In this episode of Bound for Bestseller, Valerie Morris sits down with author Jeff Kildow to dive deep into the fascinating world of alternative history fiction. Jeff Kildow shares his unique approach to reimagining 20th-century history, the intricate research that fuels his stories, and how his military and engineering background infuses authenticity into his novels.

Jeff Kildow discusses his hit series, starting with Nazi Menace, which explores World War II and asks “What if?” at a critical turning point in history. He explains how his books blend real events with imaginative departures, all while sticking firmly to the technological and societal realities of each era. The conversation also covers his creative process, the importance of detailed research, and the creative habits that help him bring authentic - and sometimes obscure- details into his fiction.

Listeners will hear about Jeff Kildow’s inspirations, his favorite techniques for building compelling characters, the challenges of killing off beloved creations, and his advice for aspiring writers of fiction, especially in the alternative history genre. Plus, discover how real-life experiences and travel inspire his stories, and why authenticity is essential in an AI-driven world.

• What alternative history fiction really is and how Jeff Kildow creates believable “what if?” scenarios
• The landmark moments behind his WWII thriller Nazi Menace and its sequels set during the Korean War and Suez Crisis
• How a military and engineering career translates into gripping, authentic storytelling
• The importance of research, from historical accuracy to oddball airplane “Easter eggs” in books
• Writing habits: capturing inspiration, making notes everywhere, and balancing technical detail with engaging narrative
• Crafting memorable characters, their arcs, and the emotional challenge of “killing your darlings”
• Advice for new and aspiring fiction writers, including the value of accurate history, avoiding clichés, and leveraging your own unique experiences
• The crucial role of authenticity and trust for writers in today’s content landscape

• Visit Jeff’s website: jeffkildow.com for books, updates, and more!

Whether you’re a military history buff, a fiction writer, or just love a good “what if” scenario, this episode is packed with practical advice, entertaining anecdotes, and encouragement to embrace both your left and right brain!

Valerie Morris welcomes author community strategist, Kerry Dobson, to discuss how authors can extend their book's impact well beyond the initial launch. Kerry shares valuable strategies for building meaningful communities around your book that allow you to fulfill your core mission and create lasting change in readers' lives.

• Beyond the Book Launch: Kerry explains why a book's publication is just the beginning of its journey and how community-building can significantly extend its reach and impact
• Strategic Community Building: The conversation explores the thoughtful process of creating groups based on a book's content, including:
• Taking essential breaks after launch to prevent burnout
• Focusing on just 2-3 implementable key messages from your book
• Positioning yourself as a guide rather than a guru to overcome imposter syndrome
• Creating a realistic timeline that respects your audience's capacity
• The Shift to Authentic Marketing: Both Kerry and Valerie discuss why passive marketing approaches are becoming less effective, while community-based strategies foster emotional connections and loyalty

• Follow Valerie on LinkedIn for updates when this episode goes live
• Learn more about Kerry Dobson and her work with authors. Check out Kerry's private podcast: "The Great Group Revolution"

Gift Guide for Authors:

Whether you’re an author yourself, or have an author in your family that you just love to spoil, I’ve got some fun gift ideas to inspire creativity while also helping you stay productive. Sometimes the right tools can help you really get in the mood to write, and some things are simply purely for the whimsical creativity they can spark. Either way, enjoy some of my favorite gift ideas for authors!

Fanciful Pen Holder

This typewriter pen/pencil holder is super cute, and surprisingly solid. Whenever I see it sitting on my desk it gives me a small smile. Even though I’m writing on my modern day Macbook, I can imagine the clickety clack of the typewriter keys and the crank as you push the slide back for a new row.

Library Card Pockets

These old-school library card pockets with cards are a whimsical small touch. Use them for greeting cards, bookmarks with a handwritten note, or stick them inside your own books at book signings or in-person sales. They add a really fun hint of nostalgia and any bookworm at heart will light up at these!

https://amzn.to/4kSvuob

Wireless Speaker

No matter where I set up to write, my JBL portable speaker helps me set the tone and get in the zone. Music sets the tone for me. I personally love using Spotify’s Daily Lift playlist which is personally made just for me! Another playlist I love is “Butter.” The quality is great, and it’s so durable with this speaker and if I move around to work from different rooms in the house, or even outside of my home office, it’s easy to move around.

https://amzn.to/44JN3lJ

Supportive Office Chair

I love this comfortable office chair. I had chair envy for...

How do you know you're ready to take your ideas and put them out to the world? We're diving into this important question on the podcast this episode!

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Get my gift guide for authors and writers! Here are some of my favorite fun picks for gifts!

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

A personal brand is vital for an author, AND for selling more books. Today, we're diving in on why a personal brand is helpful for authors and how it can help you sell more books.

Jump and trust.

Learn and be inspired by artist, Sherri Jones. Hear her perspectives on writing her upcoming book, as well as what she's learned as an artist (and teaching art). She talks about playing it safe versus living out of the box. If you're ready to get inspired to turn your writing into truly a piece of art, you'll love this convo with Sherri Jones!

It's time to live large! Take risks and mess up. Build your bravery muscles as a creator.

https://www.sherrijonesart.com/

Follow on Instagram

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Get my gift guide for authors and writers! Here are some of my favorite fun picks for gifts!

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

A personal brand is vital for an author, AND for selling more books. Today, we're diving in on why a personal brand is helpful for authors and how it can help you sell more books.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Author Craft Community!

Access Author Craft Community, a resource library that grows every month with new resources and information for authors at an affordable price. https://tinterocreative.thrivecart.com/author-craft-community-for-writers/

Timing is everything and never more important that in book publishing. So many authors obsess over how to pick the right date, so today's episode dives into a few basic best practices to ensure you are being smart with how you pick your launch day.

