Podcast Interview: Freelancing, Writing, and Traveling the World [Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino]
I was interviewed by Joe Dimino for his podcast Famous Interviews. Excited for you to check out the interview at the link above! I’ll also include the transcript below.
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Transcript: Finding Freedom in Freelance Writing, Travel, and My New Detective Series [Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino]
Joe
Hello, Amy, what's going on?
Amy Suto
Not much. How are you, Joe?
Joe
everything's good. Nice to meet you. Where are you located?
Amy Suto
Currently, I'm in Edinburgh, UK for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. So I travel around the world as a digital nomad. This is just a stop on the journey.
Joe
Oh, that's cool. That's very cool. Yeah, that's that's probably a dream for a lot of people, is to be able to have that latitude. So that's pretty cool. How do you how do you stay grounded doing that? Is it just you're so used to it, your compass is ready to go?
Amy Suto
Yeah. So it's basically been four years of trial and error. I'm trying to figure out, okay, what do I need in a place to figure out where the gym is and where the closest bookstore is, or coffee shop, or, you know, all of the kind of trappings of home, wherever I go, and so it really helps that I'm able to kind of know what I need to feel, kind of in a routine, while also being really flexible with what routine looks like.
Joe
Okay, so let's get into it. My first question is going to have a lot to do with you traveling and with what's been going on. Four years ago, we were trying to figure out this pandemic. How long is it going to last? How is it going to affect us? How did you get through it with the amount of travel you do and with what you do with your life, how did you get through it? How did it change you?
Amy Suto
Yeah, so going into the pandemic, I was working in Hollywood. I was a TV writer, and all of the writers rooms shut down and turned into zoom rooms. And so I was trapped in Los Angeles with all of my other friends as the pandemic was going and then I also was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. So I'm like, am I trapped here? Am I just gonna be stuck here? I'm worried about this pandemic. But then I looked around to my friends, and I was like, I don't think it's gonna be good for us mental health wise, to just stay in our small, little apartments in Los Angeles. We should go because Airbnbs are really cheap around the country right now. Let's quarantine around the country in beautiful places in nature, in Colorado, in Nashville, in Washington. And that's what we did. And so that kind of kicked off my working remotely journey. And so I started traveling with a group of friends and started doing a lot of work for different people, because I also ghostwrite memoirs. And when I left Hollywood, I really kind of leaned into that. And so that kicked off the digital nomad journey, and I just kept on going from there, because I loved it so much. And then also, through the journey of traveling, I ended up healing my autoimmune condition by spending a lot of time in Europe, which has great quality produce, which changed a lot. And then I also published two books. So getting out into the world really changed the trajectory of my life in a number of different ways.
Joe
So what about your autoimmune issue? Was that kind of resolved with having a better mental health and moving around and all of that? Did that get resolved?
Amy Suto
Yeah, so it got I'm completely in remission now, thanks to, I think in part, being able to travel. Europe has incredible quality produce, and so when I eat bread and cheese in the US, I just, like, it just makes me feel really, really bad. And then when I'm traveling, I can be, you know, I was eating a ton of like, pizza in Italy to the States. My doctor was like, what did you do? Your blood tests look amazing. And I'm like, I would just ate like, pizza, like, for a month. And he's like, keep doing that. And I took that advice to heart. And so I think that when we think about travel, everyone thinks about the stress that it takes on your body, and everybody thinks about like, Oh, you're running around, you're there's so much going on, like you’re in airports, like, flights are getting delayed. But in terms of life as a digital nomad, and the way that I approach it kind of as a slow-mad — spending a month or longer in different places — you're just living in different parts of the world and learning different parts about culture. And it was really cool to spend a month in Kyoto, Japan earlier this year, where I was able to really dig into my yoga practice and spend a lot of time in nature and go on hikes. And so being able to be out in the world ended up being the best thing for my mental health and my creativity and my productivity.
