Aya Winter on How Trend Readership Is Ruining Character Arcs and Reader Expectations

Trend readership is a fascinating topic, especially when readers enter a new genre without understanding the underlying character arcs or structural conventions. This week, I am sitting down with multi-genre indie author Aya Winter to break down what happens when hype-driven reading trends take over the fantasy and romantasy spaces. We dive into the hero’s journey, why readers confuse long-standing genre conventions with plagiarism, the creative autonomy of indie publishing, and why we need to retire the pretty-ugly, inexperienced heroine trope once and for all. 

Aya Winter is a romance novelist, illustrator, and publishing professional with over 20 years of storytelling experience across fiction, poetry, visual art, and music-inspired narratives. She has also spent nearly a decade in children’s book publishing, working from manuscript to print as an illustrator, designer, creative lead, and publishing manager. Her background in communications, branding, and digital media informs a strategic, design-forward approach to her stories and author platform. Known for character-driven narratives with emotional depth, cinematic pacing, longing, and found family in high-stakes worlds, Aya authored the Hartgrave Tellers rockstar romance series. Her debut novel, Through the Glory and the Mess, was released in July 2025. Writing at the intersection of art and story, she views romance as a messy, meaningful craft and calling rooted in emotional truth.

In this episode, we're discussing:

• How fear and early industry rejections stall creative output until life-altering events force a mindset shift toward publishing.
• Why hype-driven trend readership creates reader expectations that clash with standard fantasy conventions and story arcs.
• When the hero's journey gets mistaken for copycatting, and why formulaic character growth is essential for meaningful story payoffs.
• How the financial motivations of traditional publishing limit story variety compared to the creative freedom of indie authors.
• Why writing confident, experienced women who own their beauty and power makes for far better heroines than tired, self-deprecating tropes.

CONNECT WITH AYA WINTER:

Website

Instagram

Amazon

BOOKS/AUTHORS MENTIONED:

Naima Simone Episode on the Podcast

Ember by Naima Simone  (Amazon | Bookshop)

Huntsman by Naima Simone (Amazon | Bookshop)

Behind Closed Doors by Shain Rose (Amazon | Bookshop)

Lilac by B.B. Reid (Amazon | Bookshop)

Crucible by B.B. Reid (Amazon | Bookshop)

Kelley Armstrong (Amazon)

Zoey Draven (Amazon)

Alpha Breeds by Milana Jacks (Amazon)

Fae-ted Kings by Milana Jacks (Amazon)

A Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (Amazon | Bookshop)

https://youtu.be/W68Iqk8Kz4g

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Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in these show notes are affiliate links. If you make a purchase or borrow a book through these links, I may earn a small commission at zero extra cost to you.

Connect with Alesia:
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Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

This podcast was produced by Galati Media.
Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Transcript

Intro: The Impact of Trend Readership in Fantasy & Romantasy

Alesia Galati 0:00

Trend readership is quite an interesting topic, especially if you don't understand how character arcs happen or the logistics behind certain conventions that happen in certain genres. And so when trend readership happens, readers tend to feel like authors are copying each other. Every book seems the same. There's a lot to this. So today we're talking with Ea Winter all about trend readership, especially in the fantasy and romanticy space. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only.

Aya Winter's Multigenre Journey from Fan Fiction to Indie Author

Alesia Galati 0:41

Hello, Ea. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. If you could start by telling everyone who you are and a bit about your reading and author journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. My name's Ea Winter, and I'm an indie author. My reading journey started, geez, when I was super young. I've always loved reading in stories. I have been a storyteller, avid daydreamer, active imagination kid since I was really little and I was eight years old, drawing comic books in my room. Bank robbing clowns and fairies. And I started reading probably in my teens. I was part of the whole goosebumps and babysitter club and all that fun stuff. And then it just carried over until I was an adult. So I've been reading romance and YA and fantasy, all the genres. I'm a multi-genre reader and I'm also a multi-genre writer. So my writing journey is similar. I've always been writing. I didn't publish anything or release anything until like about a couple years ago. Mostly because of confidence. And I came from the 90s and 2000s when writers had to go through certain steps in order to get published. So I had a little bit of a complex about it. But after healthcare, my husband had one, I realized that you just gotta go for it. Someday becomes never. So I started publishing all my stories, all my backlogs that I've been writing for years and years. I polished up, started rewriting. So I have a rock star romance saga that's out. There's quite a few books in that series. And then I am working on a couple more series and fun things that I've always had in the works, such as my superhero rom-com, which is a kind of like what would dating Superman be like? This is a little bit alien sci-fi too. And then I'm also working on a few romanticies, urban fantasies, that kind of stuff. So then those will all be coming out probably over the next God knows how long. The rest of my writing career I'll be wearing on that. All of it's on my website. You can check it out.

