Sarah Shepard Reflects on Writing

Hey there, it's Robin from PRX, and I want to take a moment to tell you about a big year long series from this day, a history podcast here at Radiotopia. twenty twenty six is America's two hundred fiftieth birthday, and this is where folks over at this day have requested that I try and say semi quincentennial ten times fast. Anyway, it's been two hundred fifty years since the Declaration of Independence And over at this day, they are in the middle of a year long series called Fifty Weeks That Shaped America. This day is doing deep dives each week on the stories from two hundred fifty years of US history that brought us to this very complicated moment Some of them are new perspectives on huge moments like the Civil War or Prohibition. Others are lesser discussed stories that still had a massive impact Like the Trcontinental Railroad or the so called hard hat riots of the nineteen seventies. This day is also doing a special weekly newsletter, live shows, collaborations, bonus episodes, and lots more. So as we head towards the fourth of July and beyond, this is a great time to join in. If you need a little help navigating America's big birthday, check out this day Go to thisdaypod. com or wherever you get your podcasts This episode of Hyperfix is brought to you by Fodza. Hey there You got a sensitive gut Well, I do I mean, not in the sense that it's easily emotionally wounded, but certainly in the sense that it sometimes feels a little wackadoo if I ate certain foods. Or at least it did. But then I found Fodzym. Fodzyme is a tasteless powder you sprinkle right on your food. 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That's caneat againain dot com slash hyperfixed for thirty percent off your first order Finally, you can enjoy your favorite foods without the pain Just go to caneat againain d. com slash hyperfixed This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Tkiatry Hey, are you dealing with anxiety or depression and it's feeling like more than just a rough patch? Well, don't talk to a tree Tchiatry Why would anyone talk to a tree that's so dumb? 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Complete a short online assessment, get matched with clinicians who fit your needs And schedule your first visit in days, not months to a tree, that literally doesn't even make any sense. Instead, talkatree. Head to talkiatry. com slash hyperfix to complete a short assessment and get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkkiatry d. com slash hyperfixed to get matched in minutes. Hey, this is Alex. and very quickly before we start, this is just a reminder that Hyperfixed is a completely independent outlet and it is you guys, our listeners that keep the lights on over here. So I am asking you to consider signing up for our premium membership at hyperfixedpod d. com slash join Bonus episodes, access to our Discord, discounts on merch, discounts on live stuff We currently have three thousand five hundred premium subscribers My goal is to get one thousand more premium subscribers by the end of the year All of the revenue that we get from premium memberships goes directly back into the show And with one thousand subscribers, I would be able to both give the hyperfix staff raises as well as pay for their healthcare and have a little money left over to work on more ambitious reporting projects So yeah, if you can help us get to four thousand five hundred subscribers by the end of the year, that would be huge. Again, you can sign up at hyperfixpod dot com slash join One more thing is that we are doing a live show in Brooklyn in September, and we would love to see you there You can get tickets at tickets. hyperfixedpod. com All right. Here's the show I'm Alex Goldm And this is hyperfixed Each week on our show, listeners write in with their problems big and small and I solve them At least I try And if I don't At least give a good reason why I can't This week Samurai gone girl My name is Heven Kogo and I died on my wedding day I know that sounds strange, but it's true I don't mean I died I died with a funeral and a coffin and grieving relatives. I'm still alive and well, more or less But something happened on my wedding day that changed everything that came afterward I started to feel like my life had two distinct periods before wedding and after wedding Sometimes I wish I was still trapped in before. I mean, that's what a great opening. It makes me want to read it right away This is a really good opening for. a novel, you're like,, what happened This is Allison. She's thirty five years old. She lives in Chicago And this thing you just heard her reading It's from a young adult novel that she loved as a kid The first in a six book series called Samurai Girl which tells the story of Heaven Kogo The sole survivor of a Japanese plane crash who gets adopted by a wealthy family, that turns out to be akuza, which forces her to flee to Los Angeles to learn how to defend her family from the ninjas who want them dead feeleels very Y A It does feel very way. But it's the kind of genre that I really liked as a kid I was an avid reader and For whatever reason, I was just really wrapped up in fantasy. I was really wrapped up in Women like learning how to fight in martial arts and stuff like that. And as a