Joe
I mean, that has to be the best natural remedy in the world. I mean, I love travel and I love what it does been that. And it just because you realize that the world is a massive place, and there's all these things going on, billions of things every day. And when you get pigeonholed, like you said, being in LA during a pandemic, and LA was hardcore during the pandemic. I mean, I still can't believe they were closing beaches down. That just is weird to me, you know, yeah, but to be able to get out. I remember one time I'm a visual artist as well, and I I've annually where I lived, I would always have my artwork out, and I would just take donations, and people would grab artwork. And I remember a guy came up to me. It was one of the more magnanimous moments that I ever had doing it. And he came up to me, and he was telling me about someone that he knew that got over cancer, and it was a lot about just really changing up a lot of the ways that they live their lives. It was a lifestyle change, and they really did get over it. It's that whole mind over matter thing, you know, getting to a place in your life where your brain can take over the biology of what could potentially happen. It's fascinating.
Amy Suto
Yeah, it's really interesting. And there's so much research around trying to figure out how to get your nervous system into a better state. You know, the benefits of mindfulness. And a lot of the countries that I visited over the last few years have been very nature-forward. Have a more balanced approach to work and life and are less stressful. And so I think that being in these different places have helped me kind of pull different practices from different cultures to help heal. And I think that that's something everybody who travels gains something different. And I think that there's so much to be learned, health-wise, from other cultures around the world, too.
Joe
You know, in my 20s, I traveled a lot into Europe, and on 911 I was actually, I'm an IT technician by day, so I stopped by a classroom and looked at all of these newspapers of historical events that happened, and one of them was 911 and I was in the back of a water taxi in Venice, Italy, the morning that happened, and a guy's shooting his hands up, and he's going nuevo York. I'm like, What are you talking about? Because I landed in Paris on September 4, and historically, when I traveled, I just didn't go contact home. I was off. I was like, cut off. But obviously a magnanimous event happened, so I was trying to figure out what was going on. And I remember a couple days after that, I went to Cinque Terre, which is the poor man's Riviera, and I went to Vernazza. And I was like, Of all the places on the planet, to be, I remember, like, laying in the Baltic ocean, just floating and just looking up, thinking of all of the things that were happening in the world. That's probably the best, most ideal place to be at, you know, and it's that idea that, you know, other parts of the world are going to take, it's just traveling is just such a good thing, because being in America at that point was hardcore. All they were doing was showing it over and over again. You were just reliving and swimming through, you know, people fighting at the gas pumps, but there, there was just everybody was walking around with their dogs, going to the market, doing things. And it wasn't like they weren't cognizant that something major happened. It was just on a different part of the world, and they didn't know what the skirmish was between America and these forces that were taken towers down. So it was very interesting to be in that place.
Amy Suto
Yeah, and I think that it's, it's kind of, it's kind of difficult, because, like when you travel, it's like trying to strike that balance of getting away from where you come from and from your problems, while also knowing that some of your problems are on the next flight over too. So it's like trying to get the distance from the things that are going wrong and things that are happening to then be able to, like, re approach them. So when you do return to the states, like you're able to to approach it in a way where you're not letting the panic overcome you, or letting the your problems, kind of like, you know, come over you. And I feel that way when I return from the States, from, like, traveling abroad, like everywhere has its problems, but when you're kind of away from your home country, you can kind of be in a little bit of a vacuum.
Joe
Yeah, it's all about perspective. So at the end of the day, if I put you in front of a bunch of third grade students for Career Day, and one of the kids was curious and says, Hey, what do you do for a living? How do you answer that?
Amy Suto
Yeah, I am a writer of stories for myself and other people, and I think that that has been such a gift to be able to do the work that I do. So I kind of have two lanes that I work in. So I'm a memoir ghostwriter. So I work with CEOs and Olympians and really inspiring people all over the world, and I help them tell their story in book form. And that has been such a gratifying experience, because I was recently in Singapore working with one of my clients. I met up with my clients in Athens like I have clients all over the world that I get to meet up with through my travels. And so being able to step into their lives and help them tell their stories, be able to lend my skills, has been just such a really satisfying experience. And I think there's a little bit of a negative tinge people have around ghostwriters, because they're like, oh, but you don't have any credit for it. I'm like, It's not my story. I'm the I'm the vehicle and, like, the Craftsman for somebody else's story. Just like, you know, if you're a home builder building somebody's house, it's not your home, but you're helping to build something that will last for generations for them. And so it's been such a privilege to be this ghostwriter, kind of be this vehicle for other people's stories, and that has also been able to inform my own work as a fiction author. I recently came out with my new book, The Nomad Detective Volume One, which is inspired by all of my travels as a digital nomad, and kind of takes this mystery genre lens on what it's like to be a traveler in the world and interacting with all these different people with these different agendas and the problems that they face. And so being a memoir ghostwriter has allowed me to not only have access to the intimate lives of really fascinating people, but also kind of helped me understand human nature better when I'm writing about it in fiction that is also kind of inspired by my travels.
