference between a writer and a professional writer is the professional has somehow figured out how to get paid. And so, if you wanna be a writer, don’t say you want to be a writer. Go be a writer. Just write. Right, right. 

Sharon Virts: Yeah. And, and, and, and write every day. And you get better and better. I mean, that’s the thing too.

I mean, I thought I was a great writer when I started this. And then I looked at my first manuscript. Oh my gosh. The first look at it, you know, if I went back and look at it now, the very first draft of it. Oh my God. I mean, it was awful because I just, I, I used to be adverts and too much expository, too much this and you know, you just don’t know.

Uh, and that’s the thing too, is, you know, don’t be afraid to get some great books and how to, how to, how to, how to use them and Don Moss’s book, breakout novel’s a great one. Um, you know, story maps, all those things you can learn from other, other people, uh, and use them and get a literary coach. If you can afford one, get someone to, to work with you.

I did. Um, it wasn’t just Anthony. I did hire a professional literary coach for the first book. Because I didn’t know what I was doing. 

Steve Cuden: It’s, it’s always helpful to have either a mentor or someone who knows what they’re doing, coaching you along the way. That’s always helpful because most people don’t know what they’re doing right as they’re proceeding.

In fact, some people that know what they’re doing don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s a whole other issue. That is true too. Sharon Vert, I cannot thank you enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom today. This has been an absolutely spectacular hour plus on story beat, and you know, you need to get a little energy.

Oh, it’s, you’re a very passionate, energetic human that it’s fantastic to talk to somebody who’s so passionate about their work, and so I greatly appreciate it and I, I thank you greatly for your time. 

Sharon Virts: Well, and thank you for having me, Steve. I’ve had a great, I’ve had a blast 

Steve Cuden: and so we’ve come to the end of today’s story Bee.

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Until next time, I’m Steve Cuan. And may all your stories be unforgettable.