From Corporate to Sci-Fi Author: Jill Tew Discusses ‘The Dividing Sky’ [Podcast]

Balancing Creativity and Parenting: Jill Tew’s Journey

In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini sits down with debut author Jill Tew to discuss her gripping sci-fi novel The Dividing Sky. Jill shares her fascinating journey from a corporate career to becoming a published author, revealing how her love for science fiction and storytelling shaped her path.

Dive into the themes of worldbuilding, dystopian futures, and emotional experiences that form the core of her book. Jill also opens up about the evolving publishing landscape, offering insight into how authors today must stay agile and seize new opportunities. Plus, hear her thoughts on balancing writing with parenting and her excitement for her upcoming middle-grade novel with Disney.

This episode is perfect for fans of sci-fi, aspiring writers, and anyone curious about the creative process behind a debut novel. Tune in to discover more about The Dividing Sky and Jill Tew’s captivating writing journey!

Resources:
The Dividing Sky on Penguin Random House: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/736783/the-dividing-sky-by-jill-tew/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/764010/freedom-fire-kaya-morgans-crowning-achievement-by-jill-tew
Jill Tew’s Website: https://www.jilltew.com/books

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – From Corporate to Creative and Spreadsheets to Sci-Fi
00:08:12 – Exploring the Dividing Sky, A Dystopian Tale
00:13:17 – Worldbuilding Responsibility for Sci-Fi Authors
00:17:49 – Exploring Mixed Media Formats for Storytelling
00:20:43 – The Evolving Publishing Landscape
00:26:22 – Balancing Writing and Parenting
00:28:00 – Writing Tricks and Techniques
00:30:02 – A Young Black Girl’s Renaissance Faire Journey
00:32:11 – Writing for Young Readers
00:33:06 – Capturing Friendship, Uncertainty, and the Power of Perspective
00:35:40 – Closing Thoughts

Podcast Transcript

00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, a podcast here in the city of Peachtree Corners in the county of Gwinnett, just north of Atlanta. So I want to welcome you all for visiting with us today. We have a first-time author, Jill Tew, who’s visiting with us, who lives here in Peachtree Corners, actually, as well. Hey, Jill.

00:00:20 – Jill Tew

Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you.

00:00:23 – Rico Figliolini

This is great. I mean, I just love the idea of being an author myself. I’m sure I have a book in me somewhere, but I can appreciate the endeavors of a first-time writer and author doing this. Yours is actually called The Dividing Sky and is available on Penguin Publishing, their website, and anywhere else that you can find a book.

00:00:50 – Jill Tew

Anywhere books are sold. Yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I’ll always shout out local indie bookstores. If it’s not on the shelf, you can always make a request.

00:00:58 – Rico Figliolini

Excellent. So you were born in Georgia. You went away for college. You ended up in Denver for a few years, and then you came back to Georgia. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and where you’ve been in life.

00:01:14 – Jill Tew

Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up not far from here in the Dunwoody, Sandy Springs area. When I was growing up, it was Dunwoody, and then they incorporated, and so that changed.

00:01:22 – Rico Figliolini

Right.

00:01:23 – Jill Tew

And yeah, I grew up, I always loved writing and storytelling and went away for college to do something more practical. I thought that that was kind of what I was supposed to do. So I went away to school in Philadelphia at an undergraduate business degree and did that and was convinced that that was what I was going to do. I was going to go be an international businesswoman. And I was on the right track. You know, I graduated, I did pretty well in school, I got a very sort of like prestigious corporate job out of school, I was a management consultant. So I was working in New York advising major corporations. And yeah, after that, you know, I decided that maybe the corporate environment wasn’t quite for me, but I still loved business and I loved solving problems that way. And so I ended up moving out to Denver and worked at a startup for another couple of years. That startup ended up getting acquired by Comcast and it was kind of a really cool process to be a part of from start to finish. And that was when the time that I realized that I still had this like creative bug in me from when I was younger and I began to pursue writing as a hobby. And then a few years later, as things kind of shifted, the pandemic happened and I was growing in my craft. Then it shifted from being, you know, less of a hobby to more of, you know, a full kind of wholehearted pursuit. And now it’s a career.

00:02:47 – Rico Figliolini

Cool. What did, when you were younger let’s say, I don’t know growing up being a tween and stuff, what was your, did you have any, did you see yourself being creative at that point? What transpired even at that age? Because usually it seems to start young.