Joe
It's weird the literature cops with all of these rules they put out, like, with ghostwriting, and even, like, the other day I was reading, and they were like, you know, Hillary never wrote her memoirs. She just did diction, you know. And it's like, and then people say, Well, if you're listening to books and you're not reading, it, is it really? It's like, come on, you know? I mean, how sanitized do we need to make the swimming pool before it's too sanitized to even swim in? I mean, it's like, we're all ingesting it. For me personally, thank God for Audible books, because I don't have time to sit down and read, and I'm a really slow reader, but when I get that audiobook going at like, 1.25 I'm swallowing books and I'm still getting it and there's just certain people, like, there's certain people that have to watch things happen in front of them or read a book. I can listen to like a sporting event, and I absorb it in a very different way. And it's just like, I don't know, it's just like with ghostwriting, like you're delving into these worlds and helping people transmit their stories that are going to affect millions of people. And that's totally valorous. And it's like that that needs to happen.
Amy Suto
Definitely. And I think a lot of people don't realize that writing and publishing a book is such a team sport. If you're going at in terms of the self-publishing route or the traditional publishing route, no matter what you pick, you have a team of editors and proofreaders. And if you're going traditional publishing, you have a book agent and then the publishing house. And if you're doing self-publishing, you have beta readers, and you know, you have your friends and family around you, so even if you are physically writing the book yourself, you still have so many other hands on the book to help you get it out there. And I think a lot of people don't understand that they kind of have this like image in their mind of like a writer with a typewriter, just like agonizing over their story when it's like no like, fiction authors and nonfiction authors rely so heavily on a team to help shake the book and get it out there. And I think that that's something that, like, I wish people understood, because, like with the ghostwriting component of it, clients like sit down with me, and we have all these interviews, and then I ask them questions, and then even after the calls, they send me their voice memos. I read their diaries. It's their book, and their voice and the way that it's being put down on paper is just a little different than if they were to write it themselves. And I think that everyone should be leaning into their strengths as a reader or a listener or a writer and understand that, like the different form doesn't matter, as long as it serves the same function of being able to spread great stories and help people understand more about you and what you've been through and to therefore kind of inspire them to live life more fully.
Joe
And as you very well know, coming from LA and Hollywood, that's the irony of Hollywood, is that it transmits all of these stories to us that are fascinating, but it also kind of waters down the idea of what you do to publish. They simplify and they create this kind of mystic realm that doesn't exist because there is, there's an enormous amount from start to finish that goes into actually putting it in pulp.
Amy Suto
Yeah, and I think that there is also interesting to kind of see, like the revolution of publishing happening right now, and a lot of writers are getting on this platform called Substack and starting to be able to publish more directly to their readers, and finding new ways of publishing books through doing serialized kind of chapters, similar to the way that, you know, authors used to publish their books through Pulp Fiction and and dime store novels like one, you know, episode at a time, one chapter at a time. And so we're kind of seeing a return of that. But with, you know, paid newsletter platforms like Substack, where authors can their readers can sign up and support an author for a certain amount of money each month, and that allows the author to continue putting out fiction or nonfiction or essays. And I think that stuff like that is so fascinating because publishing is already starting to be kind of diverted, and there's also the stigma of self-publishing is starting to go away when you realize that if you pick up a book from Amazon, you don't necessarily know if it's self-published or not, if it's high enough quality. And I think that that's really cool, because there's so many horror stories I've heard of people who've gone through traditional publishing only to have control of their book wrench from them and to be, you know, swimming and all of this, like, this kind of like heartache that goes with traditional publishing sometimes, and also the process takes really long. So I think it's really interesting to see this shift in publishing. And as a self-published author, I think it's really it's really empowering, because I've seen self-published authors kind of hit the stage in a new way, and I think that we're about to see a huge disruption in a way that makes it more equitable and also allows writers to write for their readers, right? That writer than rather than having to deal with this in between third party that wants to have control over their image.