High School Rejections, University Writing Feedback, and Finding Confidence

Alesia Galati 2:32

Nice. Oh my goodness. Okay, so as you were talking and thinking about I'm I was born in 91. I understand what you mean. You unlocked a memory for me. I was in high school, and I submitted my book to be like my I had written a small book, like a novella thing, and I had submitted it to be published, and I got a rejection letter, and then I didn't do anything, like I didn't try to go the trad route at all after that, and then discovered Wattpad and was like, hello, the world is my oyster.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

You just unlocked and say like this. I think I wrote supernatural fanfiction for years. I didn't release anything, but I was like, this is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

So that's how we all start, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

And Wapcat and all that fun stuff, it's a great way to start. But yeah, in the 90s, I remember even being in school, I used to write romance stories and fantasy stories, and my teachers would they think they were fine, but they'd always praise other kids who wrote more journalistically and more seriously. And they're like, oh, you and your little stories. Yeah. And you're like, I guess I'm not a good writer, right? But it's what you love it, you just do it, right? So I've always been that way. So I've always written for myself. Now I'm just putting it out there.

Alesia Galati 3:53

Yeah. I think that's important too, right? Like as a writer, is to write for yourself first. And yeah, if other people see it, cool. But it's always, yeah, it's always interesting, like putting yourself out there in that way. And like you said, just that fear before you actually take the step can be a bit debilitating, especially if you've maybe had an experience where it was like, oh, that didn't work, or I don't like that response, right? I feel personally attacked by that response, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Like release the my soul and they just torch transit like, oh god. And when you're young and like insecure, it can be very debilitating. I remember taking a creative writing class in university and like people reading my writing. I was young, so it was like what's very black and white. I wanted to talk about these adult themes, and it was very like non-nuanced because I was so young, and people were like, I think you need to live life a little more. And I was like, Ow! I know everything. Yeah. So I think young hubrisness, we always think we know things we do not know. As I got older, I started writing with a bit more nuance and understanding and went through life and all that kind of stuff. And that confidence came where it's like, yeah, I know what I'm talking about as voice.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah. And through some stuff.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Oh God, that's so funny. But yeah, I remember being in writing classes too. Like I I studied writing, I studied the craft of writing, I studied publishing because I was in publishing. I was a children's book illustrator for a long time. So I was publishing adjacent for novels and stuff. I was always seeing what was what was trending, what was on the cusp, was an avid reader. I was always paying attention to trends. I was part of the whole trend in the 2000s that was the YA trend. That was big. It was a big boom in writing. And that kind of got me into writing again and reading, and all these authors were coming out. And I joined writing clubs. And I remember I joined some writing classes, and they were like, okay, now give your writing to your partner and they're gonna like assess it.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And I was just being like, I think I was in my 30s, and I was still like, no.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I was like, no one can ever read this. And that that series is actually one that now I'm producing and putting out, which is the Bellfire Chord series, which like when I gave the other person my writing, there was actually really good. And I was like, this is like my first thing. And now I'm just like F it, let's just publish it. Yep, there you just got it's a

Alien Warlords and Fae Kings: Exploring Formulaic Comfort in Speculative Romance

SPEAKER_00 6:13

journey, right?

Alesia Galati 6:14

Yeah, oh my goodness. Speaking of trends and stuff, let's get into our conversation for today, which is around the fantasy and romanticy trend. And to preface this, I am not a fantasy or romantic reader. The only two that I can think of that are like fantasy adjacent, maybe-ish, and that's because they write in a sci-fi, sometimes high fantasy way. Their books, depending on the series, it alternates between those. And so Zoe Draven and Milana Jax. And I am obsessed with both of their writing, both of their stories. The first one I read of Milana Jax was this is gonna give away exactly what this book is about, but the title is Alpha Breeds.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Oh, I've been liking that. I love it.

Alesia Galati 7:17

And it is this college woman gets sucked into some portal behind a frat house, lands on a planet with these alien warlord dudes, and he's the alpha, and his goal is to breed. And then it happens to more women, and then now like all his brothers get girls, and then there's an offshoot series where their kids take up Word to Earth and like conquer the world.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Oh, I love offshoot series. So good.