00:02:58 – Jill Tew

Yeah, totally. So it’s funny, you know, I never had any like visual art ability so I never thought of myself as like a creative person because I was like, oh I can’t paint or draw for beans. But I loved wordplay and so I loved like making things rhyme and making up funny like poems and like parodies of songs. My favorite book when I was growing up was actually my rhyming dictionary because I would use it to just like make up funny stories and poems and stuff. I loved books you know, I loved, I think, storytelling in all of its forms. So my favorite at that point ended up being musicals. So I, again, kind of love musicals for the storytelling ability. And I would find myself, you know, watching, you know, science fiction movies or books, or shows, excuse me, or when I was a little bit older, the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out. And I would just like, think about these worlds and thinking about these adventures and, you know, kind of come up with some of my own. I never wrote any fan fiction, but I read it heavily. And I just loved, you know, kind of imagining the different places that these stories could take me. And looking back now, it all kind of clicks. And I see, you know, where that spark kind of started. I loved writing stories and creative writing in school, but when I pivoted to that point of more pragmatic and practical approach, I should have known that eventually I was going to end up circling back.

00:04:17 – Rico Figliolini

That’s funny. So was science fiction, fantasy, was that area mainly your interest?

00:04:23 – Jill Tew

Yeah, mainly. I grew up you know reading animorphs. That was probably my first like science fiction love as a kid. I watched this show that not everyone remembers but if you know you know. There was a show that ran like the late 90s early 2000s called Farscape and it was like yeah. So it’s like Jim Henson Studios, like Muppets in space, but for like adults, like, you know, just like the best, like found family space opera of these like kooky alien characters coming together. I imprinted really hard on that show actually. And I feel like that was kind of where I got the bug.

00:05:00 – Rico Figliolini

Okay, cool. I agree. You listen, people get it from different places and depending on your age, it’s just, you know, it goes. I mean, my kids are voracious readers, and they’re into fantasy, sci-fi as well. Lord of the Rings was like a 13-year-old kid reading it. It’s a dense piece of work also.

00:05:21 – Jill Tew

Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:25 – Rico Figliolini

I can see that. So with the work you’ve done, you know, getting into it as a hobby, how’d you get into it as a hobby? What were you doing as far as writing profiles, short stories, trying to pull together a novel idea? How’d that work?

00:05:38 – Jill Tew

Yeah, it’s really funny. I have some friends who kind of started writing with short stories. I have a lot of friends actually that feel like they’re either good at short stories or novels. And like very few can really do both because they’re very different kind of media, like very different formats.

00:05:52 – Rico Figliolini

Sure.

00:05:53 – Jill Tew

So for me, you know, when I thought about a story, when my first story came to me, it really was this kind of bigger story that needed kind of a full length novel. I was at the startup job on the verge of burnout. And some coworkers thought that we should go see a movie after work. And so we went to the theater and it was Divergent. It was that movie that came out probably a decade ago. And walking home from the theater, I remember like that spark, like reigniting in me and me saying like, oh my gosh, like I’ve been missing this. Like this is what I want to do. I don’t want to make spreadsheets for the rest of my life, I just want to tell a story and I went home and instead of like working on work that night I started like plotting out this novel that I had in my head. It was the idea for like a parallel universe like sci-fi story and seven years later that story got me my agent. And then we went on submission and which means like you take the story to publishers and see if they want it. That book did not sell. But while it was out to editors, I ended up writing the book that became my debut, The Dividing Sky. So yeah, that was kind of the beginning of the journey was seeing Divergent and remembering that part of who I was.

00:07:01 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, Divergent. That was a YA novel that that movie was based on. A trilogy, I think, even because they came out with some more stories.

00:07:09 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:07:10 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. I love the process of writing the whole idea of doing it. You know, reading up on and listen to, you know, podcasts about writing the craft, like you said, because it is a craft, right? It’s an artisan craft almost in some ways. But putting things together, usually most authors that I’ve heard about or read about say that first book is usually that exercise of writing. But it’s not the book that ever gets published. It’s always the second or third book that might get you there. So is this book a duology, a trilogy, or is it a one-off book?