Joe
And we've seen that with the music industry, there's so many profits that are made by these publishing houses. A lot like Prince, before he died, took his entire catalog and re recorded it because he wanted control, and that's and it should, the artists should have control over it, but that that can open up a whole other thing with with, you know, the pirating of music and all of that, the digitizing of it. But I'm curious, when you were in the third grade, what did you want to be when you grew up? What was your dream?
Amy Suto
I wanted to be a writer.
Joe
Yeah, what was the first book that you read that you read that really opened the curtains, that made you either want to write or want to read more?
Amy Suto
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I think it's such a great book. It feels like it kind of balances this level of sci-fi and morality and what's right and wrong, but it also features young characters in a way that doesn't feel like it is looking down on the young characters, and I think that when you're a kid, you're growing up, and you're reading all these like YA books or children's books, you get a sense that the characters are kind of being a little bit infant written in a way that sometimes feels infantilizing, and sometimes feels like these characters aren't very smart. They're making dumb choices. They're going down to the scary basement with a flashlight knowing there's a monster. Are down there and they're not doing anything, whereas Ender's Game felt like a very like intellectualized version of, like approaching these kids stories and like having them be at the center of like an intergalactic war. And it didn't feel silly. It didn't feel like I was being talked down to as a young reader. And I think that that was like the first book that I felt like, oh, this book is for me in a way that I hadn't felt before. And as a reader, as I've continued moving along my career and picked up different books, I've realized that some books just aren't for me, and that's okay, and I will never be the person who's going to covet reading War and Peace. I'm just not. I'm going to want to read the thrillers. I'm going to want to read the books that people are like, Oh, that one's too popular. I'm like, No, it's popular for a reason. It works. But I think that like understanding that our tastes are simply the things that are for us and not to be shamed by anybody for that. Because I think there's a lot of shaming that goes to the book world, where, you know, even that New York Times, like ‘top 100 books of the century’ list that came out that everybody was ups and up in arms with because it was just it was very high, highly intellectualized, like establishment like New York Times-y books, not the books that were popular, that people really loved. And so I think that there's kind of this like divide in the literary world between what critics love and what people love.
Joe
That is so well said, because I remember when I was younger, I used to suffer through books, and now I don't like if it's not, I'm not jiving with it, I'm out. I'm going to the next one. So that's really interesting. So I'm curious, what was the first story you wrote where you got a really good, visceral experience from somebody that really was like, wow, I got it. This makes sense. This is my destiny.
Amy Suto
Yeah, it was something in the fourth or fifth grade where I wrote a kid story called The Adventure girls versus the digital boys. And it was like a feuding like tree house, like spy story. And it was just like a small story that I wrote, but I my teacher was like, You should do more of this. And so I did. And so when I got to high school, I started doing National Novel Writing Month every November for seven years, and I really dedicated myself to the craft, and that's also what helped me get into USC for undergrad, for screenwriting, and helped kind of launch my career as a professional writer, and get me out into the world and doing things. And I think that it's a real challenge to hold on to the dream of being a fiction writer, specifically, because even when I was coming up and writing novels, I was swayed into the world of Hollywood. Because people were like, it's the golden age of TV. It's like, novels, but on TV. And I'm like, I love TV. Don't love movies, but I can give this a try. And I felt like, well, I enjoyed my experience writing for TV and being in Hollywood, I was still kind of pulled back to the world of novels. And I'm like, they can't make any money. That's impossible, and I'm being proven wrong, and I'm seeing other people who are self-publishing and making an amazing living off of it, and starting to grow my own book sales. And so it's kind of cool to be moving into this kind of realm where every time I'm like, freelance writers don't make money, and then I prove myself wrong with that. And I think that that's kind of the inspiring thing, that if you really want to do something, you'll continue to prove yourself wrong throughout the process, if you stick with it and are smart and strategic about it.
