Writers in the Storm

By Liz Talley

Once there was a thirty-something writer who dreamed of contracts, edits, and book launches.

And she made her dream come true.

Oh, it took time. And effort. A little luck. Dogged pursuit. All the things required to keep one’s eyes fixed on the finish line and prepared to cross into victory.

Except, the writer began to realize she never truly crossed a finish line.

Because that elusive chalk mark scratched across the path isn’t the end of the race. It’s merely a mile marker in the long journey of a writing career. Every line crossed means another waits ahead. Some fellow writers drop out—tired, disillusioned, in need of a bench somewhere. Others press on, greeted by cheers and gold medals. And still others remain on the course alongside, picking up one foot, then the other, never knowing when—or if—that finish line will come.

Then there are the ones who get turned around, take a wrong turn, or stumble and scrape their knees. There are more writers with bleeding knees and black toenails than we like to admit.

Yes, a writing career means untied laces, blisters, worn soles, and iffy knees just as often as it means the awards podium. Some finish. Some don’t. And some start over.

Which is where I currently stand, sipping a sports drink and wondering if I’ve lost my mind.

Because after years of writing romance, I wrote a suspense.

It happens.

Sometimes we get a wild hair—an idea that refuses to let go—and suddenly the risk doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

For nearly twenty years, I pursued being a published author. It began with two manuscripts that never saw the light of day, followed by pitches, rejections, resubmissions, and finally, a contract. For many years, I wrote for various Harlequin imprints before making the jump to other publishers. With my agent’s guidance, I gained traction—hitting a bestseller list, earning a RITA Award nod, and landing three Amazon First Reads selections. Running on the right path, I felt confident, even at times, accomplished.

Then the market—already tight—grew infinitesimally narrower.

My agent couldn’t sell my next book. Proposals stalled. Crickets chirped from the publishing world. My work hadn’t changed, but the market had. Traditional publishers were no longer the sole gatekeepers. Indie publishing soared. Readers skewed younger, wanted books hotter, more dragon-y. Publishers chased low-hanging fruit—authors with massive platforms already in place. I was left dabbing my bleeding knees, trying to figure out how to reach the next checkpoint. Did I even want to keep running? That bench off to the side began looking awfully comfortable. What if I just sat down and …stopped?

Then I got an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone.

The problem? It fell completely outside the brand I’d spent a decade building—southern, sassy heroines bumbling their way into success. Marketing experts tell authors to pick a lane and stay in it for projected success. Reader expectations and all that. To leave my lane felt scary. Stupid even.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about this story, about how the heroine would grow, change, kill someone.

So I did something terrifying.

I stopped chasing romance publishing. I parted ways with my agent. And I wrote an entire quirky suspense novel with a darker, decidedly not-sassy protagonist.

A risk.

A pivot.

A Hail Mary to the end zone…wait. I’m mixing metaphors.

No matter. All that to say that now I’m on a different course.

What will this new race bring me?

I honestly don’t know. But being in my fifties and limping along in my career, a pivot felt necessary—I need a fresh course instead of another painful lap around the same one. I know the risks, know the logic against it, but the creative in me needed to be excited, to roll the dice on myself.

So for now, I’m putting one foot in front of the other. Meeting new runners. Working on my breathing. Trusting that I can reach the next mile marker—wherever that may be. It feels good to believe I can take another shot at a dream, even if hazards lie ahead. Because I choose to try. To reinvent. To change my socks and keep going with the hope that the white line lies ahead of me. They say it’s never too late to start over. I believe that.

So on I run, bandaged, determined, and a bit older than before.

But perhaps wiser? And at the very least hopeful that ahead is a new marker, a milestone reached.

Have you ever considered a genre change? Have you done something daring in your writing career? I’d love for you to share a risk that paid off or a lesson that you learned because you took a chance.

About Liz Talley

Liz Talley is the USA Today best-selling author of over thirty heartwarming stories. A finalist in both Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart and Rita Awards, Liz has published with Harlequin, Hallmark, and Montlake where she reached number one in Kindle romance and was named to Publisher’s Weekly mass market bestseller list. Her stories are set in the South where the tea is sweet, the summers are hot, and the porches are wide. In 2023, she also added screenwriter to her accomplishments, co-writing an adaptation of her novel The Wedding War, which landed in the Top 20 of the Louisiana Film Prize.

Featured image by Unsplash

By RJ Redden

We'd just come back from lunch, and honestly? The kids were dragging. My seven-year-old niece was doing that thing where she walks just slow enough to make it clear she's not entirely thrilled about the next activity. My five-year-old nephew was clutching my hand, but more out of obligation than excitement.

