Author: L.A. Chandlar

Writing can be a lonely job. So we often need that extra little help with things like editing, computer dusting, and of course marketing. When we need to read our drafts out loud? Our cats, dogs and hamsters are our best audiences.

This is a toughy for most authors. Being an author is about building a business. And it is in this realm, too. Yes, publishers -some of them- have publicists that work with you. But often they have too many authors whom they also work with and you might actually be the best one to decide on marketing ideas.

I was a Debut author last year and I’ve had a long road of publishing already. I am not an overnight star. But I’ve worked in the music and fine art industries long enough to know that the overnight successes are not often the ones who make it past one-hit-wonders. I dig that. We are all building MUSCLE as we climb this publishing mountain and I am so fine with hard work. I love to learn and I’ve started my own list of things I’ve learned and things I wish I’d known earlier. So I posed this little question to my MissDemeanors so we could all glean some intriguing tidbits of wisdom as we are writing, as we are slugging it out, as we are conquering our own self-doubt and mountains that mark our own personal success. Here you go.

One of the most moving things I learned about the 1930s, was the way art was able to overcome divides of all kinds. Just like today. Just like always. But the 1930s was absolutely incendiary with civil rights brewing, the Depression, Prohibition, the strange in-between times between the two world wars, just a scant twenty years.