“You should love what you do, because even if you love it, there are still days that feel a little mundane.”
Kelley McDonnell is a content manager at Visit Myrtle Beach. She channels her passion for storytelling into promoting her hometown’s creative spirit.
Interview
Transcript
Emma Plutnicki 00:02
So to start, what do you do for work, and where are you currently working from?
Speaker 1 00:09
I live in South Carolina. I’m in York, up in the northwestern area, not far from Charlotte. I started work in the creative field. Anyway. As an author, my first published book was in 2005, and I’ve been publishing it ever since. I mostly write paranormal and contemporary romance, but I do have a horror persona as well, who writes horror books, light horror. And in 2023 I started my own small press publishing company called Rowan pros publishing, also based out of York. And right now, we’ve got a little over 5050 authors, amazing.
Emma Plutnicki 00:57
And so how long have you been doing each author you said since 2005 and publishing since 2023
Speaker 1 01:05
correct? So, I want to say 2005 was my first published book. That sounds about right. But really, in essence, I’ve been writing since kindergarten. I always wanted to be an author, but I didn’t always know that’s what it was. You know, I get these ideas in my head, like I want to be the president, or I want to be a US gymnast or whatever, and I realized it was more the story I was interested in, then, you know, the actual job title. So always had a creative mind. You know, other people sit and watch movies or do things, and 10 ideas for a new book pops up in my head, though my first published book was 2005 and then I can’t tell you how many titles I went to, like 2530 titles I have right now, and I’ve been traditionally published with Berkeley Penguin, larger publishers and tangle Kensington, and then I’m all I’m what they call a hybrid author. So, I also independently published my own work. I have foreign translation rights in seven different countries, and I learned a lot about marketing and, you know, design and other things on my own. And so, then it was that that kind of persuaded me to start roam publishing, because I would get a lot of authors who would ask for advice. And when the indie boom happened way back in, you know, you know, the early to mid, 2000s you know, it created a lot of havoc within the publishing world. But on the flip side of that, authors are now able to publish their own stuff. They don’t have to wait for a publisher. So, we’re getting a whole different side of publishing and writing and things like that that never would have seen before. But with that comes the marketing aspect. Do you have to get your eyes on the book or is nobody going to read it? Yeah, nobody’s going to know about it. And that makes things really difficult, especially if you don’t know your way around. And so, you know, with all my experience and editing, marketing, design, you know, stuff like that. I thought about starting conferences and other things like that to help writers, but I think what they really needed more than anything was an alternative to what large publishing houses are doing. So, you know, you got the Big Five who are publishing what they want to publish, what, what sounds good, what, what’s trending. But a lot of them are not taking the word I’m looking for. They’re not taking a chance on the smaller authors who are the debut authors who are just starting out. They’re not wanting to put and this is kind of insulting to them, so I don’t really necessarily mean it that way, but they don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into helping an author build a career or working really hard on, you know, developing a book to the best of its ability. You know, yes, there’s an editing process and everything else. But you know, if a story is good and has great bones, but it doesn’t have, if it has pacing issues or other things like that, you know, they don’t necessarily want to jump on that. They want to, you know, get their editors to work, put some covers on it, and let their marketing team go from there. But, you know, unless, unless you’re a big name, a lot of publishers, even with agents, aren’t accepting new and debut authors. And I just, I had a lot of people coming to me saying, you know, you know, for edit projects or for me to design one of their covers, but then they have no idea how to upload, you know, how to market. From there, one. It is uploaded for sale. So, I got into conversations with an author, and I’ve been friends with him for a very long time, and, you know, we were discussing, how can, how can we do this? And it was, it was a big undertaking, a huge undertaking, but we’re showcasing a lot of authors that you would not see on shelves elsewhere. You know, you would never have heard about great, amazing, wonderful stories that bigger publishers don’t just want to take a chance on. And because we were by authors for authors, we wanted to make sure we were not only showcasing new talent but using new and innovative marketing techniques that some other publishers don’t, don’t do either. You know, we give our authors a lot more freedom than some other publishers would, and, you know, things like that. So, it was a big undertaking, but I’m really glad we did it. We have some really, really amazing talent, amazing
Emma Plutnicki 06:03
and is the is the talent that you work with? Are a lot of them from South Carolina? Or is there any influence of South Carolina within your work, whether that be the clientele or any influence that the state has on your writing?