kid who chafed at gender roles and expectations, I think these books kind of gave me an outlet for that Now, the last time Allison read the series, she's probably ten or eleven She really hadn't thought about it since But just recently Samurai girl popped back onto Allison's radar. And when she looked at it with adult eyes, she discovered something strange about this series The discovery happened almost incidentally Allison was reading one of her old YA novels, and something about it reminded her of samurai girl And I was thinking, oh yeah You know, I remember being obsessed with the series as a kid We should check up on what that author wound up doing Maybe they're writing, you know Adult novels now that I would really enjoy. I want to see what they've done and what they're up to. So Allison hops on the computer And she runs a little Google search for the author of the series And I just couldn't find anything. You couldn't find any information at all And I mean, that's not from a lack of crying, right? Like I have searched this a few times and each time I just, I feel like I was scraping nothing Like I can't find the author anywhere. What's the name of this author The author's name is Carrie Assai search for Carious eye And just like Allison, I found nothing I saw that her books had been published by Simon Schuster, which is obviously a very reputable publisher And there was an author profile on their website, but all it said was that she'd written the samurai Girl books I also found some conversations about her on an old blog But mostly people seem to be talking about the fact that nobody knew anything about her As far as I could tell, Karus I hadn't written any other books She didn't have any social media presence And it seemed like she'd never given an interview. Which wouldn't have been super weird for a novelist whose one and only YA series was published more than twenty years ago, and perhaps only read by combat crazy tweens like Allison. Except, it turns out that Samurai Girl had also been adapted into a TV series for ABC Family And I don't know much about marketing But I think if I were a publisher or a TV executive for that matter That would be a great time to start sending this author out on interviews to hype up their series What was going on here Carry aside write one series and disappear. Or did she never really exist? Was she merely a pseudonym for some other author that nobody bothered to unmask? because this series never rose to the level of popularity that would justify anyone doing the work Or were we looking into something else entirely Whatever the answer. Allison just wants to know. and ask the podcast repository for people's innocuous niche questions She reached out to Hyperfixed for answers. I just I find it so odd that there's somebody who you know has written a series and you can't find them at all I think that's super weird too So you'd mostly like to figure out like more about this person who wrote the books Yes, and I think Maybe part of that would be how they got published because Possibly that's a clue along the way to who did it or vice versa. but The curiosity I have is just about the author. Okay, so we're going to look into this and we will follow up with you. and In the meantime, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us For sure, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me. I'm really curious about what you find So from the moment we start our search, we're operating under the assumption that KSI is not a real person But the reason we can't find any information about her is because she's simply a pseonym used by some other writer And the fact that this other writer has never stepped forward to say, Hey, I'm Ciousi suggests that they may not want people to know that they wrote the series Obviously, this could make things complicated because we're not the kind of operation that sets out to expose artists who don't want to be exposed But we have faced this issue in the past With an indie band that had been releasing music anonymously for the past ten years It wasn't totally sold on the idea of letting people know who they really were And I think it's safe to say that we handled that situation with the delicate touch it deserved, and the whole thing ended up feeling pretty positive for everyone involved So we forged ahead with the same tactics we'd learned from that investigation. We asked ourselves If there's a person behind this person Who would know that person's name And the answer was the same The only people who would know for sure peoplee with whom she did business. In this case That's the people who help publish their books So we reached out to the headad of Children's Publicity at Simon and Schuster. We didn't hear back So we reached out to the marketing manager at Simon Instit Star But again We didn't hear back So we reached out to the senior managing editor, the VP of branded contontent. cover desesigner and a handful of other people who work at the company. But nobody at Simon and Schuster responded to any of our emails or LinkedIn messages So he started thinking about who else might have done business with KariSI And that's how we ended up talking to this guy I had been a kid who when he discovered ninjas in the second grade just went crazy for ninjas and samuraized and