Episode 82
Author Heather Osoy’s Confrontational Alter Ego Writes Her Books -82
An avid reader and writer since she was a child, Heather Osoy found her voice through literature. She wrote a number of plays, poems, short stories and even a screenplay during her formative years. The passing of a beloved family member right before the pandemic encouraged her to use that voice to publish her first novel, To Hold Oneself. She chose the indie route, so no one could interfere with what she wanted to say.
Her stories are full of imperfect people trying to find their own voices. The subject matter tends to be heavy, but that makes the characters' journeys far more imperative.
Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of To Hold Oneself at Bookshop.org at this link bookshop.org
Her next installment to her series Discomfort of the Blended entitled Suspension of the Writ will be released August 24, 2024.
You can find Heather Osoy on Instagram @heather_writes
and Facebook www.facebook.com/heatherosoywrites.
Her body of work:
2022, To Hold Oneself
2023, Comfort for Community
2024, Suspension of the Writ
Learn more about her at https://linktr.ee/heatherosoy
A little about today's host-
Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.
She offers a free 7 Steps to Perfect Your Podcast Title to anyone interested in launching a podcast. You can also follow her on Instagram-@ShawnaPodcasts, and learn more about the network and community at https://linktr.ee/37by27.
Be sure to follow or subscribe to Author Express wherever you listen to podcasts and to follow us on Instagram @AuthorExpressPodcast
Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Shawna Rodrigues [:Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know your new favorite author in a new light. I'm Shawna Rodrigues, one of your hosts, a fellow author, host of The Grit Show and Authenticity Amplified Podcast, and the founder of Authentic Connections Podcast Network, which makes this podcast possible. Let me tell you a little about today's guest. Heather Osoy is an indie novelist, avid gardener, and unschooler in the Pacific Northwest. She wrote her first novel at age 9. Her first published novel, To Hold Oneself, is an autobiographical fiction story that was met with great acclaim.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Currently, she's working on a dystopian fiction trilogy, that explores racial identity and politics, a complicated topic in today's world. Every novel by Heather Osoy studies nature versus nurture through morally gray characters in extreme environments. They're dialogue driven with palpable emotions, and a lesson along the way. When Heather's not writing, she enjoys baking and being near water, which being in the Pacific Northwest helps with that, doesn't it? Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us, Heather. I'm excited to have you today.
Heather Osoy [:Yeah. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yes. So the first thing we always start with is tell us something interesting about where you are from.
Heather Osoy [:I love that I live kind of in a small town. Never knew that I would love this, but I I love how communal it is. Because it's so small, you're constantly running into people, and everyone is so friendly. And, there's one one time in my life where I thought I was more of a city girl. Nope. That's not it. This, I love this place. I love it so much.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That's so wonderful. It's so nice when you can find a place that you truly feel like you're connected to others, and that's great that you found that.
Heather Osoy [:Yeah. I'm very grateful.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That's wonderful. So what is something you wish you could have understood more deeply when you were 20 years old?
Heather Osoy [:Oh, definitely. I wish I would've listened to my inner voice a little bit more. That voice telling me, oh, this isn't comfortable. This isn't good. I don't like this kind of a thing. I I I was definitely more of a people pleaser growing up, so I wish that I, would have been more comfortable standing my ground. And I did eventually learn that last thing.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yes. But if you go back that far, there's so much we've gained in that time. Right?
Heather Osoy [:Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yes. That's a good one. I think that being able to grow in that way is a very positive thing. So that's exciting. You've kind of made that shift and gotten to that place. What's the last thing that made you laugh really hard?
Heather Osoy [:Oh. Oh. Oh my gosh. I can't believe I forgot this because I remember laughing really hard about oh, goodness. No. I'm remembering it now. My oldest son oh, it's escaping me. My oldest son oh, yeah.
Heather Osoy [:He he called my youngest son, a Twitter user once. And I'm like, what what does that even mean? So you like to argue for the sake of arguing. It's something like I guess, I don't know what the kids are saying. So many things. But I was like, oh, that's really left field and clever. I I it it's one of those you had to be there. Yeah. It's just the it gets some events that it was
Shawna Rodrigues [:Was was your other son offended by it, or did he just not get it either, or he was absolutely offended by it being called that?
Heather Osoy [:He didn't. No. He he's he's six. I mean, surprisingly, my my oldest is, he's not on Twitter, but, you know, he's only 9.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yeah. That's so funny.
Heather Osoy [:I see. I don't yeah. I don't know where he got that from. But It was, like, cute.
Shawna Rodrigues [:How was how did you even get that as an insult? Yes. Yes.
Heather Osoy [:Thank you.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yes. It's so funny how sometimes though at that age, like, just because you say it. I can remember when I was in elementary school that somebody had an insult. And I had no clue what it meant. I didn't know what the words meant, but I just knew that it was an insult. And I remember being so insulted, and then later going, like, what did that even mean? Like, I can't even to them later going, like, what did that even mean? I knew they even mean when they said it, but I don't know what those words meant. So, yeah. That age, like, you just know the way somebody's saying it.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That, you know, we you know, you should be offended by it.
Heather Osoy [:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Listen.
Shawna Rodrigues [:So probably helps that mom mom was amused by it. Probably helped to take the sting out a little bit.
Heather Osoy [:Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yes. Well, today we're gonna talk a little bit more about your debut novel. Even though you're working on your series now, could you summarize your debut in just like a sentence or 2 for us?
Heather Osoy [:It's my way of unpacking events in my life by kind of weaving it together with another story. It's it's ultimately unpacking a particular character through 3 points of view and through the other characters learning the truth about this character's way more than she said. Through 3 other characters, you learn the truth about another one. And in turn, the truth about those 3 other characters, It's all it's relevant. Again, I know that was more than 2 sentences.