Joe
Take me back to where you were born and raised, and what were these seeds that ultimately became your career as a writer, going to Hollywood and becoming a digital nomad. What was really harvested in you to evolve into who you are today?
Amy Suto
Yeah. So I grew up in this, like, small suburb north of Phoenix, where people rode horses to work, and then there was also, like the white picket fence side of the suburb too. So it was like, kind of like middle of nowhere desert, and then bunch of Starbucks, and I felt so trapped in this, like barren desert of nothingness, as a lot of people grew up in the suburbs belt, and I helped my parents run their vintage bookstore. So they ran like an online vintage bookstore where they sold Pulp Fiction detective novels. And I just found myself loving reading these detective novels and loving the thriller genre. And so when I was growing up, my mom was a writer, my parents really encouraged me to write, and so that helped me on also, you know, shipping these books out every week to different people. And I think that that really kind of kickstarted my love of writing. And then I started making films with my friends. And so I kind of knew very early on that I love this thing, and I was very obsessive with it, and I just knew that if I stuck with it, then I'd figure out a way to make it work as a job, and making writing your job is a very challenging thing to do, and it requires, like, a lot of different pieces of strategy and thoughtfulness and personal branding and entrepreneurship knowledge. And I think that that's something that I didn't take lightly, and I kind of went really far into that side too, to understand, like, how can I make my writing, my business as well as an art form?
Joe
So who's been a hero? For you an inspiration?
Amy Suto
I think it's tough. Like, I think that Heroes is a strong word. Yeah, I think that nobody should truly be your hero, because when you meet them, you'll be disappointed by that. And I've seen that in Hollywood as somebody who has met some people that I would have maybe called heroes at one point, but I'm like, I don't know about that anymore. I think, I think really, my parents were a huge support of, like, my fiction writing and my partner, Kyle, and I think that they felt like real-life heroes to me, because they were saying true in terms of, like, what they thought, like what they saw in me, and then my partner, Kyle, staying true and like what he what he is passionate about and what he wants to do. And I think that having that ability to see people in my life that were staying true to their their core beliefs of who they are and what they're best at, and also encouraging that in me like I think we all meet people like that in our lives.
Joe
So if you can meet one person alive on the planet right now that you find fascinating, actually, let me back up a little bit, being in Hollywood, and I always find this fascinating. With people that have been in DC, in the political realm, there's all these characters and figures that we see on TV, but we don't know who they really are. Who was the person when you were in Hollywood, when you were in LA, that you really gravitated towards, look forward to running into they were really cool, just like a really good human being.
Amy Suto
Actually, my partner, Kyle, I so I met him in Hollywood, and we ended up starting businesses together before we started dating. And because I gravitate towards people in Hollywood that were really, you know, the up and comers, because I felt like when I looked at a lot of the people who were at the top and the showrunners and the producers and the actors, they were very unhappy. And so when I was looking for those role models of the people that were excited about life, I was looking to my peers. And I started like, kind of creating from the ground up. I started doing open mic nights and hosting different events with the creatives in Los Angeles, because I found more inspiration for my peers and people around me that were bravely doing their art, rather than the people who were making millions of dollars and seemed just miserable doing it.
Joe
You know, I interviewed Josh mallerman, the writer of bird box. I've interviewed him a few times, and we were talking about the premiere, you know, and Sandra Bullock was in the room, and everybody was in the room. And this is one of the more memorable quotes I've ever gotten from anybody that's been in that world. He was like, I was he was really nervous, really, really nervous. And he said the way that he calmed himself down was he was like, I'm a freak, like everybody else in here. All of us creatives have this, like part of us that are just totally like, we're, you know, we're just we're different. And once he really wrapped his head around that, he totally calmed down. And I think there's a part of that where we get mystified by the lights and all of this other stuff. But at the core of it, the ones that are really good are doing it because they're artists, and they're doing it for the right reasons, you know. So, so of all of these travels that you've had and all these places you've been to, what's been one of the most magical places that you was unexpectedly magical. You didn't expect it.