Alesia Galati 7:50

Yes, but then she even has another series, it's called Fated, F-A-E-T-E-D, Faded Kings, which is high fantasy, where the whole world and creating a whole world of Fey and others, and that one I really like because they have kind of Faye vampires too, which I love just kind of the crossoverness of like I don't want something that's like, all right, there's a 17-year-old and she needs to conquer the world, and oh my god, she falls in love with a Fae. But there's also a werewolf dude too, and she has to decide who she's gonna be with. It feels very formulaic to me, but they can be super fun. They can, and and it sounds like they can because people eat them up like crazy. And I also think that there is in something formulaic, if you know what you're getting into, there's something soothing in knowing what to expect.

Vampires to Fae: How 2000s YA Trends Set the Stage for Romantasy

SPEAKER_00 8:43

The thing about the Faye and Vampires is so funny because I've always thought that these high fay versions that are now very popular are really just the vampires of the 2000s and Anne Wright and beyond and stuff. I'm like, oh yeah, the vampires, it's so cool. And like we were talking about as a writer, you have to write what you like and what not necessarily is trending, because yeah, like in the 2000s, it was all about vampires and dystopian, all that kind of stuff. And then the Fay came around and we had romanticy, which was a new trend. And it created a big boom, like the vampires did in the 2000s, the YA ones, which hadn't been done before. And like nobody was writing about Faye in the 2000s. So it who the people who did write about them, if they hadn't followed their own instincts, we wouldn't have them, right? So that's why it's always that's a writer, you should never follow trans, you should write the story you wanna write. Because you don't know what's gonna happen 20 years down the line. And I got that also from Kelly Armstrong at the Toronto Romance Writers Group. I saw her live and talking, and she said that when I wrote my first werewolf story, it was 10 years before it came popular, and my publishers were like, no one's gonna read this. And then 10 years later, huge boom, and she gets a TV show, and it's one of my favorite series. And she's a Canadian author, if you know her. She lives up in Misskoka, she's all amazing. So when I met her, I couldn't even speak, I was just like I still have her signed autograph book. It's like my most prized possession. So I've been a huge fantasy, urban fantasy romance fan for a really long time. So I'm loving this new boom,

Trend Readership, FOMO, and Misinterpreting Genre Conventions

SPEAKER_00 10:20

but it has created a trend readership. And when a trend readership happens, it comes from a sense of FOMO. And the publishers do that on purpose, right? And with book talk coming up, that also created that everybody's reading these books, there's all these snippets and edits, I gotta read the series. What am I missing? Right. So when that happens, you don't necessarily get people in the readership who understand sort of genre conventions of the genre, right? Like fantasy genre conventions. So stuff like that can be like trials, enemies to lovers, chosen one, those kinds of things. So all those come out, but just because it's a trend doesn't necessarily mean that the people reading it like it or necessarily want to read it. It's a trend, right? So it creates like boom. So then we have a lot of people saying things like, Why aren't writers doing this? Why aren't writers doing that? I don't like first person, I don't like third person. Generally, fantasy is written in third person. So when a lot of people don't like third person, they're saying, I don't like this genre convention. And that's totally fine. There's so much out there. You don't need to read what's popular. And I think not naming like this is a trend. We do ourselves a disservice in managing reader expectations. I've been posting a little bit about that because I've noticed it happening. One that like we shouldn't tell writers what to write, because that's how some of our greatest trends and booms are born. Because somebody did something that was a little unconventional or a slight twist on something when it wasn't popular and then it became popular, and boom, everybody's doing it. So we kind of need to allow writers that creativity and not dictate what they're gonna write, when and why.

The Hero's Journey: Why Story Mechanics Are Not Plagiarism

SPEAKER_00 12:00

And then the other thing that creates, and a lot of writers have been talking about this recently, is a gold rush. So that's happened with the recent romanticy boom, and a lot of authors are noticing that it's on the decline. Another seeing less page reads, less purchases on this genre or the kind of stories written with certain genre conventions. Like I said, people are even actively saying, I'm getting sick of the trials. Why is everyone writing trials? Trials are really common in fantasy, right? The hero always has to go through the trials to get to a place where they can defeat the bad guy, right? And it's also very video game issue.

