Author Q&A Patty Blue Hayes

Patty Blue Hayes is an award-winning author and mindset coach. She brings her education, research, and personal experience into her books to benefit and empower others. She transformed her own life and is inspired to help people find contentment, authenticity, and inner strength. She moved to Panama in 2019 and creates YouTube content about her experiences in Panama. She lives a peaceful life in the valley of an extinct volcano in Panama and enjoys tending to her garden.

You are an author, but is it your day job? If not, what fills your days? I am an author! And while it does fill many of my days, it is not a source of income, so I don’t spend the time on my writing and publishing like an author who makes a living as a writer would. But there’s always hope that I will earn a living as an author one day. It would be a dream come true.

Did you always want to be an author? Yes. In fact, the first time I recall dreaming of becoming an author was in 6th grade, in Mr. Romanello’s classroom. I wanted to write a book that would help adults. There were several life circumstances when I was eleven, and I knew they were beyond my understanding of what was happening. But I wanted my experience to be helpful to other people.

Self-doubt grew, and while I’d taken writing classes in college, I never believed in myself enough to think I could actually be a writer. It wasn’t until I was living in Los Angeles after my mother died that I started writing screenplays. I always loved the idea of combining my love of photography and storytelling to have an emotional impression on people.

I was fortunate enough to have an agent for a while, but I never did sell a spec script. But that experience of screenwriting proved to be quite valuable when I wrote and published my first book, Wine, Sex and Suicide – My Near Death Divorce. That book was a journey through the night of the soul during a chaotic and destructive time in my life when my marriage ended abruptly due to infidelity.

It was a journal that I wrote with the intention of publishing, so I purposely created visual descriptions, dialogue, and sensory depictions. I worked with a developmental editor on that book, and she helped me pare it down and give it structure. Even though it was edited, it still ended up too long for a self-published author. 

While day-dreaming about ‘next books’, the idea came to me to combine alcohol cessation with an AI sobriety coach. I created a custom GPT that is available to people who buy the book. There’s a very comprehensive personal questionnaire covering the person’s drinking patterns, emotional landscape, thinking patterns, history, and personal relationships.

This book has the potential to help people with pattern interruption in real-time. The GPT is available 24/7, nonjudgmental, and programmed to support the person’s sobriety success based on their specific preferences. Some people prefer science-based solutions, while others prefer psychological or spiritual approaches. When the reader completes their sobriety profile, they can choose exactly how they want their sobriety coach to interact with them.

How do you hope your book will uplift readers? I hope that for people who have struggled to attain sobriety, this book or my shadow work journal series will help them do the emotional healing that is vital to gain sobriety. Drinking alcohol or staying in unhealthy relationship dynamics are a result of our inner landscape: the thoughts we think about our worth or value, the predominant emotions we experience throughout the day, the level of self-awareness we have, and the ability to process our feelings and build a healthier mindset.

I write about my lived experience with low self-worth, alcohol abuse, suicidal thoughts, unhealthy relationship dynamics, a lack of autonomy, and transforming from a victim mentality to a growth mindset. In my heart, I know that sharing my experience and how I got through them is valuable to people. If my books help one person not feel alone in the world, or think about things from a new perspective, or gain a few tools to use, that is incredibly gratifying.

What are you most excited about with this book? With the How to Quit Drinking Alcohol with ChatGPT book, I’m excited about a few things. One, it is a truly revolutionary way to use AI for good. AI is an emerging technology with significant controversy, and I’m happy to use it to enhance someone’s well-being. And two, I’m also creating a series of hybrid ‘book & bot’ journals that combine physical journals with a custom GPT for more in-depth, interactive journaling and self-reflection sessions.

I’m excited to bring a new type of self-help journal model to the market. People benefit from both elements in these hybrid journals. The brain processes things differently when we handwrite our thoughts, allowing us the self-reflective time we need. Then the AI GPT coach helps the person create tangible goals, take action steps, problem-solve, and offers real-time support when needed. 

When I scan the Reddit threads, my heart breaks for people who are genuinely struggling with their emotional and/or mental health. Many people can’t afford therapy or don’t have the stamina to navigate the endless paperwork and waiting periods just to make an appointment. As a coach, I know not everyone can afford those rates – and that leaves many people feeling like they don’t have options for support. I’m hopeful that the ‘book & bot’ journals will fill the gap for people.

How did writing a book help your career take off? Sadly, it hasn’t. My dream was to support myself through my writing, but as of today, that hasn’t happened. I recently signed up for a course on self-publishing designed to help me generate income through publishing. It hasn’t worked for me, but that course got me back into writing what I love: memoir, workbooks, and journals that help people. Perhaps the financial gain is on the way. I generate income from coaching, my Airbnb in Panama, and my YouTube channel, but right now, publishing is an expense.

