Over a writing career spanning more than 30 mysteries and thrillers, Michele Scott has seen both the highs and lows of publishing.
She enjoyed “instant success” with her first thriller, Daddy’s Home, after weathering years of rejection letters, and she’s now riding high again with her Wine Lover’s Mystery series, book nine, A Killer Margarita, recently published, set for a future on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and in today’s Binge Reading episode Michele talks about staying true to your life purpose when ‘stuff’ gets in the way, and how she balances her creative process between writing serial killers one minute and cozy mysteries with lots of food, wine and humor, the next.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
Her unexpected "best seller"Why she uses two different pen namesOptioned for TV - Wine LoversBattered by life and dealing with 'stuff'Alice Hoffman a writer she admires The Holly Jennings San Diego DI series
Where to find Michele (and her pen name AK Alexander) :
Website: https://michelescott.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akalexanderauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/michelescott1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelescottauthor/
What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Jenny: But now, here’s Michele. . Hello there Michele and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.
Michele Scott: Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here with you.
Introducing Michele Scott, author
Jenny Wheeler: You are a multi-published New York Times bestselling author, your books have made the lists numerous times, and listeners and readers always want to know the answer to the very obvious question: how did you get started, and did you enjoy “instant success”?
Michele Scott - and AK Alexander - cozy mystery and thriller author
Michele Scott: I'll answer the latter part first. No, I did not enjoy instant success although I've been introduced that way, as an overnight success, which I always find funny. I'll backtrack a little bit, but I always wanted to be a writer, I knew when I was a little girl. I wanted to be a writer from the time I was probably eight, nine years old.
I used to write short stories on my dad's legal pad, the little yellow note pads, and one day he read one of them and he looked at me and said, you're a writer, and it stuck with me. I always had his support. He's since passed.
Life took an unexpected turn
So I always knew. Then I went to university and my mom was far more pragmatic and said, it's very difficult to make a living as a fiction author. I don't know how that's going to go, I think maybe you should look at something else. So I majored in journalism and I thought I would go into broadcast journalism.
Then life would take an interesting turn. I became pregnant in my senior year of college and I had a baby, my son who is now almost 30 but he was very premmie and I stayed home at the time and started taking care of my baby. I did an online correspondence course through Writer's Digest and I wrote my first novel. I knew after writing that first novel that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I was 22 years old and I think I probably wrote eight to ten manuscripts – or half-written manuscripts, a lot of them. It took me 12 years before a literary agent picked me up and when she did pick me up, it went very quickly thereafter. I had a publishing deal within six weeks, and they bought three books, and six months later they bought another three books, and it went from there. So definitely not an overnight success.
A long writing apprenticeship
Jenny Wheeler: No. During that 12 years, did you keep on writing?
Michele Scott: Oh, yes, I didn't stop writing. In fact, I would get these rejection letters and some days I would get very discouraged,