We shuffled into the children's museum like we were heading to a dentist appointment.

Then my niece spotted it.

"THE NEWS ROOM!"

The transformation was instant. One second she was dragging her feet, the next she was gone. Rushing toward a mock television studio complete with cameras, desks, and stacks of papers. My nephew dropped my hand and sprinted after her.

No hesitation. No “what do we do here?” moment.

They just knew.

Within seconds, my niece was shuffling papers with the seriousness of a seasoned anchor.

My nephew was making exaggerated reporter faces at the camera. The giggles started almost immediately, but underneath the laughter was something deeper:

Pure, unfiltered engagement.

They weren't learning about journalism. They weren't consuming content about news production. They were being journalists. Playing the role. Living the experience.

And watching their faces transform from sluggish obligation to electric participation, I had a revelation:

This is what we're all chasing as writers.

Not readers who just consume our work and move on. Readers who see our world and think "I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS" and rush in to explore, to play, to participate.

Readers who go from dragging their feet to sprinting toward engagement.

The question is: How do we build newsrooms?

The Problem With Traditional Marketing

Here's what most of us have been taught: Write the book. Post about the book. Send newsletters about the book. Remind everyone, constantly, that the book exists and they should buy it.

It's the spray-and-pray approach. Shout into the void. Hope someone's listening.

And look—I get it. We do it because we don't know what else to do. Because someone told us "visibility" was the game. Because the algorithm demands constant content and we're all just trying to keep up.

But here's what that approach actually creates: readers with their shields up.

You know the feeling. Someone's trying to sell you something, and your whole body goes “nope.” You scroll faster. You delete the email without opening it. You unfollow.

That's not connection. That's noise.

And noise doesn't create fans. Noise creates... crickets.

So what's the alternative?

Stop marketing. Start building playgrounds.

The Journey: From Reader to Ride-or-Die

Not all readers are created equal. And I don't mean that in a snobby way—I mean it in a "there's a transformation that happens" way. A journey. And understanding that journey is the key to building something readers can't resist.

Stage 1: The Reader

They bought your book. Maybe they even finished it. They liked it! Gave it four stars, meant to leave a review but got distracted by laundry.

And then... they moved on. To the next book. The next glowing rectangle demanding their attention.

You're a pleasant memory. A name they might recognize if they saw it again. But you're not taking up any real estate in their brain.

This is where most readers stay. Not because your book wasn't good—but because there was nothing to DO after they finished it. No door to walk through. No newsroom to discover.

Stage 2: The Engaged Reader

These folks follow you on social media. They open your newsletters (sometimes). When your name pops up, there's a little spark of recognition.

But they're still on the outside looking in. They're watching through the window.

Interested, sure. But not invested.

Stage 3: The Participant

HERE'S where the magic happens.

Something shifted. They didn't just read about your world—they stepped into it. Maybe they took your "Which Character Are You?" quiz and got unreasonably excited about their result. Maybe they found the playlist you made for your protagonist and listened to it on repeat while doing dishes. Maybe they chatted with your character through a chatbot at 2 AM when they couldn't sleep.

Whatever it was, they crossed a threshold. They went from audience to participant. From watching the newsroom to shuffling papers behind the desk.

And something changed in their brain. We'll get to the science in a minute, but trust me—this shift is real and it is powerful.

Stage 4: The Superfan

You know these people. You might be one of these people for some author or fictional world.

They have the tattoo. They made the fan art. They've recommended your book to everyone at their book club, their office, their gym, and that poor unsuspecting stranger on the subway who made the mistake of asking what they were reading.

They pre-order everything you write, sight unseen. They cry when you announce a sequel. They have opinions about casting if your book ever becomes a movie, and they will defend those opinions.

They are ride or die.

And here's the secret that might change how you think about everything: Every single level-up in this journey didn't happen because you marketed harder. It happened because you invited them to play.

The Science: Why Play Changes Everything

Okay, let's get a little nerdy. Because this isn't just fuzzy "engagement" talk. There's actual brain science behind why play works when marketing doesn't.

The Defense Drop

Remember that feeling when someone's trying to sell you something? The internal nope? That's your brain's defense system kicking in. We're wired to be suspicious of people who want something from us. It's a survival thing. And traditional marketing triggers that response.

But play? Play sneaks past like it's got an invisibility cloak.