Speaker 1 06:19
In my own personal writing. Yes, I have, in my, fact, I’m writing out of southern romcom series right now that’s been contracted with Germany for foreign translation, as for Rome prose. Yes, and no, we’ve, we’ve had some really great output from independent, uh, bookstores and libraries. Um, to date, we, I don’t think we have a South Carolina author right now. We have a few that are close by, but none that are in South Carolina, the state of South Carolina, not necessarily, because when you think about it, publishing is mostly a virtual entity. I’m based in South Carolina, and thus the LLC and the company is but as for everything else, you know, we’ve gotten some great community support, and, you know, like I said, the independent booksellers. But as for the state of South Carolina, not so much. What I would love to see is more, um, more of the colleges and whatnot, like what you guys are doing, showcasing how to properly, you know, do this. And just, you know, I mean, there are so many young adults who were me once, who are like, you know, I want to do this. I want to do but they don’t know the right way. And then he wastes, you know, 1520, years of your life wondering, how do I do this? And it can be very dejecting, and, you know, demoralizing. And it’s, it’s, I wouldn’t want that for anybody. That’s another reason why one, one of our authors, in fact, she’s based out of Louisiana, is only 20. She’s in college right now. Wrote her first book while she was, I think, at home on like, Christmas break or during COVID or something, and sent it, sent it to me, and we were like, Ooh, it’s a really good fantasy So, yeah,
Emma Plutnicki 08:02
amazing. And within a creative career, I mean, it can be very difficult to figure out what your niche is and also how to find success. So how would you define professional success? Is it the number of books you sell, or is it kind of just something within you, of like bringing your words to the page. What? What does success look like for you, both personally and professionally?
Speaker 1 08:27
I think, to be honest with you, success is all dependent on what every single individual’s definition is. You know, some people, I have several of my authors who are like, I would just love to see my book in a library, and they will be happy for the rest of their life. You know, some, some, you know, want New York Times and USA Today. Some want to be Stephen King or Nora Roberts and be a household name. You know, for each individual person. You know, you have to define what that goal is for you, because it’s going to be different for everybody, for me, you know, of course, you know, I wanted a good reader, following a dedicated reader, following who were interested in, you know, they liked one of my books, so then they want to read all of them they wanted. I loved the foreign translation contract, because to be honest with you, I wouldn’t have had that kind of market anywhere else. Market anywhere else. It’s a little weird because my foreign translation contract started in Germany and just happened to be read by some editor while she was on a train to a book event, and then contacted my publisher, and that’s how it started. And I’m actually a household name over in Germany now, and it just it blows my mind. And when I was starting early in my career, that never would have been something I would have thought of. I would have thought I wanted to be on every bookstore shelf. I want, you know, I want to be in libraries. I want to read the New York Times. But success to me. Personally, has always been those readers who, you know, send an email like you made me ugly cry, or I laughed out loud, or, you know this, this really touched me. A lot of my personal books have social or economic or physical disabilities. You know, a hero who’s deaf or another who has social anxiety, you know, things like that. I I always tend to have some kind of element, and I did it accidentally, but, you know, so I get a lot of readers who connect with that, because you don’t tend to see a lot of that in fiction writing, especially romance. Um, so for me, I learned that that was my goal. As I as I got into this, you know longer, but the best way to go about it, and there’s two levels of this too. So my best advice is, you know, if you are wanting to become an author, or you are wanting to become an editor, or, you know, if you want to be in the book world and the publishing world in some way, I would highly suggest getting into either an Associates, a two year associates program or a four year college program for an English degree. And I say this, not because it’s what society tells you should do, but because, when you go into even the small presses all the way up to the Big Five, like, you know, Simon and Schuster, one of the best things that you can do is learn the industry and earn a paycheck while you’re doing it. So, you know, get that, get that degree, or that associate associates degree, and you know, work as an editor, and that way you learn the background and the business, and you make connections. Because to be honest with you, it’s really difficult to get your foot in the door. That way. Otherwise. Now, if you’re