started taking karate lessons. So Samurai girl really jumped out at me This is Luke McMullan We found his name on the IMDB page for the Samurai Girl TV show It's listed right up at the top of the page in the field that credits the creator of the show So the fact that he got back to us was pretty exciting Because in the world of TV, the person who's given that title is generally considered to be the person running the show They're usually the person who writes the pilot episode And when it comes to adaptations, they also tend to be the person with the closest relationship to the original author. So our hope was that Luke would be able to tell us who that person was or at least who we needed to talk to to find out But we couldn't just come out and say, Yo, tell us what you know about Karry Aside. So we asked him to tell us the story of how he came to develop the show. doing that D get the answer to our question? sort of So I had just come off of Alias and my agent sent me on meetings and one of the first meetings I took was with a production arm of a plishing company called Alloy Entertainment. They had had a bunch of success with turning some of their book serieses into TV shows So they were in the process of attempting to find writer to develop other book series. they had done and Samura girl was a young adult theory And You don't have a copy in front of me and I'm gonna forget the name of the writer, but that's okay because the writer doesn't exist. So as you know, we had walked into this with the assumption that KSI was not a real person. But we also assumed that behind this made up person was going to be a real person a person who had come up with the idea for a character and a story that would eventually become the samurai girl novels that young Allison had become obsessed with But Luke seemed to be suggesting that there was no person behind this person. And I didn't really understand how that could be possible. Because someone had to have come up with the idea for Samurai Girl And I wanted to know who that person was That's a Bob Levy question Okay because he was the one that that was his job Oh, okay I mean, I believe, he would be able to tell you Wh carries that is If anyone can You may be wondering why we didn't ask, who's Bob Levy? And the reason is that we already knew who he was. In fact, we'd already scheduled an interview with him for right after this interview with Luke The way we found Bob was much more circuitous than it needed to be, for reasons we'll explain in a minute. But essentially what happened was that at some point in our search for the real Cious ee, we came across an article about how back in the eighties, there was this one guy who'd begun to suspect that the author Richard Bachman was actually Stephen King writing under a pen name And eventually he confirmed it by going to the library of Congress and calling up the copyright info for each of Bachman's books. Iturns out three of Bachman's books were registered to Stephen King's agent, and the fourth was registered to Steephen King himself So We decided to give this a try We went online and ran a copyright search for all of the books credited to KarrySI. But when the results came back, What we found was not the name of a person, it was the name of a company the same company that Luke mentioned meeting with all those years ago. Alloy Entertertainment which is where Bob Levy, the guy we're about to interview had spent more than a decade working as an executive Now initially, it was unclear to us how Alloy was connected to the Samurai Girl series besides being involved with the development of the TV show According to the company's wikipedia page, Alloy is a book packaging and television production unit of Warner Brothers Etertertainment. And if we had any idea what that meant, we would have realized that the answer to our question was staring us right in the face We would have understood why Luke implied that there was no person behind this person and why it's virtually impossible to say who actually came up with the idea for the series Unfortunately, we completely misunderstood what book packaging actually was. Book packaging has been around for one hundred and twenty five years And most of us culture consumers and book readers have never heard of it This is Bob Levy He's a retired TV executive with an unbelievable track record for translating young adult book series into successful TV shows And the second he started explaining the book packaging business The whole mystery of the Samurai Girls series began to unravel To the extent that I understand it, this guy named Edward Strademeyer created the book packaging business model literally in the eighteen nineties. and his first hit book series was a series called The Rover Boys. And he was very successful with the Rver boys. And so he went on in the nineteen twenties to create the Hardy Boys And the Hardy Bys were so successful. he had the great idea. to say What's a girl version of the Hardy Boys, which of course became Nancy Drew. Over and over again, Stratimeer repeated this cycle creating one successful series after another including some of the most beloved and enduring young adult series of all time Just because Stratimeyer created these series doesn't mean that he actually wrote them The secret engine behind