What advice would you give someone wanting to succeed in your professional industry? If we’re talking about the self-publishing industry, I’d recommend a few things if they genuinely want to have financial success in non-fiction publishing. Treat it as a business, not a passion. Write in a genre that is proven to generate income. Create books with strong keyword titles, high demand, and relatively low competition. Write the best book you possibly can. Have at least $5,000 to start your business. You have to embrace marketing or hire someone to handle ads (pricey). Don’t write one book and think it’s going to be a huge success; create a series of books and build a brand. If you have a product or service to tie into your books, do that for cross-promotion. And always have a plan B, C, and D.

How do you handle setbacks and criticism? When faced with setbacks, I try to find an alternative route to my destination. For example, I don’t have a huge Amazon ads budget, which seems necessary if you truly want your book to stand out from the hundreds or thousands of books available, so I’m getting myself booked on podcasts and pitching to journalists to get my information in front of people. I also ‘advertise’ my books on my YouTube channel – though my content is about my life in Panama, it’s likely that someone watching my videos is going through heartbreak, wants to quit drinking, or needs to make significant mindset shifts.

I used to take criticism very personally, and it would set me back. In fact, at one point in my life, I stopped writing altogether due to harsh criticism from another student in an online writing class. Then I learned to consider the source. Everyone has an opinion, but the question is, do I value that opinion?

If I give my manuscript to 20 beta readers and 6 of them have the same critique, I’m going to pay attention because I value their input. But if a reader leaves an Amazon review that says, ‘I thought it would have been better,’ it doesn’t faze me. I don’t know that person, what their expectations were, or what state of mind or emotion they were in. I focus on the positive reviews that mention how my story was relatable to them or helped them think about some aspect of their lives differently.

The most prominent critic we have is often ourselves. To deal with that, I keep focused on my good intentions and the high quality of my work, and I do the best I can to create books I feel proud of, knowing that I am doing all I can with the resources I have to present the best books possible.

Being an author today is like running a business. How do you manage your publicity and social media? How can media maintain engagement with readers? It is a business, absolutely. That is something I didn’t consider when I wrote my first book, Wine, Sex and Suicide – My Near Death Divorce. I thought I’d publish the book, that hundreds of thousands of people would read it, and that some producer would option it and make a movie based on my book. And that has happened for some people! So I thought, why couldn’t it happen for me?  But other authors write and publish many books, might not get the movie deal, but they generate consistent income while growing their readership. Back then, I chose not to continue writing because I didn’t see the magical result I’d hoped for.

For marketing and publicity, I do have a small email subscriber list and send out infrequent newsletters about my books, videos, and personal retreat offerings in Panama. I just recently joined TikTok because someone in that publishing course I signed up for said books can go viral! Not yet for me, it’s been another way to spend money, boosting posts. But I’m actually enjoying creating that very short-form content and will likely plan to post inspiring content rather than the fun, flashy, “here’s-my-book” videos I’ve been doing. I also post my books and videos on my FB business page, but that has very low engagement. I use my YouTube channel to talk about my books, and I’m getting booked on podcasts. I’m paying for Amazon ads, but they haven’t translated into many sales.

I now know that you have to be consistent with marketing and PR. It doesn’t have to be a grand or expensive campaign, but it does have to be a few times a week. Planning would be valuable, but that’s just something I’ve never been good at doing.

How do you hold yourself accountable and achieve the goals that you set forth? That is the million-dollar question, isn’t it! I put a lot of focused time, energy, and money into my publishing efforts for the last year, and I’m now taking a bit of a break. I still have ads running on Amazon and am active on TikTok, but with the change of seasons where I live, it’s now getting sunny and breezy, and I have some Airbnb projects to complete. I like working in concentrated time segments. If I spent 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, only writing and publishing, I would burn out quickly. Some people can do it, but I know myself, and I can’t.

I honor my energy and focus management. Right now, I have a completed manuscript, but the next 6-8 weeks are busy with other endeavors, so I’m not pressuring myself to get the book out. I know that when the time is right, I’ll get the cover designed and publish it – it’s not a time-sensitive book. As in all things in life, balance is key. Sometimes we need to step away from the laptop, live some life, and then get back to our writing.

How do you structure your day and make time for writing? The mornings are best for me to come up with ideas or do the actual writing. Afternoons are best for editing, organizing, and planning. I do enjoy a midday nap when I’m in ideation mode. I find that’s the best time of day for creative ideas to come into my awareness. On alternating days, I can either batch-create TikTok content or send a newsletter. Still, it is often dual, and the marketing is usually challenging for me to keep to a regimented schedule, the first to fall off my radar.

What do you find most fulfilling in the career that you’ve chosen? My dream is to help other people through my books. If someone reads one of my books and feels less alone in the world or finds a new way to think about something, that is most fulfilling for me.

What book uplifts you? I typically only read non-fiction, and while I find value and gain knowledge from many books, the one that comes to mind for feeling uplifted is Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

Anything else you’d like to share with your readers? If you’re a writer, keep writing! Don’t focus on the end product; focus on writing and leave the editing to a professional. If you’re a reader of non-fiction, I hope you might choose one of my books to help guide you through a challenge.

You can connect with Patty and learn more through her website.