Shawna Rodrigues [:No. That that's so fine. And so to hold oneself, I love the title that you came up with it. Was that something you came up with before you wrote it or something that came to you after you finished the book?
Heather Osoy [:Actually, during, like, early into the process. I luck out somehow early in the process. I the title sticks out to me early on. It's kind of a play on words. It's about having to physically hold oneself, like, and embrace Mhmm. Having to hold someone up, holding someone else up, and holding someone accountable. So there are multiple meanings around that.
Shawna Rodrigues [:I like that. I definitely like that. Is there a certain part of the book that, like, sticks with you the most from it?
Heather Osoy [:Yeah. There's one particular scene. Being that it is autobiographical fiction, there's some truth in it and there's some stuff that's made up. Mhmm. And, there are some scenes that are word for words. You can see what happens. And there's one scene in particular. I'm actually not gonna go into detail about it because I kind of like that people don't know what's true and what's not.
Heather Osoy [:But there's one particular scene that was really hurtful for me and, it was really it was really healing to kind of unpack it and talk about it. Again, I'm not gonna say which scene it is.
Shawna Rodrigues [:But there's, but there's parts of it that were really, a useful experience for you to be able to kind of write and go through that. So what helps you decide which parts of it were going to be fictionalized and what parts were real? Was it what made it flow easiest or what kind of helps you decide which parts of it were based on actual experiences and which pieces weren't?
Heather Osoy [:Well, I've realized about I've realized this about myself years after the fact because I published this in, 2022. I just I went with my emotions. I went with what felt right. I created totally fictional characters and just had them go through certain things. So I went through and I'm like, oh, I don't really feel like unpacking this. So I'm gonna kind of, like, create this other storyline that totally didn't happen and then just kinda weave it all together. So it it was kind of my way of unpacking it without really feeling it, exploring it kind of a thing. It was so organic.
Heather Osoy [:It ends up being a nonlinear story line. So not only do you have 3 points of view, but it also becomes nonlinear and it just felt so natural. Boy, I I don't know if every author experiences this, but at some point, the story writes itself. I started off kind of like talking about the things I want to talk about and then branching off kind of like, okay, gonna create these new story. I mean, these totally made up characters and and just everything just kinda came together. It was kinda telling me what to do. So it's it's very woven in everything from what I'm just honestly talking about myself with these fictionalized characters and what they're going through and then the way it became nonlinear, it just made the most sense to just speak it in that way. It it was ultimately telling me what it wanted to do, and I'm I love how it came out.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That's beautiful. And that's a great thing about writing, right, is that the characters kind of become their own and have their own pieces and revelations that they have along the way that kind of build the story as it comes along. And that's kind of the the beauty of fiction to some extent is that it has new tools and new ways to insert new pieces of information and new perspective into it.
Heather Osoy [:Very much what happened.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That's incredible. And it's really fun too because now you've shifted to doing more dystopian and doing more young adult. Has it been a hard transition to doing that?
Heather Osoy [:No. It's been a fun transition, honestly, because I went from speaking so much about myself to talking about a kind of aspect of myself. And this time, going through characters that I can't really relate to and having to do this whole world building thing to just really kinda step out of myself. And, I've been having another great time with it. Even my latest suspension of the red, which I'm still working on, it's not out till August. The main protagonist is actually a a young man. So going through the perspective, like, trying to think, like, how would a young man respond in the situation and this person isn't me, you know, I can't really put myself in there. I have to think how this totally separate being responds.
Heather Osoy [:It's it's been fun to kind of stretch my brain out that way and, yeah, have a good time.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yeah. And really immerse yourself in it. That's exciting. Mhmm. What piece of advice do you think has been the most helpful to you in your writing journey?
Heather Osoy [:To be honest. I I hear that kind of self doubt from other authors or or newly emerging writers is we know deep down what we wanna write, but we're thinking about what other people will think of it. And when you kinda have to when it comes to marketing, you you have to, in a way, care what other people think. But, I mean, all at the end of the day, it's your arch. That's something you're putting your name on. Can you really stand by it? Just be honest about how you wanna write it. And even if it's a little avant garde, if if it's just go with it. Just go there.
Heather Osoy [:Whatever you're feeling, just, just be honest.
Shawna Rodrigues [:I love that. To be honest, it's definitely the the heart of it all to that that the authentic piece of it all when you're doing it. What is the best place for people to find you, Heather?
Heather Osoy [:Well, they can find me on Facebook or Instagram. Just look up Heather Osoy, o s o y. I'm the only one who exists, so you will definitely find me.
Shawna Rodrigues [:That is that is lovely. I love that. And we'll have that in the show notes to also make it easier. And what book or story inspires you the most?
Heather Osoy [:I would say, kinda surprisingly, A Child Called It by Dave Pelber.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Oh, yes.
Heather Osoy [:Which is a heavy book. It's a heavy it's a heavy trilogy. I ended up reading all of them. Read them when I was, like, 19, possibly younger than that, between 17 or 19. But it hit me hard because I admired his honesty. And to talk about these things obviously had to be hard, but he was being very vulnerable. And he was expressing that even when you come from this environment, you can pull yourself out. And I just found it so inspiring and it's what let one of the things that ultimately led me talking about my story, which isn't more so than memoir route like he took.
Heather Osoy [:But, it gave me the confidence to do what I wanted to do. I'm grateful for that.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Yeah. Sharing those stories is so important, Jen. Having the inspiration to share stories. I love it. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing about your writing today, Heather.
Heather Osoy [:Thank you. It's awesome.
Shawna Rodrigues [:Thank you for joining us. I hope you take a second to give a stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. It really makes a difference in folks being able to find us. We'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. And don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.