strictly, you know, 2022, years old, getting ready to, you know, step out of college with a completely different degree, and say, economics, do your job, do your career, do what you love. You can love more than one thing. And then, you know, right at night, when you’re not at your day job, and again, find out what your personal individual goals are. You know, if you want to be on every bookshelf in every Barnes and Noble, then I would suggest, you know, research agents in your genre. And you know, following their guidelines, because the only way to get into the big five publishers and all of their individual divisions is to have an agent. I know some of the smaller publishers, you know, and Kensington is still considered. They’re one of the one of the bigger five, but they’re not technically a big five. They don’t require an agent, but they’re one of the only big ones that don’t, you know. And then you get all the smaller presses that step down from there. My personal experience has been better with small presses than it has been with the bigger publishers. You get the advancements with big publishing or the big five. You get the bigger marketing team you get, you know, often the mass market contracts where you’re in every library and every bookstore. But the thing is, especially with your first second or even your third book, a lot of the readers don’t know you. The booksellers don’t know you. They’re going to throw you on an obscure shelf and whatever genre you’re in, but small press has more to lose. They know your name; they know your story. They can help you build a reader base. And that’s why I honestly started Rowan pearls publishing to help read, to help new authors build their base, give them a really good, positive first publishing experience, and, you know, to help them go on from there, so then they can get their agent or stay with us for the whole career, whichever. But to me, big contracts are only going to get you so far, because let’s face it, we’re not all Stephen King, so
Emma Plutnicki 14:15
yeah, no, it makes sense. Did you have any fears when you were starting as an author, or any fears when you started your publishing company,
Speaker 1 14:23
oh my gosh, yes, and I still due to this day. I’ve been in this business for 20 years, and I still have, I wake up every morning. A lot of it now is fear for my authors, like I remember getting, you know, that first bad review, or, you know, I often. I still do, on average, 10 to 20 times a week, get hate mail, you know, because I have LGBTQ characters in in secondary character role, some of my books have what they call you. Uh, heat level. So, you know, it’s not like fading to black or closing door. So, you know, I get a lot of, you know, religious people who are like, going to hell. So, it is what it is. Having somebody navigate that with you when you’re first starting out makes all the difference. You know, it’s kind of like hand holding. You know what this is? Okay? Not every, not every reader, picks up the same book. I mean, let’s, let’s take To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance. You know, one of the best classics ever to be written. You know, it’s the path that it’s time with, with civil rights movements and other such things, right? No two people read that same book. One person is going to rape about it, the next is going to be like, Yeah, you know, it’s no two people read the same book. One of the best things you can learn is they always say to grow a backbone. But in my opinion, if you grow a backbone, you lose a lot of that emotional edge that you can put into your writing. So you know what? Cry about the bad review. Drink a glass of wine and start again. That’s all you can do. I mean, one of the funniest things I like to tell my authors is, if you look up on Google reviews for Stonehenge there, and it’s got, like, an average 2.5 at least right now, a 2.5 to a three-star review, don’t henge, not enough. Rocks, that was, that was one of the reviews. So, look at it that way. There’s going to be people out there who are going to hate and all you can do is keep going, because for everyone that does, there’s 10 that don’t. So it’s easy to say, to grow a backbone, sometimes you get a little bit more maybe lax, you get a tougher skin out of it. But that’s, that’s what always scared me was, you know, getting getting people who who would hate the book, or worse, yet, nobody would read. And I think about that every day, and I think about all my, my new video authors, who we have and how they’re going through that right now. And I tell them the same thing, you’re, you’re going to get bad reviews, it’s going to happen, but you’re going to get great ones, and you’re going to build great readers too. That’s, that’s what I feared the most. And I think a lot of what they fear the most. You know, rejection and failure, but, you know, failure is just like success. What are your goals? Yeah, you know, I’ve got hundreds of awards behind me, you know, and I have wonderful readers. And I look at where I am now, and I think of the me that I was at 20 years old, and there’s no way I would have thought this. So look, look at it that way, and just keep going.