the success of the Stratimeer syyndicate which is what he called his company was a kind of literary assembly line. designed to churn out books almost as quickly as his young audience could read them Stratimeyer would write the outline of the plot, then pass it to one of his many ghost wrriters who'd flesh out the story, and then pass it back to Stratimeyer, who'd take a quick polish pass before sending it off to a publisher Because Stratomire created the characters and the outlines for the series and because the writers were working for a flat contracted fee He would keep the copyright for all of his books And because each of these series was written under a pseonym A pseonym that Stratimeyer created specifically for that series. Young adult readers could hold ono this idea that the stories they loved were being written by one person. person with whom they had a relationship. When in reality, some of Stratimeyer's series were being written by dozens and dozens of different writers and That was a sort of Fundamental business practice of the book packaging model for most of the b models history. So what does all this have to do with Samuriar put it plainly the reason that Alloy holds the copyright for Samuri Girl is because Samurai Girl was created by Aloy usings the same basic business model that Edward Stotemeier created over a hundred years ago. The only major difference is that instead of having one guy generating all the ideas for all of the series Alloy's ideas are created by committee. The company's internal team has weekly development meetings to pitch and refine their ideas based on broad mandates from the top of the company For example What's teenage sex in the city This, Bob says, is how the company's been able to create some of the most successful YA series of the last twenty years, including Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Sister Hood of the Traveling Pants, and Pretty Little Lars And all of that is great for Alloy Now that I knew how a sausage was made I was starting to worry about my follow up conversation with Allison She'd sent me on this mission because she loved this book series. She loved it enough to care about its author to want to read their other work and continue building this relationship that began in her childhood. there was no offer At least not in the way she thought there would be And it was my fear that in the end, explaining to her the way this book had been created would be like telling her that her favorite movie was a commercial for shampoo I imagined it breaking her heart even though I knew I was probably just projecting It wasn't how I wanted the story to end for her. And I felt like Bob understood how I was feeling He told me that shortly after the Samurai Girls series came out The company began to pivot away from the collective pseudonym model, precisely because of the way that it limited the audience's relationship with the author Now every book that's published by Alloy has the name of a real person on the cover. And in the interest of connecting Allison with the real person behind Samurai Girl I asked Bob Do you know who the author was for these books? I mean, Aliceon our listener, who really loved the series when she was a kid, Her specific request was to help her find the author Um I know that there were two or three different writers. And I don't know who the two or three writers were, sadly Oh no And my understanding is they wish to remain anonymous Really? H. I'm sorry for your listener who is curious to connect with Kare aside. Whob was the top of the mountain, as far as Sam Ragiro was concerned And the fact that he couldn't give us a name felt like the end of the line for us I was disappointed, and I think Bob could see it So before he got off the call, he said this I will circle back to the people that I'm still in touch with an alloy and see if I can do some digging and possibly off camera slip you some information for Alice. That would be amazing. There aren't a million Samurai girl. book fans out there. So for that rare adult who remembers and still holds a torch for the samurai goal, I and my alloy friends will jump through some extra hoops for you guys We'll be right back after the break This episode of Hyperfixed is brought you by Lisa It's summertime, and is there anything worse than falling asleep on a mattress where you feel cold and clammy like a cold clam I didn't think so. I just switched to a leegend Chill mattress from Lisa, and it's been a much needed change because this mattress keeps your body the perfect sleeping temperature night after night Like a lot of families, our nighttime routine revolves around getting everybody settled and ready for the next day. And once my kiddos are asleep, that quiet moment to rest and recharge really matters to me With my leegend Chill mattress from Lisa Scrolling on TikTok for hours so that I don't have to face the intrusive thoughts that make me feel terrible every night before I go to bed has never been more comfortable I actually have been working on creating a more peaceful nighttime routine so I get to sleep better And the biggest upgrade I made wasn't aromatherapy or meditation It was putting my phone in the other room But the second biggest upgrade was the Legend Chill mattress from Lisa Turns out the best hack