Stuff Happens

Did you listen to the recent podcast with Shannon Baker, who recently received a plaque from her publisher for reaching 100,000 books sold?

On the podcast, Shannon told a great story about sticking with it. “I think I would say ‘be the tortoise’ … just keep at it. I mean, when I started writing, (with) little kids and everything, it was a struggle. And I didn’t write a lot … but I wrote almost daily and you know, maybe it was 1000 words and it was 500.”

At time, said Shannon, she thought “I’m never going to get there .. but I kept going and I think that’s it. You just keep going. It’s the people that stay in a long time, who pay their dues, who make it.”

And Shannon emphasized something we hear all the time—practice pays off.

“You can’t not grow as a writer—if you’re paying attention,” she said. “If you think you know it all—and you know you’re as good as you’re ever going to get—then you won’t get any better.”

Shannon relayed a story, too, about her writer friend Jess Lourey. Jess, whose recent novels of suspense have been huge best-sellers, recently sold her entire Murder by Month series to Thomas & Mercer. But in the process, she went back and re-edited the first six books because of how much her style had changed over the years as she wrote book after book.

Lourey (The Taken Ones, Bloodline and many more) was recently notified by her publisher that she had reached 1 million books sold.

And then there’s the great story from Kevin Wolf on another Rocky Mountain Writer podcast.

The story involved a western he’d written—a traditional western that drew some initial interest from a publisher eight years ago. But one day after receiving a nibble for that book, Kevin immediately found out he won the Tony Hillerman Prize for his more modern murder mystery The Homeplace. Suddenly, he had a deal with Minotaur Books and Kevin’s agent sold two “weird” westerns to another publisher. The traditional western languished in a drawer.

“I always liked the story and kind of forgot about it,” said Kevin.

One publishing company closed. An editor moved to a new house, where there was interest in publishing some large-print, traditional westerns. Kevin’s agent and the editor happen to “cross paths” and the old book was mentioned and the editor realized the book she had long ago liked was still available and the next think you know Kevin has a deal for The Bootheel.

“So that’s round about story, about how it came to be,” said Kevin. “I hope that for people who are listening … don’t give up. Hang in there. Yeah and stuff happens.”

Yes, it’s true.

Stuff happens.

Keep writing. 

Mark Stevens