00:07:47 – Jill Tew

Yeah, right now it’s a standalone, I think. So actually I should say that next fall, actually I’m publishing The Penguin Random House again, a book that you could think of as like a companion novel. So it’s another kind of dystopian romance. It’s about a hundred years before the events of this book. So it kind of sets up how we get here, but you can read them in either order, honestly. Readers have been clamoring for a sequel already for The Dividing Sky. And so I am putting some thoughts together about what I want to pitch to my editors. It definitely has, it’s not a cliffhanger, but it leaves some questions open-ended at the end. There’s room for more. And so I’ve been thinking about where else the story might go.

00:08:28 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. No, I could tell. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but just the synopsis of what the story is about. It takes place in 2364. It’s an 18-year-old Liv Newman. Interesting storyline about what she does.

00:08:43 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:08:43 – Rico Figliolini

And that the rookie police force person, I guess, Adrienne Rowe, that follows her and finds her, and she’s lost all her memory, even though memory is part of her job. So, I mean, it’s just I think it’s such a great premise, and I can see how it could go further. You’ve done a lot of good reviews, it seems. Kirkus Reviews called your debut a gutsy novel. You’ve had other reviews in there and your comparisons even to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. What does it feel to be talked about like that? You know, to get those reviews?

00:09:21 – Jill Tew

Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean, when I finished it, and we were kind of wrapping up the editing process, I knew it was something special. But you never know, you know? I think, a lot of the power of those reviews comes in, like, who they assign to read it. And all you can do as a reader, as an author, honestly, is like, hope your book finds its people, like at every level, even, you know, bookstores. And so when I saw those star reviews, my first thought was like, oh my gosh, like this book might have a shot at like finding its people. And, you know, I mean like any author I think would like dream of being compared to Octavia Butler. I feel like I don’t want the book to be like overhyped, but you know, it’s funny. Like, I mean, I love Parable of the Sower. I love that book and Octavia Butler, her writing was brilliant. I think when I reread Octavia Butler or the Parable of the Sower this past year, I was reminded of how much of that story kind of seeped into my authorial DNA. In that book, the main character has this sort of like, you could call it a gift or a curse or just ability to feel like the physical things that others feel you know like if somebody gets punched in the face like she feels that pain and this idea of like a character like having empathy for like extreme like speculative like couldn’t possibly be real like empathy for others in that way has leaked into my DNA for sure. I think you know Liv in the Dividing Sky she’s what we call an emo proxy meaning that her job is actually to read books, watch movies, look at blades of grass blowing in the wind or sunsets, and have emotional experiences about those things. And then sell those emotional experiences, those emotional memories to wealthy clients who are too busy working to live life for themselves. And so this idea of transferring emotions, of channeling an emotion so that someone else can experience it, I feel like is tangential to that ability and Parable of the Sower in a lot of ways.

00:11:13 – Rico Figliolini

I love that idea. I mean, the fact that we look at COVID, we look at the sense of loss of personal connections with people, eventually losing you know I could see that it’s sad world almost a dystopian world where you literally have to work through other people’s emotions. Which is really what we do with social media right? When we scroll through TikTok for about 30 minutes we’re living through other people’s lives. It’s not that much different.

00:11:39 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:11:39 – Rico Figliolini

So is there, and as you know, every book always says, none of this is based on real events or real characters or people, but you know, an author writes from what they know a bit, right? Is there a particular part that was difficult to write or a particular part that you felt more deeply about in this book?

00:12:01 – Jill Tew

Yeah, that’s a really good question. So I think, there’s the world of the book starts off and it’s called the Metro. And it’s sort of this like hyper capitalist world where everything is hinged around productivity. And so you’re only valuable insofar as you can earn money for this mega corporation that we call Life Corp in the book. And that’s why everyone is so, you know, focused on working is because like, that’s how you get not only money, you know your productivity score dictates you know where you can live what you can do kind of just like the confines of your life. And so like of course you’re going to outsource reading books or child care or you know repair work or like dates with your wife to like proxies who will go and handle that for you. Now Liv and Adrian end up discovering this other community outside of the borders of the Metro called the Outerlands. And there are people out there who have been kind of vilified. But the closer they get to this community, the more they realize that they have a very different way of living that feels more connected and feels more like in harmony and is slower paced and appreciates the value of human life, not for being productive, but just for being intrinsically valuable. And that was hard. I mean, I did some thinking about what I wanted that world to look like, because, you know, I think as an author, like you’re going to be depicting a society that is like, you know, in some ways, kind of what you’re saying, what we should like swing closer towards or keep in mind, something that’s supposed to show, you know, what could be be possible. And you have to like take that responsibility really seriously. So I thought a lot about the elements I wanted to highlight and you know what I wanted to kind of telegraph as yeah, like a way of life that is you know maybe more in balance.