Emma Plutnicki 17:43
Yeah, that must be pretty cool to look back on. But has there been a significant project that you’ve worked on throughout your career that really stands out as kind of the pinnacle of your creativity, or just one project that has had a significant impact on your life? I
Speaker 1 18:02
don’t know if there’s one project in particular, because especially for an author, it’s the little things like, oh my goodness, USA Today reviewed me, or I just won this award, or I’m a finalist in this one, or you collaborate with other authors sometimes to write a compilation and anthology. Do technology, I don’t, I don’t think there’s one particular project in particular, you know, in particular I go around, on average, it’s usually about twice a year, once a year now to those math, math author book signings that are usually hosted by bloggers or event companies, and you made some really great authors and publishing professionals at those writing conferences, depending on your genre, like romance. Has the Romance Writers of America, The Mystery Writers of America, have malice domestic I can’t think of all of them right now, but you know, the horror Writers of America, or the horror Writers Association, there’s a ton of them out there. As a matter of fact, one of my other really big pieces of advice is to join a writer’s group, because they have publishing professionals, editing professionals, cover design professionals, indie authors, traditional authors. And you’ll learn a lot by going to conferences. And some of them are virtual. Some of them are in person. I remember, I think, probably my most pivotal moment that I can think of is I had written and published two or three books with some small press before this happened, and I had written this book, and it was very emotional, it kind of bordered, bordered on romance and women’s fiction, but it was a romance, and one of my author friends who I met at a conference, um. I had said a virtual conference, I had said, you know, why don’t you try submitting it to my agent? I’m like, I don’t know. Okay, let me try. Because, you know, I had hit up hundreds of agents before in some of these previous books, and I didn’t have the reader following. I didn’t have the experience. Most of them didn’t pick me up. You know, good, positive, you know, responses, but not, not anybody willing to take that. So, I did. I submitted it to her agent. She loved it, and that was my first math market contract. That was my first I’m in every bookstore, and that was with Berkeley slash penguin. And that, that to me, I think, was my most to date, eye opening and pivotal experience that I had, because not only did I get a mass market contract and these books were everywhere, it was a two-book deal, but these books were everywhere. I learned a lot of marketing from them, you know, little, little things. And so to be honest with you, I think my other books outsold those two books 10 to one, which I find incredibly funny, but I met some really great people, and then from there, that happened to be the same that was in 2015 that happened to be the same year that our wa was having their big conference In Manhattan, and I had never been to New York, and here I was with these advancements and this awesome opportunity. And so I went, and it was I met hundreds more people that I never would have met otherwise. And I still have people to say, like, I remember, I remember we were, you know, doing this, or, I mean, you meet a lot of great people doing that. But for me, I think that was my pivotal moment. Because to me, that was my, I made it moment. You know, I have got an agent. I’m on bookstore shelves. To me, that was my, I made it moment. So that would probably be the one that stands out the most.
Emma Plutnicki 21:57
Yeah, that’s pretty special. So now, a typical day, what does that look like for you? Do you spend a certain amount of time in your day writing? Are you more on the publishing side? What does a typical day look like?
