Celebrating 1000 Blog Chats with Authors and Readers!

In 2008, I signed up for my first writers critique group. This was a wonderful group for children's writers led by Nancy I. Sanders – who at that time had probably published 30 to 40 books (now has 95 titles). As part of that group, I had the task of following publishing and marketing news for monthly reports to my group. This is also when I created a website to post blog interviews.

While still being a part of that group and a member of SCBWI, I joined a romance writers group and started my first romance novel. I also become a member of RWA. For this group, I had the duty of preparing monthly interviews with the members of the group focusing on their writing achievements. We had an ever growing group, so I never had to duplicate interviews with anyone. 

While I was a member of both of these groups, I continued to write stories in their genres and submit them to agents and publishers. At the point I decided to indie-publish my own books, my articles and stories had already been published in 40+ magazines and book anthologies - including Chicken Soup for the Soul.  To Date, I have personally published 10 books that include ones for childen, adults, and devotional guides. 

Before, I started marketing my own books, I had a lot more time to create multiple blog posts every week talking about market trends along with my author interviews. Now I mostly use that time for author interviews only with my writing updates. I still do those at least once weekly and sometimes more for promoting for special events. 

I truly enjoying doing my blog interview and getting to know the chart-topping authors and those just breaking into the field of writing. One of my favorite interviews was with Clyde Edgerton, who wrote Walking Across Egypt.  I have recommended that book to many friends. So I decided to track him down for an interview to thank him for writing such a funny and endearing book. I discovered that he was still a professor in college.

By this time, he had published a few more books and even had 4 of his books made into movies - including the one that I loved. I enjoyed the movie, but love more of the details and nuances that you find in a book that a movie can't add. I asked him about getting paid for the movies (No, I didn't ask how much did he make.) and if that allowed him to just write full-time. He informed me that he was still teaching writing at college full-time, but the movie money helped to pay for the college tuition for his kids. 

Another interview that has stuck with me was one with Colleen Coble, who is the author of 85+ books and has sold more than 2 million books in print and lots more in eBooks. These books have won numerous notable awards and she is the CEO of American Christian Fiction Writers. In that interview, she told me it took her 7 years to write and edit her first book. However, that hard work paid off and Thomas Nelson publishers bought her book!

When I asked her which of the awards she has received meant the most to her. I was surprised that the answer was not the most prestigeous with national acclaim. Instead it was winning the Best Books of Indiana award for one of her books. She recounted how she smiled from ear to ear when she had the privelege of putting a copy of that book in the Indiana State Library.  When she first started writing she hoped that one day her book would be in her local library so this was achieving her dream.

One of my most inspiring interview was with Britt Menzies. Her unique business career began by creating two small paintings of her children, which led to friends asking her to do paintings of their children as well. From there she launched a group of six paintings that all had unique personalities. When she took them to a local children’s store, the manager wanted to know if Britt would be willing to sell the rights to her art for a line of T-shirts. Instead of selling her idea to someone else, she decided to grow the business as a brand. This went on to include t-shirts, plush dolls and a children’s book series and there’s even been a musical based on these characters.

I'm currently in the process of putting together a book highlighting my favorite notes from those 1,000 interviews I've done. I look forward to doing many more.  One of the questions I always ask in my interviews is what is their favorite writing advice. I've learned a lot of good ideas from their responses, but one of the most consistent replies I've received is the importance of treating it like a business if you want a career out of it.  You have to work at it and keep on polishing the book until it's the best it can be. Don't try to publish until the book is truly ready. If it isn't, publishers won't want to buy it and neither will readers.

If you're a regular reader of my posts, you know I like to end with an eBook giveaway. So I'm continuing that tradition with this post as well. Here's an assortment of free eBooks for one week from a group of authors. Check it out and get a new read...  https://books.bookfunnel.com/Books-from-the-heart-you-cannot-put-down