Hello everyone! My name is Jaiden Colling and I have been a Marketing Assistant for the Tule Mystery imprint since April of last year. In an average week, you can find me brainstorming, planing and scheduling marketing for our mysteries with the amazing Mia, managing our cozy site, creating content to share on our socials, and handling author communications.
Thank you for having me, Jane!
Questions:
1. What is your favorite part of working with Tule?
This might sound cliché, but it would have to be the people. Everyone is so kind and welcoming, and I feel like I lucked out getting to work with all of them. The authors are gems too. I love being able to help them accomplish their goals and make their release dreams come true.
2. What are some of the challenges/difficulties in working with Tule?
Working remotely! I know, I know—working remotely is the dream for most people, and believe me, I’m so grateful to work from home. The only downside is that I’m a social butterfly. Without going into the office every day, I sometimes end up seeing or talking to just one person all week! Thankfully, it’s my husband, but he might not always share my enthusiasm when I bombard him with a long monologue of everything I did that day the moment he walks through the door. lol
3. What do you specifically like to read, if you have time for pleasure reading?
Anything I can get my hands on! I love all genres and just so happen to be a bookworm (so, basically I’m living the dream working for a publishing house). I can’t help but read more than one book at a time. Currently, I’m working my way through The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin and just picked up Buried by Tule’s very own C.J. Carmichael.
4. What is an accomplishment you’re particularly proud of? (Could be work-related or not!)
Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to work with books. A way to explore newlands, make new friends, and go on adventures—all from the comfort of my home? Sold! It started with reading to younger kids in school, volunteering at libraries, and my mom always encouraging me to read everything. As I matured, my love for books grew. I interned with a book touring company after I graduated high school (at 16), helped edit books, talked with authors, and even became a certified proofer! Every step I took along the way has brought me to where I am today, and I’m so thankful I never stopped pursuing my dream.
On a personal level, the accomplishment I’m most proud of is the incredible blessing of my family. I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by five generations of strong, wise, and loving women. The youngest is only two, yet I feel so grateful every day to be part of this beautiful legacy.
Each of them has taught me invaluable lessons, offering wisdom, encouragement, and unwavering support. I’m constantly inspired by their strength, and I’m truly blessed to be able to call them my family. To know that the love and guidance I receive is part of something so enduring and precious is an accomplishment I hold close to my heart.
5. You are busy, and Tule isn’t your whole life. How do you juggle it all?
For me, it all comes down to time management. I love what I do, and because of that, sometimes I struggle to maintain a healthy work/life balance. I learned early on that if I finish everything I need to do in a reasonable amount of time, I have the rest of the day to do whatever floats into my head. Also, working remotely gives me the freedom and flexibility my spontaneous planning craves, and on any given day, I can work from a different state, a family member’s house while visiting, or even at a café with a constant stream of coffee coming my way.
How do you manage the work/life balance?
Hello everyone!
1. What is your favorite part of working with Tule?
4. What is an accomplishment you’re particularly proud of? (could be work related or not!)
Happy Friday! I am so happy to welcome my longtime BFF, Cyndi Johnson Parent, to my blog. We met as 15 year olds at Redwood High School in Visalia and four decades later, she’s still someone I trust with all my secrets and dreams. Cyndi is brilliant, insightful, a true problem solver, and Tule’s team leader. She knows how to bring everyone together and keeps us on the same page–not easy when we’re scattered over different time zones, and continents. Cyndi was always the math girl, and I was the English girl and so it makes perfect sense that she is with Tule today, in charge of all the very important financial things, including keeping us in the black. So delighted you get to meet someone who has kept me sane and shown me what true friendship is. And without further ado, here is Cyndi. 🙂
2. What are some of the challenges/difficulties in working with Tule?
5. You are busy, and Tule isn’t your whole life. How do you juggle it all?
2. What are some of the challenges/difficulties in working with Tule?
3. What do you specifically like to read, if you have time to pleasure read?
a proud auntie! I’ve known the beautiful Jeanan for years, as Jeanan and Jake were in the same grade and more than once Jeanan was on Jake’s speed dial to check on due dates for tests or homework clarification.
