#78 - From Full Time Author to Full Time Mom with Katie Cross

Mark Lefebvre, Director of Kobo Writing Life, interviews Young Adult Fantasy and Chicklit author, Katie Cross as she shares strategies about how she was able to keep writing, with even more productivity, in her transition from full time author to full time Mom. In the chat, Katie and Mark discuss:

• Her lifelong passion of writing and her recent passion of becoming a mother (which happened about a year and a half into her 3 years of publishing career) and how she juggles both with her 18 month old.
• Some of the time-scheduling strategies she uses, which changes every month with such a young child. (For example, right now, she writes for a couple of hours during the day during nap time as well as after bed-time)
• The concept of a Mom-swap with a few neighborhood friends. On a schedule with two other stay-at-home Moms who need time for personal errands/etc they rotate on particular days of the week where all the children are at a particular mother’s house for about a three hour period. This provides Katie with about 3 additional hours to write twice per week
• Strategies in early childhood, actually holding her baby while he slept and managing to quietly tap away at the keyboard
• Other strategies used, (involving intense multi-tasking) walking the dogs while having her baby strapped onto her and dictating story ideas into her phone. (Exercise, fresh air, getting the dogs and baby for an outing AND getting some writing work done)
• How, being a Military Wife, she is able to arrange to travel to valuable writing and networking workshops like Superstars Writing Seminars
• How having limited time has made her a much more productive writer
• The way that hiring a virtual assistant has helped her maximize her writing time (Her assistant, Christina’s website is www.faithfullysocial.com
• Katie’s initial struggle to grow sales and readers at Kobo and how, over time (about a year and a half), her sales began a slow and steady build (she has been seeing growth mostly at Kobo, iBooks and Scribd since going wide)
• How, once she finished a young adult series (4 books plus a prequel and a novella) and created a bundle, the series seemed to have taken off
• The comparison of being a new parent to being an indie author
• The blog that Katie has which is meant specifically for author parents (IE: “I get it, I’m in the trenches with you”) kcrosswriting.com

After the interview, Mark reflects on the manner by which Katie has made writing a priority and how other writers who struggle with balancing multiple priorities might be inspired by her as well as a reflective writing quote that has been with him for more than 20 years.