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Join the Author Craft Hub! A place for authors to get tools you can actually use to guide you through the process from writing to publishing, to launching and ongoing marketing...and more! Members get new resources for each week of the month as well as access to the whole archive. Join today and take the headache out of promoting your writing!

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

A personal brand is vital for an author, AND for selling more books. Today, we're diving in on why a personal brand is helpful for authors and how it can help you sell more books.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Author Craft Community!

Access Author Craft Community, a resource library that grows every month with new resources and information for authors at an affordable price. https://tinterocreative.thrivecart.com/author-craft-community-for-writers/

Join the Author Craft Hub! A place for authors to get tools you can actually use to guide you through the process from writing to publishing, to launching and ongoing marketing...and more! Members get new resources for each week of the month as well as access to the whole archive. Join today and take the headache out of promoting your writing!

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

A personal brand is vital for an author, AND for selling more books. Today, we're diving in on why a personal brand is helpful for authors and how it can help you sell more books.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Author Craft Community!

Access Author Craft Community, a resource library that grows every month with new resources and information for authors at an affordable price. https://tinterocreative.thrivecart.com/author-craft-community-for-writers/

Join the Author Craft Community!

Access Author Craft Community, a resource library that grows every month with new resources and information for authors at an affordable price. https://tinterocreative.thrivecart.com/author-craft-community-for-writers/

Join the Author Craft Hub! A place for authors to get tools you can actually use to guide you through the process from writing to publishing, to launching and ongoing marketing...and more! Members get new resources for each week of the month as well as access to the whole archive. Join today and take the headache out of promoting your writing!

_______

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

_______

A personal brand is vital for an author, AND for selling more books. Today, we're diving in on why a personal brand is helpful for authors and how it can help you sell more books.

 So let's say you've got this amazing book idea and you have started it. Maybe you've got a few ideas. Maybe it's just a seed of an idea. Or maybe you actually have the whole thing mapped out and you are this close to finishing it. There is something inside of us that resists the act to complete a book. And I think a huge piece of it stems largely from fear. A book is a very personal thing to put out there to the world. And so I get how it's scary. So part of this is like, maybe you just need a mindset shift around you really just need to get the book out there.

Right? You've got it written. I've heard of a lot of people who have full book manuscripts sitting on their cloud drive that the world will never see because they were too afraid to put it out there to the world. And then there are other people who have great ideas and they just need that little oomph to get it across the finish line.

So today we're going to talk about just a few - not all - but just a few of, of just some tips for busy real people to do this. It is so easy to sit there and say, well, sure, like follow these 10 steps and you'll have a book manuscript. The reality is we have a thousand things vying for our attention on any given day. And so, while we may be well-meaning in wanting to finish a writing project, there is something that just often gets in the way. And so for people like us who have a lot of things going on, which most people who are thinking about writing a book are usually involved in multiple different things in their life. This isn't something that is meant to cause extra stress. I say that in a sense of recognizing and giving full validation to the fact that what you were trying to do is going to meet some resistance. We have a lot on our plates.

Let's see if we can find some tools and systems to help get our book draft book draft across the finish line.

It is a lot of work. So first off, let's just recognize and celebrate that if you are pursuing this idea. That in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Author Craft Community!

Access Author Craft Community, a resource library that grows every month with new resources and information for authors at an affordable price....

Join the Author Craft Hub! A place for authors to get tools you can actually use to guide you through the process from writing to publishing, to launching and ongoing marketing...and more! Members get new resources for each week of the month as well as access to the whole archive. Join today and take the headache out of promoting your writing!

_______

The Book Marketing Goodies:

Get my gift guide for authors and writers! Here are some of my favorite fun picks for gifts!

Get my FREE guide for book planning if you're still writing your book. Let's get that manuscript finished! 

Get the book marketing blueprint filled with the framework you need to market your book in a simple, but strategic way before, at, and after your launch!

Download the launch team building guide and class. (AKA how to enlist others to help your book make a big splash at launch!) 

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Transcript:

 Pre-selling your book. Okay. So I get this question a lot from authors. And honestly, it's a topic that I've had to kind of do some different research around myself to see, you know, what works, what doesn't, what scenarios could it work in? What scenarios does it not work in and all of that. And so over the years, I've learned a lot when it comes to pre selling a book and offering it up for pre sale.

It's not, it's not a cut and dry answer. So if you talk to someone who comes from a more traditional, book publishing background where they worked for a traditional publisher or a hybrid publisher, they are probably gonna have you do a pre sell of your book. Um, they're gonna, they're probably gonna push that and you know, it's, it's not a bad thing, but people from those backgrounds traditionally are not necessarily thinking about the way that Amazon works for, um, for going after bestseller and some of those, those metrics that a lot of authors care about, and they're also not necessarily thinking about it from a marketing standpoint, which is a little ironic because a lot of publishers.

You know, that's what people traditionally, like, they think that the publisher is going to help them with all this marketing expertise. But they're not marketers. They're publishers. They know how to get your book live. Okay? They know the ins and outs of this traditional industry. They're not always thinking about things from a marketing standpoint.

And there's a phrase I believe Donald Miller uses a lot in his podcast around the story brand. And it's, uh, if you confuse, you lose. And so I see this way too often, especially when it comes to a pre sale for a book, is that it becomes confusing for the audience. They don't really know when your book is live.

You're talking about your book a lot, but unless you are crystal clear about the actual date that the book is live, people are going to be confused. Because you've been talking about it for months and months and months, and then if you're not explicitly clear that your book actually went live, Then you don't really you confuse your audience and also a lot of authors that go this route They will pop up out of...