Alesia Galati 12:33

Right. I'm even thinking, got Star Wars, Star Trek, like even from a sci-fi perspective and a story arc perspective, your characters have to go through struggles to get to their happy ever after or happy for now at the end. It's gonna happen across multiple genres.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah. And that's because if you want to really d dive deep into that, is because that is technically the hero's journey. And the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell, if you want to read a hero with a thousand faces, it's really dry, but it's really good.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Listen to it.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Really dry, really old, really dry. It's basically us as humans telling the same story over and over in different capacities. And of course, Hollywood's jumped on it, the Marvel Universe is full of it. So it's in all stories, and it is formulaic. The hero is in its normal place in life, and then the hero is has a calling to do something to leave the norm, and they don't answer the call. There are consequences to that. Then they answer the call, and then they go through a series of trials. And some of them are like if you Joseph Campbell wrote it out in an outline, it's very specific. They meet the mother figure, they meet the father figure, they do this, and then they have the death, and then they have the rebirth. So sometimes what we're seeing isn't necessarily like authors plagiarizing each other. It's authors following the hero's journey pretty rote, and it's like a really long-standing convention. So I think that's the trouble when something becomes popular and everybody's reading it. We don't all know the inner mechanics that are happening there. So if we don't like it, we don't have to be like, oh, this is just like this, this is just like that. I don't know if romantic is my thing.

Alesia Galati 14:13

It makes me think of I saw something on Threads where someone commented and were like the they were like, this sounds exactly like this book by this author. And the person was like, I literally am the author. Like that's how media literacy, y'all. Like, come on. It's me promoting that book because it's my book.

Contentification and Inside Thoughts: The Dark Side of BookTok Feedback Loops

SPEAKER_00 14:43

And that's the problem with the contentification, which I'm stealing that term from another really amazing content creator on threads that I follow really religiously, of what we read and what we create, right? We might not always have to post that stuff.

Alesia Galati 15:00

Those are inner thoughts, as I tell my 11-year-old. Those are inside thoughts. We don't always have to share them.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Oh man.

Alesia Galati 15:13

But yeah. Let's dig into this idea of the copycatting, right? Because, like you said, so much of this is story arc, it is the hero's journey, it is formulaic. I even think of going to with the Marvel idea. The Spider-Man. So we've got the Toby McGuire one and the Andrew Garfield one, both fantastic. I'm an Andrew Garfield preference, but both fantastic and both have very similar hero journeys and similar arcs. They're both Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

It's literally the same story over and over. Like, how many Batmans are there? There's exactly but we love it. We just and that's why we keep telling it to ourselves over and over and over. It's like thousands of years. Now it's just like superheroes instead of gods and demigods and stuff like that, right? Religious characters and myths, right? And it is across genres and it is in almost everything we watch. And it we can look at it from a perspective of, oh, I'm sick of this. Or we can look at it from a perspective of what does that tell us about ourselves as humans? Like, why do we always want to read these stories over and over about these characters having these transformations? And that's the other thing we have to remember about stories, is that in order for something to be a story, romanticy, fantasy, whatever genre it's in, certain things

Character Arcs and Redemption: Why Characters Need to Make Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 16:38

have to happen, such as a character arc. So you want your character to start one way at the beginning of the book and to change their mind, go through experiences that change their mind to get to another place at the end of the book. I see this happens with enemies to lovers a lot when the guy's a jerk at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I haven't forgiven him for what he did back here. And it's but that was his character arc. Like you had he had to be this way to get here.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

And we like sort of redemption arcs and seeing a character who's one way change their mind and get to another place. But in order for them to do that, they have to make mistakes. And the story is built out of characters doing the wrong thing over and over, facing consequences, having to get out of them, figuring out how to get in, so we get into the other side of the story. And if we don't have that, we don't really have a story, right? So a lot of the complaints I've seen about like romanticity and fantasy are story mechanics, really. And I'm like, sure, the author could have taken another turn, kind of did another mistake, but that's the one she chose to do. So what we can say is, I didn't really like that character arc or that story plot line or that story arc in this book, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good story. It just means that wasn't for you, right?

Alesia Galati 17:58

The same could be said for TV shows, right? Or any kind of media that we're consuming that has some type of character arc or story. It's so funny you mentioned that. I just finished an arc, it is so good, of Ember by Naeema Simone. We had her on the podcast either earlier this year or last year when she came out with Hunter, which is a retelling of Snow White and the Huntsman. And it's so good.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

We tell ourselves the same story. Right, exactly. Same thing.

Alesia Galati 18:33

Ember is a it's a retelling of Cinderella, and she is this badass who works for her mafia dad, who's a piece of trash, and she makes like she's got La Masters in biochemicals and like all that stuff. So she's the one making the drugs that they're pushing on the streets, and her drug is called glass slipper. Like there's like little things throughout that are like, oh, I see it. Easter eggs, right? And then it's a stepbrothers, and they're very go to the event, and your carriage away. It's like in sarcastic ways, but little penfricks. But it's an enemies to lovers, and he bullied her for her entire childhood. And so first half of the book is just you hate this dude. He is unapologetically him, he stands by his choices, he is not repentant whatsoever. And then you find out like why he did that stuff, and it reframes everything. And you're like, wait, but you have to go through the journey with the characters to get that.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

That payoff, right? And that payoff is so good. Yeah. See, I love that kind of payoff. It's like, oh, I knew it. And we just love those kind of guys, don't we?

