If you’re a member of the human race, chances are you have hopes and dreams. Still, I can always count on my friend Lois Winston to share a pragmatic viewpoint. One of my favorite quotes is, “Don’t hope more than you’re willing to work.” In Lois’s opinion, however, hard work comes with a caveat. I have to say after reading her article, I see her point. Please welcome USA Today Bestselling Author Lois Winston as she explains. ~ Donnell
Author Lois Winston
Many authors mention in their bios that they always wanted to be a writer. Not me. I wanted to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, I have a right brain that quakes at the sight of anything requiring math skills, not to mention a body prone to motion sickness. Had I tried to pursue my dream, NASA would still be rolling on the floor laughing their you-know-whats off.
I got the urge to write well into my adulthood. While on a business trip, I was attacked by a rabid dream. That dream eventually became Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, the first book I ever wrote and the second to sell fifteen years ago. Since today is Earth Day, and I’m a huge proponent of “reuse, repurpose, recycle,” I thought I’d take this opportunity to repurpose the story of how I came to be published by sharing it here.
Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception is a story about secrets and revenge and the steps some people will go to in order to protect the former and achieve the latter. I’ve always been fascinated by both secrets and revenge. Who among us doesn’t have secrets? Who among us hasn’t harbored revenge fantasies? Is it possible to get through junior high school without a hefty dose of both? I doubt it.
Years ago, I knew a woman who went to great lengths to project the ideal marriage. She constantly bragged about how much her husband loved her and what a perfect marriage they had. Then I learned the secrets behind the lies. She was carrying on an affair, which her husband discovered by tapping his own phone. Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Marriage were anything but. It got me thinking about public persona versus private reality.
I’m also fascinated by the way the “common” folk act around celebrities. In Six Degrees of Separation the playwright John Guare called it “star f***ing,” that annoying, name-dropping habit of those who need to brag about their connection to someone famous, no matter how tenuous the link: They once shared a plane with George Clooney, or they went to the same high school as Brad Pitt, or they played tennis with Pierce Brosnan’s third cousin’s wife’s uncle’s accountant. Of course, they fail to mention that George was sitting in First Class while they were stuck in Coach or Brad graduated a decade after they’d attended the school. And let’s just forget about Pierce and the accountant. That’s really taking six degrees of separation way too far. However, for many people being able to show some relationship between themselves and a celebrity makes them more important, if only in their own eyes.
So there I was on this business trip, and I guess I was subconsciously thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Marriage and Six Degrees of Separation, having recently seen the movie version, when I had this dream. Normally, I don’t remember my dreams, but I remembered this one. Even weirder, each night for the next couple of weeks I dreamed another “chapter” of that dream. Eventually, I was dreaming up chapters during the day as well as at night. Finally, I decided to commit the dream to paper. Fast forward a few weeks and I’m the proud author of a 50,000-word romance spanning thirty-five years.
Talk about clueless!
Of course, I didn’t know I was clueless. I thought I’d written The Great American Novel. However, when I pushed my baby out of the nest into the world of publishing, she flew right back with her beak stuffed full of rejection letters. I’m certain some agents are still rolling on the floor laughing their you-know-whats off.
But there’s a huge difference between overcoming the obstacles that prevented me from achieving my childhood desire to fly into space and the obstacles preventing me from selling my book. For me, it was far easier to learn how to write a book than to master trigonometry and calculus or conquer severe motion sickness.
Being stubborn, I wasn’t about to be deterred. I handed over my VISA card to a friendly salesperson at Barnes & Noble and walked out with an armload of how-to-write-a-novel books. I joined various writing organizations and attended workshops and conferences. I networked with other authors and took part in critiquing groups. I learned about point of view, narrative action, dialogue, plot arcs, layering subplots, and the importance of character goals, motivation, and conflict.
As I learned, I wrote other manuscripts, eventually signed with an agent, and sold my first book, Talk Gertie to Me, in 2005. I never forgot about that first clueless effort, though. I liked the characters, even if the story needed major surgery. I went back and revamped the book into a 90,000-word romantic suspense that spans a few months. Little of the original manuscript survived, but my efforts led to a sale.
Motivational speakers will tell you if you really want something and work hard at it, you’ll achieve your dreams. I don’t believe that. Nothing I could do would ever make me an astronaut, but some dreams are attainable with hard work. I no longer write romance and romantic suspense. During my writing journey, my agent saw a talent in me I didn’t realize I possessed. At her urging, I tried writing a humorous cozy mystery. And the rest is history.
About the Book: With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the New Jersey chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.
The sweet little old ladies Anastasia is expecting to meet are definitely old, and some of them are little, but all are anything but sweet. She’s stepped into a vipers’ den that starts with bribery and ends with murder. When an ice storm forces Anastasia and Cloris to spend the night at the Chateau, Anastasia discovers evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and a bevy of suspects.
Can she piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Craft projects included.
An Anastasia Pollack Craft Mystery, Book 10
About the Author: USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” Stitch, Bake, Die! is her latest book and the tenth in the series.
Thanks for inviting me today, Donnell!
My pleasure, Lois. I’m sorry you didn’t get to be an astronaut. Something tells me it turned out for the best!
Great blog!