00:13:37 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. I mean you’re not too far off with the, with what you were saying before about how work or credits may affect your life because, I mean China does that right?

00:13:42 – Jill Tew

Oh yeah, the social credit, exactly, right.

00:13:48 – Rico Figliolini

And we’re not that far from that. I mean, we’re stepping towards it a little bit because even credit ratings, it used to be that apartment rent wasn’t counted in that. Now it is. Utilities and the use of utilities is being counted in that. It wasn’t before.

00:14:10 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:14:11 – Rico Figliolini

So I don’t think we’re too far from that social credit kind of deal.

00:14:13 – Jill Tew

I agree. Yeah.

00:14:15 – Rico Figliolini

So, and you do take responsibility as an author to be able to, I mean, as a reader, I take responsibility of what I want, what I like. So it’s a two-way thing, two-way street, right? To a degree like that?

00:14:31 – Jill Tew

Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:32 – Rico Figliolini

But I like where you’re going with that. World building is a very difficult thing.

00:14:36 – Jill Tew

It’s hard. It’s real hard. Yeah.

00:14:38 – Rico Figliolini

I mean, you do it well. I think people realize that without even putting too much thought into it they all of a sudden realize they’re in it and they like it. A bit like Blade Runner.

00:14:52 – Jill Tew

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think you know all of those stories. I think it’s funny as a sci-fi author and like dystopian author especially like you just realize you’ve been like swimming in this like ether and like all these ideas and you know there’s like androids in my book you know like all these things have just kind of like seeped into like your, the compost pile that you’re using to you know to grow your story.

00:15:13 – Rico Figliolini

Definitely, for sure. So where do you find, so you mentioned like movies, a couple of movies and stuff and obviously some books. Are there other books of sci-fi or movies or shows besides Farscape and some of the ones you’ve mentioned already that you’ve taken inspiration from?

00:15:28 – Jill Tew

Yeah, definitely those. You know, I mean, I haven’t really, I haven’t sold a book in space yet, but like I love Battlestar Galactica. That’s kind of like a classic space, you know, space story. What was I talking to somebody in an interview the other day about when I was younger, there were these two movies that came out back to back that were both about like androids that like you know kind of bordered on being human. So one was like AI, the Haley Joel Osment movie but he was like a little boy almost like a pinocchio metaphor. And then the other one was Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams.

00:16:00 – Rico Figliolini

Yes.

00:16:06 – Jill Tew

Where he lives over like 200 years. And I think those books, I mean the movies came out like back to back and I just feel like there was a moment there where everyone was kind of thinking about like technology and humanity and like where do you draw the line. And I think like I always wrestle with those ideas. The android character in Dividing Sky, Naz is Adrian’s like partner on the force. They’re like buddied up and he like he’s got a heart of gold right? Heart of like chrome and gold, I guess. But he you know, for being you know a robot essentially like he cares a lot about his partner. And I wanted to kind of subvert the idea of an android being clinical and like hard and cold and have one who’s like prime directive really was like the care of his partner. And there’s a book that is a little bit more recent it’s another like YA sci-fi book a trilogy actually, called the Illuminae Files. So if anyone’s listening and like has a young reader in your life that likes science fiction, this book is fantastic. It’s like a mixed media format so instead of just like prose on the page it’s told through like chat transcripts and like security camera footage and like all this really cool like artifacts. It’s a really fun read and also great on audiobook so I would highly recommend that one as well.

00:17:18 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. I haven’t heard about that one yet. But I guess trending today, I mean, you see, my kids are into YA novels too, or at least they were in YA novels. They’re into young adult novels, maybe, right? And so there’s trends out there, right? Different ways of writing. Like you said, I mean, it could be multimedia. It could be transcripts. It could be just different ways of doing it. Do you find, are there any, is there anything out there that’s trending that you think would work for you even for you to do?

00:17:53 – Jill Tew

I like, it’s my dream to someday do like a full mixed media like mixed format book like that’d be awesome. There are a few of those in Dividing Sky like we have some like police reports there’s some doodles in there that are really cute. We have like a scientific study abstract and a job description actually opens up the book so there’s like some fun little things we did in there from a design perspective to kind of make the world feel more fleshed out. But I would love to be able to play around with different mixed media formats because it’s almost like a puzzle coming together even more than like a novel already is. It’s like thinking about what elements you pull from like the real world that you’ve created to give a full picture of the story. So I think that’s really cool.