Alesia Galati 19:55

Yes. But anyway, everybody go read that book. It's fantastic. What I love about it is that you start a story, whether it's fantasy or it's urban fantasy or it's contemporary or if it's dark romance, you have to go through that journey with the characters.

Reader Demands vs. Authorial Freedom: Separating Art from Fandom

Alesia Galati 20:11

And I think we as readers do a disservice to authors by demanding things, right? I just started a book by a new author. I'd never read their books before. And there was an author's note at the beginning that was like, Stop telling me what to do. Readers. And I was like, Oh, snap. What happened? I want, I want to know the T. I want to know the lore. What happened here? But I would be frustrated too. The person was like, I'm writing the books I'm gonna write. If you don't like them, don't read them. Go find something else to read.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

There's so much out there, like it's unnecessary. We can find our niche, our little thing that's ours. If everybody's reading a certain book, we don't have to and we don't have to like it. Right. We can move on. And I agree, like especially with creativity. And I can't imagine the kind of pressure it would be. And a lot of more authors are who are big are talking about this about having a series, having a plan for a series, and it becoming hugely popular. And then suddenly you have all this pressure, right? People want to steer where the story's going, but you had another idea for it. I think I would probably do that too. It's gonna be over my corner writing.

Alesia Galati 21:23

Everybody leave me alone.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

It would be very difficult to separate the art from sort of the fandom. And I think that's gotta be a hard thing for authors to do, especially when they're so large. And I think a lot of, like I said, a lot of them have spoken about that. So I think the other thing too is we need to remember is authors are people, and I've seen people go on and be like, oh, if they did this, that'd be so boring.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

And it's but maybe that was their plan from the beginning. Like sucks. I haven't even finished it and already calling it boring. Oh my God.

Alesia Galati 21:53

Yeah. It makes me think my kids go to MMA, and one of the girls that like teaches. The younger class, she's in the older class. She had like bright pink hair, and she recently dyed it like all black to go like back to her natural coloring. And two sisters came in, like they're uh a couple years apart, but they came in for the next class, and then one goes, Oh my goodness, you dyed your hair. I don't like it. And then the other one comes in and she's like, Oh, you dyed your hair, it looks good.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

It's like, what are you doing? I don't feedback.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Yeah, and I think that's the thing. Book talk has created this immediate sort of feedback loop. And people always like to get their own opinions confirmed, right? And I think that's why book talk took off because it was like, oh my god, me too! I felt like that too. I want to obsess about this. But then it also has a darker side where it becomes like, let's tear this to shreds. And some book talkers like throwing books in the garbage and calling them trash or like trashing on the whole genre or even romance. Like romance gets such a bad rap, which it always has. I remember we had that conversation in the 2000s too when e-readers came out, and people were like, Did you know that women are like reading all this romance on e-readers?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

And everyone of all the women are like, Yeah.

unknown 23:13

Right?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Everyone just was like so appalled by it. But it was like back then it was a million-dollar industry, now it's a billion-dollar one, and people still kind of turn their noses at it, right? But we love it, and there's nothing wrong with that. No judgment. We love love, we love love, and we love all the parts of it. We want to see all the parts, open doors, closed doors. Yes, whoever you're loving, monsters, women, men, right, days. We want it. So there's room for everything. And I think with book talk, I think it's it needs to allow for a little bit more niche iness. I think readerships and and that is happening. You do see that. People are getting more into the like, okay, I'm gonna start promoting indies more and talking about books that aren't as popular. The sad thing about that though is algorithms work on trends, so they push hot takes, they push discourse, they also push if everybody's talking about something. So if there's one book out there that everybody's talking about it, you jump on the trend, you get more views, right? You talk about an indie author that people aren't maybe talking about as much, you don't get as many views. So it's a catch-22. And I think in the bookish community, writers and authors, we need to find a happy medium between getting on trends, trying to be trendy, building our readerships, our followers, and honoring what we like, our niches, creators who maybe aren't the huge and indie authors from all walks of life and all different kinds of genres and celebrating our likes and our joys more than ripping on everything.