Because play isn't asking for anything. Play is offering something. An experience. A moment of fun. A chance to explore.

When you invite someone to take a quiz or chat with a character or listen to a playlist, you're not selling. You're opening a door. And open doors don't trigger defense systems—they trigger curiosity.

The Dopamine Loop

Your brain loves a good loop. Question leads to interaction leads to reward leads to dopamine hit leads to wanting more

That "Which Character Are You?" quiz? That's not a gimmick. That's a dopamine delivery system.

Curiosity (I wonder who I'll get) → Interaction (answering the questions) → Reward (finding out the result) → Dopamine (the little hit of pleasure) → Sharing (telling everyone you got the villain and you're not even mad about it).

This is why interactive content gets shared more than static content. It's not just fun. It's literally lighting up reward centers in people's brains.

The IKEA Effect

One weird truth about human psychology: we love things more when we helped create them.

It's called the IKEA Effect, and it's why you're irrationally attached to that wonky bookshelf you assembled yourself. You put effort into it. It's yours now.

When readers participate in your world—choose their faction, chat with your villain, build their own playlist of songs for your protagonist—something shifts.

It stops being your world. It becomes theirs

And people don't just casually appreciate things that are theirs. They protect them. They evangelize them. They get tattoos of them.

The Invitation: Building Your Playground

So how do you actually do this? How do you go from "author with a book" to "architect of a world readers can't resist playing in?"

You start where you are. You use what you have. And you build one piece of playground equipment at a time.

Low-Effort Entry Points

You don't need to build Disneyland on day one. Start simple:

A playlist for your book or main character (Spotify is free)

A "Which Character Are You?" quiz (plenty of free quiz builders out there)

Behind-the-scenes content about your world—the stuff that didn't make it into the book but makes the world richer

Remember: those scraps on your editing room floor? That's not trash.

That's playground equipment waiting to be assembled.

Once you've got the basics, level up:

- Character chatbots—imagine your readers having actual conversations with your protagonist (or your villain, which is honestly more fun)

- Interactive maps of your world

- "Bonus chapters" from different characters' perspectives

- Email sequences that feel like letters from a character

For when you're ready to go all-in:

• Augmented reality experiences
• Alternate reality games that blur the line between fiction and reality
• Full-blown community spaces where readers can interact with each other and your world

The point isn't to do all of these. The point is to start thinking differently.

Stop thinking like a marketer standing outside the fence shouting at people to come look at your thing

Start thinking like a playground designer building something people can't resist climbing on.

The Newsroom Is Waiting

Back at the children's museum, I watched my niece and nephew play journalists for a solid forty-five minutes. They made up stories. They interviewed each other. They took turns being "the camera person" with exaggerated seriousness.

Nobody told them what to do. Nobody gave them a tutorial. The environment was designed so well that they just... stepped in and started playing.

That's what your readers are waiting for.

Not another newsletter asking them to buy something. Not another social post reminding them you exist. But a newsroom. A space designed so invitingly that they take one look and think:

I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS.

And then they sprint toward it. Your world is already built. Your characters already exist. The raw materials are sitting right there on your editing room floor, gathering dust. The only question left is: are you going to keep shouting from outside the fence?

Or are you going to open the gate and let them play?

About RJ

RJ Redden is your digital fairy godmother for audience engagement. Her wand wields AI, chatbots, and augmented reality to create experiences so engaging, your readers will forget Netflix exists. Find her at https://blackbeltbots.com. This article was edited with AI assistance, because this fairy godmother believes in using every tool in the workshop—ethically and transparently.

Top image from Pixabay

By Janice Hardy

A choice I had to live with—despite the consequences.

My husband and I were kitten shopping and we came across a four-month-old gray kitten who was eager to get our attention. He meowed at us as he clung to the side of the kitten-cage, his little paw poking out like he was trying to flag us down. My husband picked him up and he immediately snuggled in and purred.

Then I got to hold him.

He was just as sweet with me, but my nose started running and my eyes got a little itchy. I figured it was just from the sheer number of kitties at the shelter and didn’t think anything of it. I’ve always known I had a mild allergy to cats, but it never bothered me enough not to have them.

Three days later, it was clear I was highly allergic to this cat.

But by then, he wasn’t “some random kitten from the shelter,” he was Sterling, our lovable boo boo kitty, and he was ours.

I had to choose—send him back, or keep him and spend the next 15-20 years taking allergy meds every day.

I chose to keep him, which led to an unexpected problem.

Tough choices are the first step to creating conflict.