00:18:34 – Rico Figliolini

I’m curious. Your book is probably available as an audible.

00:18:38 – Jill Tew

Yeah. Oh, the audio book is fantastic. So we have two amazing voices. The story is dual POV. So it’s Liv’s perspective and Adrian’s perspective. And so we have two narrators, which is great. So Kaya Freight does Liv’s voice, and she is like a well-known anime voice actress. She does a bunch of audiobooks. She just did the voice of Violet from Fourth Wing on the like full cast edition of the audiobook so she’s amazing. And then Junior Nyong’o did Adrian’s voice and he’s a fantastic actor in his own right. He’s done a few audiobooks as well I think some things for the stage. He’s also Lupita Nyong’o’s little brother which is really cool too. So they both did a fantastic job. I’m like so, I’m a big like audiobook, I have like a high standard for audio books. And so I was like, okay, like can’t get just anybody. But I’m so pleased with how it turned out.

00:19:30 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, no, I can appreciate that. When I go on my two, three mile walks, I always listen to a novel or something. And if I hear a really good performance or voice, I always look for what other stories they’ve read.

00:19:42 – Jill Tew

Yeah, exactly.

00:19:42 – Rico Figliolini

Because I mean, just, you can have a really bad reader or performer just.

00:19:51 – Jill Tew

They can ruin a great book, yes. That’s happened to me, unfortunately, a few times when I’ve listened. It’s like, ugh, yeah.

00:19:55 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, same on that, but it goes that way sometimes. So you’ve gone through the process of writing your book, publishing it. I’m sure it took a little time to, like you said, it took seven years to get an agent. You wrote the book for seven years, but your first book.

00:20:09 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:20:12 – Rico Figliolini

And you got an agent. Were you surprised about the process of actually, behind the scenes process of what it took to get the book published?

00:20:19 – Jill Tew

Yeah. So the process of going on submission, I think, was more straightforward. It’s basically like getting an agent, but like all over again. So, you know, you send the manuscript out to editors, you know, your agent ideally has relationships with different editors and publishing houses. And, you know, in science fiction and speculative work, especially, it just takes a long time because editors are also editing books they’ve already acquired. So they’re editing those things. They’re reading a bunch of submissions every day, every week. So the time it took, like that was kind of expected for me. The Dividing Sky actually sold in like five or six weeks, which was pretty fast. And that was amazing. But yeah, so after that, I think, you know, I knew that it would take about 18 months to two years for the book to come out after that, which is about right. So we sold it in October 2022. It just came out. So that’s about right. And over that time period, yeah, you’re editing more at the high level story structure level. And then you go into line edits. So that’s like at the prose level. And then you get to copy edits, which is like typos. So all of that takes, you know, months and months and months. You know, I think what might have been surprising to me is that, you know, a year before the book even comes out, that’s when like marketing and sales and like cover conversations really kick off. And so, you know, you might be working with your editor for a year before that, but it’s like that one year timeline like starts like now all of a sudden it’s a real thing for like everybody else at the publisher. So that part’s always really exciting. So now we’ve got, we’re going through that process now for my next YA book.

00:21:55 – Rico Figliolini

Gotcha, okay. And publishing has changed right? So I mean you have Amazon selling books you have Audible selling books on credit. So authors aren’t making the millions that they used to make before, let’s say. And it was definitely an exclusive club to some degree, right? Where you can make at least a full-time living between a book and then talking tours and stuff like that. Did you find anything about that that was surprising?