Amy Suto
Yeah, so in most of my life, I haven't been a big hiker, but then when the opportunity to do the Inca Trail, which is a four-day, 26-mile hike to Machu Picchu, came up. I was like, I'm gonna do this. And my friends were very surprised. They're like, really? And I'm like, Yeah, let's go camping and go kind of trek, this, like, incredible trek in Peru. And so when we showed up to this, this four-day trek, I kind of was like, What am I just get myself into? Because I had done training, and I had, you know, you know, wore my hiking boots on the treadmill, to break them in and done all of that stuff. But I think nothing really prepared me for how ancient and how challenging that trail is, because the amount of mysteries on that trail and the amount of like when you're up in that high altitude, everything feels a little fuzzy. It kind of created this mystical experience when like this, like the fog would roll in and you're walking through this cloud forest, or you're you're just making this insane trek of dead woman's pass, and you just see this mountain range where it looks like this woman is, like, sleeping and like, and the wind is going crazy. And we were caught in a rainstorm one day, and like, almost slipped off the mountain, and there was like, lightning right near us. And it was a challenging track that I had never in my whole life did anything near that, that difficult. But what made it really interesting, and what actually kind of inspired one of the stories kind of on my in my book, The Nomad Detective, and what caught up kind of caused me to come up with this idea of like, what would happen if there was a murder on the Inca Trail? Was this idea of all of this kind of, like, these mysteries in Peru and in Cusco and on the trail where, you know, our tour guide would just like, point at, like a bunch of boulders or this wall, and being like, those boulders are too heavy for humans to carry, probably aliens brought them, because that's our best guess. Historians have no idea. And so to have these, these really kind of like these locals and these historians, these people around us being like, these mysteries are older than man. Nobody really remembers who was the first person to live and discover Machu Picchu. The people that you know showed up were just like, there were people before us, but we don't know who they are or this was just here, and so to kind of be in this place with all. Of this folklore and all this mythology and all these ghost stories, and to be trekking and sleeping in the wilderness while all those stories are kind of swirling in my head, it was something that I was like, this has got to be a murder mystery. And so it was just like, was a really magical moment. That's a writer's paradise right there. So at the end of the day of everything that you've done and evolved into, what are you the proudest of? I think, I think the thing that I'm most proud of is this debut collection of short stories for The Nomad Detective, because I think as it's kind of my first work of fiction outside of Hollywood and outside of the scripted podcast I've done. And so this book is my basically the distillation of all of these travel stories where I ask the question, what if, being a digital nomad and a traveler and an expat out in the world, what if everything is going wrong, and like, who is solving the crimes that is going on in these communities? And like, there must be a private eye, a detective who's going in and solving these things. And so that's kind of what spurred the collection. And it took a long time to kind of get the book to really, really be where it needed to be. And so after kind of, like spending this, this almost this entire year, coming up with the idea and drilling down, and like going through my travel memories and also doing deeper research and different true crime cases to get inspiration, I think what I've put together is something that I feel like, not only feels like, kind of like a globe-trotting mystery, but also a deeper kind of like exploration of what it means to be searching for something outside of your home country and looking for something that you're missing.
Joe
Okay, Amy, so everyone out there has a perception of you, family, friends, fans, everyone you know, but you run the show. What's your perception of you? Who do you think you are?
Amy Suto
I think I'm a writer who is also has been looking for something, and I embarked on these travels to find solutions and to find answers, and to also find more of myself out in the world and I think I found a lot of that. And I think that I'm I'm grateful to have been tested by my travels and by the things that I face out in the world, and I think that is just such a privilege to be able to learn from the people I've met along my journey, and to be able to kind of share that in the form of stories, both for the work that I do, for my memoir clients, as well as in my book.
Joe
Amy, this has been wonderful. What a great story. You know, keep keep etching it. I appreciate your time today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe, thank you. Take care. Bye.
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