“For all the suffering and the anguish – this business is definitely NOT for the faint of heart – writing is who I am.”
Novelist Terry Lynn Thomas reveals how sticking with it despite the rejections landed her on the USA Today Bestseller list.
I fell in love with books and reading at a very early age, so naturally this love slowly grew into the desire to be a writer. The writer’s life, staying home in isolation penning stories, book signings surrounded by readers, and finally the movie deal… What would I wear to the Oscars? Feeling in my heart that I was destined to be a writer, I cut my hours at the day job and started writing in earnest. I had stars in my eyes when I set out to write my first book, a middle-grade ghost story with the gothic undertones that I love to this day. Writing that book was hard, but when it was finished, I was proud of myself having completed it. Working with an experienced published author, we polished that book until it shone. A year and a half later, I got an agent, but no publishing deal. So I tucked away all my how-to books, put my dreams on the backburner, and once again started to work full-time and do all the responsible things adults in modern society are supposed to do. Maybe I’d get back to writing in my retirement years.
Fast forward fifteen years. I had been collecting gothic mysteries and had grown very fond of that particular writing style, even though it had fallen out of fashion long ago. Remember those Ace Gothics with the cover of the woman in her nightgown running away from the castle? That’s what I’m talking about. I adored those books. Scoured the used bookshops for them and read them voraciously. I asked myself how I could write books that somehow paid homage to these wonderful mid-twentieth century authors and give them a modern twist. I pushed this idea further and decided I would write a gothic heroine who saved herself! This idea gave birth to the Sarah Bennett Mysteries.
I wrote the first book, The Spirit of Grace, and once again, after forty-eight queries, got an agent. Nothing happened. And this time, I almost quit for good. What a relief it would be to just shake off this desire to have a book out in the world, this desire to get up at 4:00 a.m. and write before I headed off to the day job. I had suffered enough rejection. I wanted to quit. But I couldn’t. Writing wouldn’t let me go. Because for all the suffering and the anguish – this business is definitely NOT for the faint of heart – writing is who I am. So I plodded forward, not quite sure what I was doing. Just as I was considering self-pubbing, I got a three book deal for The Spirit of Grace and the next two Sarah Bennett books. That was in 2014. Since that time, I’ve written seven books. By some fortuitous stroke of luck and timing, The Silent Woman, the first book in my Cat Carlisle Series, hit the USA Today best-seller list.
Today I’m a full-time writer. I have absolutely no job security, no steady paycheck, no pension, and no health insurance. My career is only as certain as my next book, which may well flop. But I’m lucky because my job doesn’t feel like work, and – at least for today – I’m really glad I didn’t quit!
Terry Lynn Thomas grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, which explains her love of foggy beaches and Gothic mysteries. Terry Lynn writes the Sarah Bennett Mysteries, set on the California coast during the 1940s, which feature a misunderstood medium in love with a spy. The Drowned Woman is a recipient of the IndieBRAG Medallion. She also writes the Cat Carlisle Mysteries, set in Britain during World War II. The first book in this series, The Silent Woman, came out in April 2018 and has since become a USA TODAY bestseller. The Family Secret in March 2019. The House of Lies released in to critical acclaim in March of 2020. When she’s not writing, you can find Terry Lynn walking in the woods with her dogs or visiting old cemeteries in search of story ideas.
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How to become Unstoppable: author Terry Lynn Thomas