00:22:27 – Jill Tew

Yeah, you know, I don’t have much to compare it to because I’m an author now. But you know, from what I gather, you know, I think the biggest thing that’s changed is that people’s attention is just split in so many different ways. And that has upstream effects, right? So if people don’t read the way that they used to, you know, we have so many different things vying for our attention between, you know, the different streaming services and social media, and, you know, all the other forms of media out there, video games. And so I think authors are not, you know, one of only a handful of different forms of entertainment anymore. There’s so much more out there. And so, yeah, I think it’s harder. You know, I think publishing houses definitely feel this, you know, both because, you know the big five publishing houses that they have their own like traditional way of doing things that now may not be as effective and because new players are entering the fray. Like TikTok has their own publishing house now called Bindery. And Bindery partners with local TikTok influencers to like who become editors and like kind of curate their own stable of authors and then promote them through you know going viral on TikTok. And so you know there’s all, and it’s working really well. I mean, I have good friends that have Bindery deals and they’re being treated very well. And I think for authors it’s a totally viable path. So yeah it’s just fascinating to see and then also even downstream you have like book boxes so they’re these companies that will create these beautiful exclusive editions of books and kind of spray the edges and maybe redo the cover and put the illustrations inside and now they have their own publishing houses as well. So they’ve spent years getting to know what readers want really, really well. And now they’re like great, like we can just go buy that we don’t have to pay the publisher to acquire the licenses for these books, we’ll just edit and like have our own authors. And so I think from all these different angles, publishers are feeling this push of like, okay, how do we get closer to readers, but also explore these new channels of marketing, right? I think it’s kind of a free-for-all right now. And I think, yeah, authors can just stay agile and nimble and kind of react to what the market’s doing and just try to seize opportunity where it comes honestly.

00:24:29 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah and hopefully that you know maybe one of these becomes a Netflix series or movie or something, right?

00:24:35 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:24:40 – Rico Figliolini

With all the streaming services looking for content and stuff it’s unbelievable. And with ChatGPT. I’ve had a few friends that think they’re authors now because they can just get ChatGPT to write a piece for them. It’s amazing. It’s not that easy.

00:24:57 – Jill Tew

No, it’s not. And like you, if you don’t enjoy the like puzzle and like mental exercise that is writing, maybe being an author is not for you. Like you should enjoy, it’s hard, but you should enjoy the process.

00:25:10 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, that’s for sure. It is hard. And it’s, if you’re not willing to spend weeks, months and several years on it, then just drop it. You’re a parent of two kids, two young kids. I think one of them is starting school, maybe shortly? How do you balance? Writing is different than a 9-to-5 job, and it’s even different than some of these remote or hybrid jobs. Because someone could say, well, you can write almost any time. Although your creativity might be good at 6 to 7 in the morning maybe, or maybe at night after the kids go to sleep. So how do you balance that? How does that work for you creatively?

00:25:49 – Jill Tew

Absolutely. So yeah, so when I, before I got an agent, when I was like, when they were very young, I would write mostly at night. Now I write in the morning. So, you know, you can write anywhere. But for me, like once my kids are awake, like a good half of my brain is just like tuned in to wherever they are, like whatever they might need. Even if like I’m in the basement of my office and they’re upstairs, like you hear the pitter patter of little feet and I’m like, oh, like there goes like a chunk of my focus. So I need to write when they’re asleep. So, yeah, I get up early. I write, my like dedicated writing time is usually in the morning from like 6:30 to 8:00 or so. And now because my oldest is in like full time school now and my youngest is in a half day preschool program, I have more of the time during like waking hours to write. But you know, I’m still a full-time mom so my you know, I’m doing grocery shopping, I’m doing laundry. Like that time gets filled with other things too. So I really protect that 6:00 to 6:30 to 8:00 time and I can get a lot done in that time. If I’m like plotting out my story and I know what the next scene is and I know, you know, what I need to happen and what conversations need to happen in that part of the book, I can bang it out. You know, as long as I’m just like keeping that time and like holding it sacred and getting up every morning to do it a little bit at a time, I can chip away at a manuscript.

00:27:11 – Rico Figliolini

Do you set up an outline? Do you start with an outline?

00:27:15 – Jill Tew

I do. Yeah. Some authors can be more kind of like flexible and kind of discover, you know, where their story takes them. I always outline. I’m a plotter, as they say. So I plot out my story. I made spreadsheets for a living, you know, before I was an author. Now I make them for my like outlines and my revisions. Love a good spreadsheet still. And yeah, I need that. Yeah.

00:27:37 – Rico Figliolini

Do you create profiles for some of your characters or do you let them tell you where they go as you’re writing?

00:27:44 – Jill Tew

Yeah. Some authors do that and have like a big story bible. I’m not, I don’t do that only because I know that it will make me procrastinate. Like I could spend forever building that out and then never actually get to the story. So I kind of let, I have like a few character details that I use in service of like figuring out how the plot works. And then the rest of it, I kind of build in over the course of revisions as things kind of flesh themselves out. Yeah.

