Featured Author: Carol Davis Luce

My friend Carol Davis Luce is one of the first authors I got to know when I published in 2011. She's been writing for decades, and her talent shines through in her wonderful body of work. A perfect example of that is her novel, Night Cries, about a thirty-year-old woman named Maddie who has no memory of her adoption, and is haunted by her haunting past. With a 4.9 star rating, this is a perfect example of Carol's impressive talents. 

Carol has a lot of great insight into the writing industry, and she was gracious enough to share her thoughts on the writing biz below with all of you:

If the path of my writing career were a chart, it would resemble a picket fence. Extreme up and downs over a thirty year period. I wasn’t born to write, but when I did take it up later in life, I jumped in with both feet and wrestled the beast to the ground. After the success of five traditionally published novels, my career suddenly stalled. However, I didn’t give up. Just changed direction by becoming a novel writing instructor for the next generation of aspiring authors.      

Fast-forward fifteen years. My good buddy, bestselling author J. Carson Black, encouraged me to join the twenty-first century. I converted those five novels into digital format where they found a whole new audience of modern day e-readers.

The good times didn’t stop there. Last year, with the help of a group of smart and exceptionally talented writers (waving at Cheryl Bradshaw), I became a New York Times bestselling author. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Success Begins Where Others Quit. That was my motto through the years. Take your knocks and move on. Develop a thick skin. Take comfort in those good days of writing where everything falls into place. Associate with people who lift you up. The first check I received for my writing was $10 for 3^rd Place in a magazine writing contest. It wasn’t much, but it validated me as a writer and was a portent of good things to come.

Featured Author: Allan Leverone

Allan Leverone is a good friend and a talented thriller/horror author. His horror novel, Mr. Midnight, was named one of the best books of 2013 by Suspense Magazine.

Allan has been penning thrillers since he was a boy, and publishing novels for the last several years. His newest, The Omega Connection, has received praise from some of the best authors in the business.

I asked Allan what advice he would give to new authors, and this is what he had to say: 

When I was starting out, people who seemed to have a handle on these things told me, “Write what you know.”

Can I be honest? That advice never made sense to me. Most of what I know is mundane and boring, day-to-day stuff like paying bills and going to work. Grilling burgers and washing the car. Who the hell wants to read about that stuff?

Although, in fairness, I do grill a mean burger.

But I wanted to write about spies and assassins, about ordinary people doing extraordinary things under difficult circumstances.

So that’s what I did. I’ve never been a spy or an assassin (as far as you know), and I’ve rarely been forced to do anything extraordinary. But who cares? Research and imagination can take you a long way if you let it.

So that’s my advice: don’t write what you know, write what you love.

My other advice is to read what Jeffery Deaver, JohnLescroart and all the other amazing writers Cheryl has gathered above and below have to say, and do that, too.