Beat the Odds by Following Your Heart's Desire

 By Lisa Malice, Ph.D.

The odds are stacked against any one person becoming a traditionally published author. A 2017 Writer’s Digest survey found that a staggering 81% of Americans believe they have a story inside them just waiting to be written, but a mere 3% will finish their manuscripts. Of those aspiring authors who get that far, only 1-2% will be traditionally published. With so many wannabe writers out there, we “against-all-odds” authors shouldn’t be surprised that readers (the above-mentioned 81%?) ask how we got started. Here’s my story.

Like many of you, I suspect (because that's what we crime writers do—we suspect everyone), I grew up reading mysteries I pulled off my mother's vast shelves of books. She read the masters of British Mystery--Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, and others. I got hooked on radio (CBS Radio Mystery Theater) and TV mysteries (The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, Murder She Wrote).

As a teen reader. I fell under Sherlock Holmes's spell, fascinated by his keen abilities of observation and deduction to identify a murderer, his or her motive, and weapon of choice. After college, I devoured every book written by a female American mystery writer, such as Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Lisa Scottoline, Diane Mott Davidson, and more.

It wasn’t until my kids were teenagers that I got the bug to write myself, after reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to my family during a road trip (no one else could read without getting carsick). I’d spent the last ten years working in K-12 education developing enrichment programs, so I set about to write the next great Young Adult (YA) series, one that would educate, as well as entertain. But as my kids’ interest in YA books waned, so did mine, along with my desire to tell those stories. I still wanted to write. I just needed to follow my passion—crime.

Knowing little about fiction-writing, I took online community college classes to learn the ins and out, the dos and don'ts needed to write like a pro. I joined Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. I attended my first writers' conference, Killer Nashville, in August of 2013 and sat in on three days of author panels and break-out sessions on write-craft. I met people who would soon become my friends and mentors. I was energized and hooked. Ready to write my first crime novel. But what kind? What story should I tell?

​At first, I thought I'd write a traditional mystery—I loved following clues, figuring out whodunit along with my favorite sleuth. But one day, while I was huffing and puffing on the elliptical machine at my gym, the TV show I was watching broke to a commercial for an identify-theft protection service—and my mind ran away with "what if." What if a woman woke up from a coma only to find her husband with another wife, someone who claimed to be you, using your name . . . I thought through a string of other “what-ifs” to figure out why and how and where a story like this could happen, then started putting words down on paper (actually, a computer file). What surprised me as I wrote—I wasn’t writing wasn't a traditional mystery, but more of a mix of mystery, thriller, and psychological suspense. (Being a psychologist, I guess the latter shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but it was.)

The rest of my story is not much different from any other success story. It took loads of time, money, and perseverance to hone my craft, polish my story, and meet the right people who could help me take my story, Lest She Forget, all the way to the bookstore. But the thing that really made it all possible was the passion I felt in my heart in putting my story on paper and the joy I experienced finally sharing it with the world.

As I strive to finish my next thriller, with all the ups and downs, stops and starts that come with any creative process, are the odds still with me? I believe so. Because it's my heart's desire to do so!

Odds are, you have your own success story to share. Authors, what made you start down this challenging path towards writing and publishing crime fiction? For everyone else, share your own the-odds-are-against-me story.