00:28:06 – Rico Figliolini

Are you a bit of a procrastinator?

00:28:09 – Jill Tew

I’m not, but I can get in my head about like a story not being good enough to get started and I think that’s the biggest thing when you’re writing. Even, you know, for an established author writing the next thing and like that blank page is always scary. So yeah, if I don’t just like start then like I can get in my head and say like, oh let’s wait you know, a few more days. Like just, nope, just got to do it. You cannot revise what doesn’t exist. So you have to start first.

00:28:29 – Rico Figliolini

That’s good. I love that. Do you set goals for yourself, like word counts or time or anything like that?

00:28:37 – Jill Tew

Yeah, I try, you know, I’m generous with myself because I know that I, if I’m not careful, I’ll burn out. And then like that goal won’t be hit anyway. So especially when I’m on my own deadlines, not my editor’s deadlines, I try to take it easy, you know. I can do 1000 words a day pretty reliably. And so you know, that gets like three months later, that’s a full book, right? So that’s kind of usually my pace. And I do like to kind of backwards plan and think about, okay, by the end of the week, I want to be at this chapter. By the end of the month, I want to be here. That way I just know that I’m on track. Or that I need to adjust my plan if I’m falling behind or, you know, sometimes as you’re writing, you’re like, oh, like that scene actually belongs somewhere else. Or I can like accomplish that in a paragraph instead. So you’re always revising, like you’re not holding it too tightly, but I like a good plan. It just helps me know where I’m going.

00:29:26 – Rico Figliolini

I know the kids are kind of young, but the oldest, what does she feel about mom being a writer and author?

00:29:34 – Jill Tew

Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the moment they began to kind of finally get it actually was last February. I sold my middle grade book, which is like a nine to twelve year old reader, kind of like that’s like younger than young adult right? I sold two books to Disney. So my first one, my first Disney book’s coming out in April. But when I told them that it was with Disney, they were like, oh, Disney, like we get it. That was amazing. And then actually like three days ago, I was going to, we were picking up Mellow Mushroom for dinner. And we went to Johns Creek Books and Gifts, which is like right down the street. And my book is there. And so I was like, our oh, pizza’s not ready yet. Let’s just go in this bookstore. So my oldest was with me. And I was like, hey, do you see anything that looks familiar? And like her eyes popped out of her head. I think for her, she was like, oh, like mommy writes real books. And they’re like in the stores. And that was, I think she was like proud, but like also just like over, like it was very cute. But yeah she like, she couldn’t believe it so that was really cool.

00:30:33 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, that must have been a great feeling.

00:30:35 – Jill Tew

Yeah, I mean she, you know, like the whole house, my husband’s been amazing about this too. Just like the whole house has been like, mommy’s books coming out. So we have like just keep track of like whose birthdays come in like the calendar year and so it’s like, oh like daddy’s birthday, mommy’s birthday, you know my youngest, my oldest, whatever. And they slotted my book’s birthday in there so they’re like, mommy’s book’s birthday. And then yeah, and then Christmas. And so yeah. So it’s been like a big thing we’ve been building up to so yeah.

00:31:00 – Rico Figliolini

That’s fun. Now you did mention a middle grade book you wrote. So tell us a few you know tell us about that.

00:31:10 – Jill Tew

Yeah. So that’s coming out April 1st. Oh I have that, I’ll show you the cover because it’s very cute. So that book is, it’s called Kaya Morgan’s Crowning Achievement and it’s about a, let’s see put the camera, a black girl growing up in suburban Atlanta who is competing to be crowned the first black queen of her local Renaissance Festival summer camp. And it’s really good. I loved the Renaissance Festival growing up. It was a big part of my nerd awakening, probably. And there’s just so much in here about this girl kind of discovering where she belongs and what she’s interested in, even as society tells her that maybe those things don’t make sense for who she is. And also a bunch of Renaissance Faire puns in here.

00:31:54 – Rico Figliolini

So that’s great. And that’s a great festival. First of all, anyone that lives in Atlanta should be able to visit.

00:31:59 – Jill Tew

It’s amazing. Yeah, I go every year. So, yeah, that one’s coming out in April. And Disney has, it’s been great to work with too. It’s kind of fun to think about younger kids and readers that are maybe still looking for, they don’t know that they’re readers yet. They’re looking for the right book to hook them. And so I think a lot about the reader looking at this on the shelf and saying, okay, maybe I can get into books.