Choices force a character to act, which moves the plot and story forward. Tough choices create unpredictable outcomes, because readers aren’t sure which option the protagonist might take. This uncertainty leads to curiosity, and readers want to know:

• Did the character choose wisely?
• What price will that choice demand?
• Will the consequences be worse than they feared?
• Will the price be worth it in the end?

Without a difficult decision at the heart of a scene, events just “happen” without conflict, and tension doesn’t build. Nothing important is truly at risk. Readers don’t care about the outcome unless that outcome matters.

However…a choice only matters if it’s a legitimate choice, not a cardboard conflict.

For example:

• Take the job and get the one million dollar signing bonus.
• Don’t take the job and lose your house, family, and everything you value.

Nobody is going to turn down a job with those consequences, and a decision this easy isn’t going to make readers worry about the choice. But if taking the job comes with consequences, and if losing everything is actually the better option, then readers will be dying to know why.

Look for meaningful choices the character can agonize over—like returning a kitten they already love versus accepting years of runny noses, watery eyes, and not being able to breathe.

Characters facing real consequences for their choices is step two.

A choice by itself isn’t automatically interesting—it’s what that choice costs the protagonist or those close to them. The consequences turn a simple plot-beat decision into a conflict that can have long-lasting ramifications for the story.

Consequences create stakes and uncertainty, and that engages readers and makes them devour your pages as fast as they can turn them. And a great way to do this is…

The impossible choice.

This is a sure-fire way to hook your reader. None of the options are good, and every single one comes with repercussions the protagonist would rather not face. Readers can’t see the clear path out, and they’re not sure how the repercussions will affect the characters, which draws them deeper into the story and makes them more invested in how that story turns out.

Impossible choices are great for shaking up the story, adding conflict to a character arc, and forcing characters into situations they don’t want to be in.

Are your character choices strong enough?

It all depends on the story and how dire things are. A light-hearted romp with lower stakes probably won’t have life-or-death stakes, and the choices will reflect that. But a thriller will likely have a lot more impossible choices and dire stakes for the protagonist to deal with.

Consider your genre and story and ask:

Does this choice have consequences for whatever the character decides?

No matter how dire your story, if only one option carries a cost, odds are it’s not strong enough. A real dilemma means both paths lead to consequences that will cause trouble for the protagonist somehow.

In your novel, ask:

• What’s the consequence if the protagonist chooses A?
• What’s the consequence if the protagonist chooses B?
• How personal are these consequences?

The more personal the consequences, the better the choice. “Everyone dies” might feel like high stakes, but readers don’t typically care about faceless masses. They care about the characters they’ve been reading about and rooting for. 

Do those consequences affect the character and the story?

Consequences that don’t change anything wind up feeling pointless and even melodramatic, because the story unfolds the same even if they didn’t happen. Good choices change the plot and affect how the story unfolds.

A choice might:

• Complicate the character’s goal
• Make future problems harder
• Remove options that would make things easier
• Expose a flaw or fear the character would rather avoid

The more a consequence affects the character and story going forward, the more weight that choice carries.

How would the story change if the protagonist chose the other option?

Knowing things would change is good, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to brainstorm how each choice could affect the story. You might uncover more interesting paths and problems you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Look at the other option and ask:

• What does it do to the plot?
• How does it affect the tone, mood, or pacing?
• How does it affect the character’s growth?
• What other characters might be affected or involved?
• Does it connect to a subplot or tie thematic elements together?

Sometimes we get so focused on what we know happens, we miss opportunities to make our stories even stronger. Some of my best scenes came from characters making choices I hadn’t expected them to make.

Pick whichever choice best serves your story.

Not the nicest choice. Not the safest choice. The choice that creates the most tension, growth, and delicious fallout. That’s the choice readers will remember.

For those wondering what happened with Sterling and my allergies…

After taking antihistamines for a few weeks, I found out they gave me heart palpitations, and I had to stop taking them. Which sent me to the allergist for tests. Turned out I’d always been highly allergic to cats, but I was also highly allergic to a slew of other things and never realized it. I’d thought a full-time runny nose was normal. I’m on non-histamine allergy meds and get regular allergy shots now, and life is a whole lot better.

And Sterling is still our snuggly boo boo kitty.

What are the tough choices in your current book? What’s a tough choice you
personally had to make?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. and the chapter books Who's Haunting Who? and The Haunting of Cabin 13 for Lerner Publishing. For adults, she writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

Website | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Indie Bound

Featured image by Pixabay

---