Anti-Trend Reading, Mood Reading, and Navigating Book Reviews

Alesia Galati 24:44

Yeah. Honestly, that's something that as this account has evolved, and as I was thinking about what I wanted this podcast to be, I was like, I don't necessarily want to do book reviews because half the time I'm like, I don't know what I thought, good vibes all around 10 stars. Tends to be how I rate.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Or like I I've now with reviews, I like I stopped doing them. So I cannot review a book I've just read because like my emotions are like so heightened that I'm like, what the fuck? Like a couple days thinking around like, oh, that was actually really good. All good vibes. Right.

Alesia Galati 25:19

So reviews are like for me, I'm just like, like it has to be really bad for me to be like two or three stars. Or if I find books that I have like really high expectations for because everybody loved them, because it got like a huge boom in readership, or it was the trending book. And I don't tend to read those when everybody else is reading them because I'm like very anti-trend. I read them like a little bit after when the mood strikes. Yes, and I'm definitely a mood reader. So like I ended up reading one and I and maybe it was because it was an audio book, but I just I wasn't impressed. And I don't know if it was just like maybe a year ago, I would have been like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. But now I was just like, it was fine. Like four stars, like three stars, three and a half stars, it was fine. Like I know how I feel about most of them.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

It was really good. I liked it. But there's also like some great moments.

Alesia Galati 26:19

Like, even thinking about the book Alpha Breeds, like if I were to go back and read that now, I read that in like 2021. So, like, my opinion might be completely different. I just remember at the time I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Oh wow, I could not read some of the stuff I read when I was younger. And like I remember in the 2000s, like I was like when the Sex and the City came out and all that, there was like this big boom of chiclet, they called it. Like all those confessions of a shop a holic. All those kinds of books. Like I was totally into those, but like now I'd be like, what is this? My dark romance, romantic reading, but be like, I don't know about yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

I really want to go shopping.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

I enjoyed them. They were fun, they were cute, but I think I'm out of my contemporary rom-com era. So I forgot I read those.

Alesia Galati 27:13

Memory unlocked.

Indie Freedom: How Independent Authors Drive Real Industry Change

Alesia Galati 27:15

Yeah, I think it's interesting, the whole trend readership, the whole idea of like piggybacking or saying, oh, this book is too much like this. And that's where I think that indie books, because they have a lot more freedom to create whatever world or create whatever story they want, can help with that, like palette cleanse almost. Like I'm typically reading anywhere from four to five books at a time. I'm usually have one paperback that takes me forever to read. I've got one arc that I'm trying to get through because I'm like, okay, I gotta get through this. I have usually some like erotica or like a street lit or urban romance. And then I usually have a sci-fi or a paranormal going, like all at the same time. And I can keep them pretty separate because they're very different stories typically, right? I'm not reading, okay, these are all Desi stories, and I'm gonna read four Desi stories at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

I can't yeah, I'm the same with like dark romance going, romanticy, and then probably urban fantasy romance, and she's all over the place. Yes. I'm similar, like I came all separate. I'm similar with writer. Like some people are like, cheese writers are out here writing like three different projects. And I'm like, yeah, I gotta toggle. Like sometimes I just hit a roadblock with Wunster, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna jump into like what dating Superman's like now. And I just we're into superheroes, we're going to rock stars, and then we head on over to romanticity, you know what I mean? It's so you just kind of that's always how I've been. And I agree that like with the trend readership, we have to be mindful of them when we're in them, just because like they create sort of a cultural reset and a boom, right? So we have to be mindful that boom's gonna change, things are gonna change, the wave is gonna eventually crest, and it will be something different, right? So if we're like, oh man, I'm really gonna sick to seeing romantic everywhere, it's gonna change. And similarly, like people are ragging on on like blonde MMCs, or like, what's wrong with blonde MMCs? It's like we ran for the early 2000s because it was all blonde MCs. Like, we have blonde MCs all the time. Oh, it was annoying. So then we switched, right? And eventually it'll be something else. So, as readers, as writers, we just gotta ride the waves. If you're in it for any sort of long term, especially as a book talker, if you're doing that, if you're a writer, just ride the wave. We'll come to the next one. Dark academia, who knows what it's gonna be. Sci-fi, maybe we'll have a wave here, dystopians having a wave. It'll always change. It's a way to not get caught up in the weeds of it, right? In the logistics and the semantics of it, like arguing with all these, like, oh, I didn't like how this happened or this character is this way, or it'll be a new book boyfriend about ideas.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

We'll all move on. So it's okay.