to improve your sleep is to address what you're sleeping on Thisince making the switch, I unwind easier, I sleep deeper, and I wake up feeling energized. My bed has officially become my happy place. Go to lisa. com for twenty five percent off of select mattresses, plus get an extra fifty dollars off with promo code Hyperfixed. exclusive for my listeners. That's L E ESA dot com promo code hyperfixed for twenty five percent off select mattresses, plus an extra fifty dollars off Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout Lisa. com promo code hyperfixed This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Gusto Webster's dictionary defines gusto as enthusiastic and vigorous enjoyment or appreciation But that hyperfixed were kind of mavericks You know what we define Gusto as? A gosh darn online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay hire onboard and support your team from anywhere I have a very small team and I don't need to do much when it comes to payroll and so on. And even then, any of that administrative work makes me want to leap into a bottomless chasm out of some kind of cosmic horror story. 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' leep into some payroll software with Gusto Try Gusto today at gusto. com slash hyperfix and get three months free when you run your first payroll That's three months free payroll at gusto. com slash hyperfixed One more time, gusto. com slash hyperfixed This episode of Hyperfix is brought you by Keper I think we all know that I'm a huge fan of the TV show Tales from the Crypt, and specifically the show's host The Crypt Keper But while the criptkeeper delights and terrifies with his ghoulish puns and cartoonish grotesqueries ember the app Keeeper the app keeps you secure Keeper is a password manager that creates strong, unique passwords for all your accounts, stores them securely in one place, and logs you in automatically across all your devices, so you never have to remember, guess or worry about your login credentials again. 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And while the cryptkeeper can tell a pretty scary story, I'd like to see him do that From individuals to large organizations, millions of people worldwide rely on Keper to keep passwords organized and accounts protected Keper helps you stop thinking about passwords altogether and just get on with your day Right now, Keeper is offering our listeners sixty percent off personal and family plans at Keepersecurity dot com slash hyperfixed This offer is only for podcast listeners Kepersecurity d. com slash hyperfix for sixty percent off personal and family plans Make sure you use our link So they know we sent you Kepersecurity d. com slash hyperfixed Welcome back to the show Before the break, we met a listener named Allison, who was recently inspired to look up one of her favorite childhood authors. And in the process of doing that discovered that this author was missing. KarrySI hadn't written anything new There was no information about her online And for all intents and purposes, it was starting to seem like she didn't exist So Allison came to us with a seemingly simple question She wanted to know if KarSI was real And if she wasn't, she wanted to know who wrote the Samurai Girls series she'd loved as a kid. Our search had taken a pretty circuitous path, but eventually we learned that Kariai was not the secret nom de plume of some secret author It was just a name selected in a New York City boardroom by the executives of a book packaging company It wasn't the answer we wanted to bring back to Allison. And Bob Levy, former executive at that New York company, seemed to understand how he felt So he offered to do some behind the scenes digging to see if he could arrange a meeting between us and one of the series ghost writers We thanked him and said goodbye. And in the meantime, we kept searching A few weeks after our conversation with Bob, Hyperfix producer Kat Schuchneck popped into one of our meetings and said I think I found one of the Samurai Girl writers, and you're never gonna believe who it is And about a week after that Bob made good on his promise and confirmed Kat's theory that one of the writers on Samurai Girl was actually someone very famous. Someone with a bunch of other books to her name who also just happened to follow me on Twitter It wasn't Stephen King But in the world of YA literature It might as well have been I was so excited that somebody had read Samurai Girl at all. I had no idea. I had no idea people were reading Samurai girl This is Sarah Shepherard She's the author of more than three dozen books, including Pretty Little Liars, a series that sold millions of copies and generated a TV series, and three spinoff series Today, she has the kind of career that she used to dream about She can write what she wants and shares in the profits of her successes And according to Sarah, none of it would have ever happened if it weren't for her experience writing Samurai Girl My first gig was samurai Girls Really? Yes. My first cake was samurai girl Going into this conversation with Sarah I was still a bit worried about what we were going to say to Allison. When we spoke to Bob about the pipeline that created this series, we'd only heard about it from the perspective of the executives