1. What is your favorite part of working with Tule?
I am so happy to formally introduce my long time friend, Sinclair Sawhney. Sinclair was one of my ‘real life’ friends in Bellevue, and was there through good times and bad. We met when my big boys were still just very little boys. How did we meet? Through our husbands! Sinclair’s handsome brilliant doctor husband, Deepak, was my former husband’s anesthesiologist (for these incredibly long 9 hour surgeries) and when Deepak was with Joe I knew he was in good hands. Our husbands got along well, and one day while talking discovered each had a wife who was writing romance. We were introduced, and we hit it off and the rest is history. Sinclair is energy, and warmth, sunshine and joy. She is also a Taurus (which means she’s a fixed earth sign, which means she’s stubborn but also fiercely loyal).
1. What is your favorite part of working with Tule?
The second thing, which should be my first—oops, is that I deliberately egg-headed how I wanted to raise my kids. No shade to my parents or my husband’s but man I really wanted to focus on pushing and building confidence and resilience and kindness and positivity instead of fear and anxiety and insecurity and constant second guessing. I wanted my kids to realize their power and control and the role that they played in creating their life. I felt helpless and alienated as a child—passive, and when I was a teacher, I was talking to a 6th grade boy who was struggling, and I was really trying to understand what was going on, and he had no sense of himself in his life—total external focus of control and THAT was a huge AHA moment for me. I knew my kids had to see themselves as agents and directors in their lives—seize control of what they could and drive.
5. You are busy, and Tule isn’t your whole life. How do you juggle it all?
Thank you for joining the Tule blog series as I highlight the incredibly talented team that makes up Tule Publishing. We started with Meghan Farrell and are shifting to focus on Kelly Hunter, an Australian writer, editor, and publishing exec who also happens to be a very good friend and someone I love traveling with. I’ve been to Montana and numerous RWA conferences with Kelly, a special trip Scotland and Ireland, and then over to the Blue Mountains in Australia, as well as to Hawaii three times now for various Tule meetings. Kelly is so chill and undemanding, and yet razor sharp—nothing escapes her. I love being surrounded by brilliant, good women and now it’s time you hear from her yourself!
3. What do you specifically like to read, if you have time to pleasure read?
2. What are some of the challenges/difficulties in working with Tule?
A. In 2013 I wanted to do something creative and commercially viable with my close friends, 
We met up in Montana in May of 2013, and brainstormed at CJ’s Flathead Lake cottage, before piling into her car with way too much luggage (I was to blame for the too much luggage) and we hit the road, traveling across Montana to Livingston, Bozeman and throughout Paradise Valley. At CJ’s cottage and on the road, we did extensive world building, creating our own town and individual story series ideas, which became Montana Born’s 75th Copper Mountain Rodeo, and also, Tule’s first imprint.
At this point, Tule Publishing was little more than an LLC and the first imprint little more than a marketing tool so readers could find our Marietta, Montana stories easily. Marketing makes sense to me. Before I sold my first book, I was in sales and marketing for six years and then a teacher for six years, and I know how important it is for your customer to be able to find you.
This is how we added more stories to Marietta: We’d published two rodeo stories in September and then two more in October. Then we needed more stories so I reached out to 
We just kept adding authors and stories, not just to Montana Born, but to two other newly created imprints, Holiday and then Southern Born. Our growth was really organic. Authors would find us or we’d find them, and it turned out to be a win-win for all of us. What makes Tule work is that we really wanted to be supportive of smart, successful, creative women – we wanted an environment that respected and empowered authors – without ever marginalizing them. That meant we couldn’t take every book, and it meant that we made mistakes as we learned on the job. Admittedly, not every decision, or every story, has had the sales and success we’ve wanted, but Tule’s strength is being small, flexible and focused on the goal of supporting talented authors and keeping the communication open, honest and real.
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