Alesia Galati 29:59

So true. And I think that it's too to the authors writing what they want, because even if you look at some of the authors that quote unquote made it big in the last five years, they had an extensive backlog for people to consume. So when someone found them, it wasn't like, oh, there's just that one book and then they move on. No, there's 20 books or 10 books from this author that I can then fly through or consume and then move on. And so I think that writing what you want can help that, where like when it does come around, when your time happens, that you have a backlog.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah, and and some authors have backlogs in different genres. Right. So they toggle and then this is like their third or fourth series in this genre, or they've been writing in a completely other genre and then they just tried their hand at this, and boom, it takes off, right? Yeah. So as writers, it's very important to remember that a lot of people write to the market. Other thing we have to remember about traditional publishing, especially with trends, is that publishers and publishing is a money-making business. Its main objective is to make money. So I was a manager for a publishing company that published educational resources for minority communities. So I kept up with it. I know how to publish things, I know the whole production. And you publish what you know works, right? Right. So sometimes why we see the same thing over and over is because that is the publisher not deterring from the trend. They're like, just write it like this, or we have a formula, yours is gonna fit into it. So the thing with indies is they have so much more creative freedom. They have more creative freedoms over their IPs, they have more creative freedom to tell their stories their way. So it's so important to remember that trend publishing is not the end all be all of what is good. It's just the most marketable version of it right now in this cultural moment. So that's why indies are so important. Indies get a bad rap, but they're driving the change underneath the surface of that crest, right? Under the push under the wave, and then it onto the next thing. And they can even be the trend setters for the next thing. Publishers look at what's happening in the indie world and they're like, oh, that's gonna be the next big thing. Let's jump on it. They pull a couple indies, yep, and then they make a new wave, right? So yeah, so it's important to jump on trends if you like it. That's great. But also remember that some of those indies are telling stories in that genre that are amazing.

Alesia Galati 32:26

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting too that we're seeing a lot more publishers traditionally publish books by originally indie authors, right? I'm even right behind me. I literally have two that I bought because I liked the spine, and they're both authors of color. The spines are just gorgeous. So the one is Behind Closed Doors by Shane Rose. And then I have read quite a few of her indie books. I haven't read this one yet. It's just pretty, so I bought it. Crucible, BB Reed. She came out with there was a rock star why choose that she came out with, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago. Yes, Lilac, yes. And she came out with that one first that was indie published, and then now has this series. This is the first one. It is a duet, and it does end in a cliffy, and the second one is out. I always like to make sure people know that because I hate Cliffies. I'm like, all of the books need to be out. Cankover is real, so real. Because then I don't know what to do with my life after that.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Yeah, I have ADHD, I get hyperfixated, so it's like I need to finish the whole thing. And as a writer, I'm so bad for that. No, I'm sorry. I would hate myself too.

Alesia Galati 33:43

Oh, that's so funny. But yeah, I think it's really cool. I think that yeah, if you're not reading indie, there's so much out there. That's why I like to make sure that I'm showcasing both traditionally published authors and indie authors. Speaking of indie authors, tell us about your books and what they're about, where we can buy them, all that

Deep Dive into Aya's Books: Fleetwood Mac Rockstars, Superman Rom-Coms, and Griffin Riders

Alesia Galati 34:02

stuff.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Yeah, amazing. I wrote a modern Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones and the Six kind of story. All my worlds are very inclusive. They're also safe worlds. So we have LGBTQ, all BIPOC characters, everybody from all walks of life, because that I mean, like it's my own life, right? I always like to preface that.