00:32:13 – Rico Figliolini

So that’s a lot different to write than a YA novel.

00:32:21 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:32:22 – Rico Figliolini

I mean, did that process take longer? Is it the same agent or you had to find a different agent?

00:32:30 – Jill Tew

Yeah. Same agent, different publisher, obviously. So yeah, for this one, you know, it’s interesting. You know, I love a good love story. There’s no romance in my middle grade, right? So where’s my romance arc? But that’s okay. There’s a friendship arc, which is really good. And yeah, the voice is different. I think younger kids, I think even for a young adult, like in YA, everything is so immediate and urgent, but for middle grade, even more so, right? So your best friend doesn’t invite you to the birthday party, your world is crashing. It’s crumbling down, right? And so it was fun to kind of get back into my like 12-year-old headspace. Remember what it was like, like not knowing who I was going to be, like who I was going to end up becoming. There’s a lot of that uncertainty and like, who am I, where do I fit in? It was fun to revisit that and kind of provide, you know, one perspective.

00:33:20 – Rico Figliolini

That’d be interesting for your kids to pick that up as they get older.

00:33:24 – Jill Tew

Yeah exactly. It’s different yeah.

00:33:37 – Rico Figliolini

Yes, critiquing mom on, I don’t know about this mom.

00:33:38 – Jill Tew

Yeah I can’t wait. Yeah my oldest is still, she loves her like Dog Man and Captain Underpants right now. But I think as she gets older she’s like, she’s close to getting ready for this. yeah we’re going

00:33:42 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I remember Captain Underpants, my kids bought those too. Actually, because of the school book fair, it’s scholastic books and stuff.

00:33:50 – Jill Tew

Yeah.

00:33:56 – Rico Figliolini

How far out do you think? I know you’re working on the other book. So how far out do you plan? I mean, or are you taking it as you go?

00:34:08 – Jill Tew

Yeah, I think I take it as I go. I mean, I have a few books, book ideas in me. So right now I’m actually, I need to start drafting. My second Disney book comes out April, 2026. So I need to start drafting that. I have the outline ready to go, but that’s kind of where I’m at in terms of my like workload. After that, I have no other contracted books yet. We’re on submission with an adult space opera, which I’m holding my, crossing my fingers for. But I’m excited to have some time in the early part of next year for a book that like, is not under contract, like nobody else knows about like, I just want to like play around again. Because I think, like, you know, it’s amazing to have book deals. But you know, there’s, you know pluses and minuses to everything and I miss that feeling of like this is just for me. So I’m excited to get back into that.

00:34:51 – Rico Figliolini

That’s cool. So have we missed anything that you’d like to cover that’s maybe, that I didn’t quite get to?

00:34:59 – Jill Tew

I don’t think so. I think that’s me.

00:35:02 – Rico Figliolini

Do you want to show us the cover of your new book? Do you have that?

00:35:04 – Jill Tew

Yeah, I do. Let’s see. This is The Dividing Sky, which this cover is absolutely gorgeous. It gives me all of the science fiction, romance vibes. Yeah, they did it, so pretty.

00:35:17 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. Excellent. Well, we’ve been speaking to Jill Tew, author, first-time author, lots of books out at this point with Disney and this first novel. Appreciate you spending time with us. And it’s great to see, you know, Peachtree Corners has a lot going on and it’s good to see, again, I’d love the opportunity to talk to different people from different areas of different professions, different skill sets. So this was great. Love talking about the, talking shop to some degree, although I don’t do writing, I publish magazines, but that’s about it.

00:35:53 – Jill Tew

It’s all connected. Absolutely. Thank you so much for this and for having the spotlight. I love the city. When we were moving back, it was top of our list. So we’re so happy to be here.

00:36:02 – Rico Figliolini

Great to have you. Hang in with me for a minute. I just want to sign off a little bit, but I also want to tell everyone EV Remodeling Inc. is our sponsor for these podcasts and for our publications. So check them out. Eli lives here in Peachtree Corners with his family. They do great work from start to finish. So no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s one room or all the rooms in your house, you should visit them. So EVRemodelingInc.com is where you can get that info. And if you’re listening to this through our website or wherever you’re listening, I’ll have links in the show notes. So this way you can find more about Jill’s books and about the Disney book as well. We’ll have that link as well. So thank you all for being with us. Appreciate it.