Alesia Galati 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

I also want to challenge more authors to do that, right? We can write inclusive, it's important. So I wrote this modern Fleet with Mac series. So it takes place starting 2017, and it's Friends to Lovers, Second Chance. It's very Stevie Nixon, Lindsay Buckingham, but modern characters. So I have Emma Hargrave and Liam Teller. Liam's a British rock star. Emma's a classically trained ballerina from New York, and they come together. There are two bands to form this new band called The Hargrave Tellers, which is meant to be like a Fleetwood Mac kind of revival, a rock revival. And from my background, I have studied opera and jazz. I've been in a lot of bands. It's not my story, it's just a labor of love. And I put a lot of my own experiences from being on stage and working with bands and being a musician into it. So that's kind of why a lot of the scenes are immersive from the musicians' perspectives because I'm able to tap into that. I just kind of got this idea and I just ran with it and it just took on this whole life. And I took a leave from work after a really stressful period in my life, and I just wrote for Three Months Solid. And then I ended up having this giant series. It was like a little bit dark romance, a little bit rock star romance, very sort of Daisy Jones and the Six with Spice in modern times. So I'm releasing those books now. There's two series, the Legacy series, which is them now. And then I did a prequel series, which is sort of them before they get together, the band. And it's a lot more about the band's rise to fame and the corruption of the industry they're in and how they deal with that and move forward. It's a little piece also on how women are treated in the media. Emma kind of became my effigy for a lot of what I've seen female celebrities and female artists go through with owning their own music, owning rights to their art, their bodies being sold as commodities, their mistakes being vilified to the point where they might lose their career, all that kind of stuff. And also, sort of the industry and those industries in itself, the mainstream industries, which we all know, have a lot of really suspect people. So they deal with that kind of thing and being artists and being commodified as well as being exploited. So that's sort of the dark romanticy piece to it. Liam himself is not a villain, but he is a guy who is in a band with a woman who he needs to step up and protect and help through some really difficult situations. So that's the hard grave tellers, and that's the name of the band. So I wanted to give them sort of that nostalgic Fleetwood Mat kind of feel. And it's like a fun series that I get to also play with all my knowledge about classic rock history and lore, and all my knowledge about music that I love and what I love about rock and roll. And because rock and roll disappeared there for a bit, which it's one of my favorite genres. I love pop, but like I'm also a rockerly. I grew up on rock, I sang rock, even though I was classically trained. And I grew up listening to Fleetwood Mac in my dad's car singing to it when I was like, or it's very nostalgic to me. And I do know all its background and a lot of this history, and I wanted to bring that forward and talk about it because it's coming back. I feel like rock and roll is coming back. We'll see. Yeah, and in July, I have my What Would It Be Like to Date Superman story coming out, my sci-fi alien romance, superhero rom-com. So that'll be coming out. It's just like a short little sweet little fun story. I released a romanticy on my sub stack. I'm releasing the first chapter. So this is actually a story I wanted to write for my niece like 13 years ago, and I didn't do it. I wrote it, but I never released it. And it was gonna be a YA, but now that romanticies is a big thing. I was like, oh, this works so well as a romanticy. So it still has sort of the elements that I had incorporated from the beginning, but it has a bit more bite. It's around themes of colonization and evil empires, rebel forces, there's griffin riders. They're in their late 20s, early 30s. Nice. That's not our role. All of my characters are generally older. That's kind of how I roll. And my female characters are generally strong female characters. That's really why I started writing as well, because they

Ditching the Inexperienced Heroine Trope for Confident, Complex Women

SPEAKER_00 38:40

say write the stories that you want to read yourself. And I remember in my early 20s just being really disappointed, sort of with a lot of the female characters that came out. And I was like, why? I want women who are multifaceted, who have been through trauma, who are a bit ragey, but also soft. I mean, like who can love, but are also like, I'm gonna kick your ass across me. But they're also like not these perfect little virginal women. Like, I'm really sick of those. That's kind of one of my pet peeve tropes, is is the pretty ugly girl who's had no experience. She doesn't think she's pretty, but every guy in the whole book is in love with her.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

I'm really sick of that. If you're hot, just own it. Yeah. Everybody loves me. I'm so tired of that. I'm not much to look at. I'm so thin with my big boobs and all the Please stop. I'm like over that. No more.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

You know what I mean? So my female characters are generally women who know what they have when they have it and they know how to work it, and they're like women, you know what I mean? So that's what I write. So Emma's like that. Bree is the girl in my superhero rom, and then I have Lyra Beth in my fantasy, and she's also like that. She's a rebel fighter who has a past she doesn't remember. So we get to follow her on that journey and see where it leads. So it's quite fun.

Alesia Galati 39:58

And then so you said that the fantasy one you can read on your Substack. We'll make sure we have a link for that. And then the other two, you have you're like releasing the one on a schedule, the one series on a schedule. That's probably on your Amazon, right? So we can grab that. Perfect. And the sci-fi superhero one, that one's coming out in July. So we'll make sure we have links to pre-order that as well. What is your website? So we can make sure we have that correctly.

Outro: Where to Support Aya Winter

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Yeah, it's aawinterromances.com. And then all of my handles are AWinter Romances with underscores in between each word.

Alesia Galati 40:36

Awesome. We'll have links for all that in the show notes and for the YouTube description for anyone doing other things as they're listening to us. Aya, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for talking to me about readership trends and all of the weird behavior happening in the reader's space. Much love to you readers. Let's get our shit together, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

More joy.

Alesia Galati 41:02

And then definitely want to check out your books. So we'll have links, like I said, for that. Thank you so much for being on.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Thank you.