Speaker 1 22:10
It depends on what contracts I have for my writing. At the time, roam pros, eats most of my time, and I’m happy to do it. I mean, I love what I do, but to be honest with you, the commute from my bedroom to the coffee pot to my first-floor office and the house is horrible. I like to, I like to tease my fiancé all the time that you know, yeah, yeah, you have to go out to work, but my commute is horrible, yeah, I have to be honest with you, right? We do have two dogs, so there is traffic. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. I mean, it’s all joking aside, I’m literally living my dream. I wake up when I feel like it, though it’s usually at six o’clock in the morning. I check on my authors, I check on our social media. I post but it’s a big balance, because, you know, here I have all of these responsibilities, and I don’t want to let my authors down. So, there’s, there’s that, and then I have my own books to make sure I maintain my readers, and I’m still following that dream, and I do still have many foreign translation contracts that I fulfill every year. So what I, what I like to do is start out with, you know, something slow in the morning, I always do our social media accounts, make sure we’re posting, doing things, checking email, and then from there, I like to get into whatever edits we have, sitting and waiting for our authors. Make sure everybody’s doing okay. We’re ahead of schedule, and I’ll usually do two to three hours of writing in the late afternoon before. You know, everybody gets home from school and work and everything else, but sometimes when my deadline supersede that, we have two interns who are amazing, who helped me out when we get backed up, and two other editors besides me, though, and one of them an author, the other one’s a blogger. So, I mean, they’re all in business. They get it. We try to make sure that we have a balance between work and whatnot, but it’s hard, you know, like yesterday, we just had a family party, our first one since Christmas, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have so much to do. But yeah, sure you’re Yeah, you have to make sure
Emma Plutnicki 24:25
We maintain that, because I’m sure working from home doesn’t make it easy to separate the work from just your normal day-to-day life, and I’m sure creativity strikes at different times of day and night. So how are you able to kind of have time for your work, and then also have time for yourself. It’s
Speaker 1 24:43
really difficult. You have to be very detail oriented, you know, I have a number of my writers who have day jobs, and then they write, you know, at night, which is what I used to do. And for me, I. I’ve always been obsessively organized, would probably be a good way to put it. So, I have schedules. My schedules have scheduled, and those have posted notes that have their own post it notes. So, I follow a schedule, and I make myself follow a schedule, because if I can’t do that, then things go cray. Cray. So I definitely, I definitely follow its schedule. It’s very difficult. My well and my kids are all three boys. I have teenagers, and they, they have known since they were little that, you know, when mommies in her office, she’s working, yeah, you know, distractions are very common, especially when you’re working from home. So, but there you just, you just have to set boundaries and stick to them and a schedule and stick to it, especially if you’re working a full-time job away from, away from your writing career or your, you know, publishing aspirations. A lot of a lot of people feel really bad because they go to three days without writing or typing something on a page, but you can’t fix a blank page, so always try to, I mean, even if it’s getting up a half hour early before your day job and just typing a few sentences, what I used to do when I worked outside of the home with I would, I had this notebook that I took with me, and I shoved it in my purse. But whenever I had an idea in the middle of the day, I would write it down, or during my lunch, I would write, you know, bring your laptop and type some things out, or things like that. And, you know, sticking to a schedule like that, like, say, nine to five, and then you get home, you eat dinner with your family, or whatever it is you normally do, set aside one hour and do that one hour, and then keep the rest of that for your family, you know, or you have a three day weekend. It’s a really hard balance, right? I mean, writers probably have one of the best and toughest jobs, because we’re not often taken seriously, like, oh, I should write someday. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 27:06
Yeah, it’s hard. Yeah, no, I’m
Speaker 1 27:10
sure. And then I mean, what the other thing too is, what other job out there, unless you’re they and, you know, an actor or a journalist, what other job is there where, where your day is done, and every single person in the world can leave a review about you on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I mean, it’s, it’s cutthroat. I mean, imagine going into your job at, let’s say you’re a mechanic, right? Imagine going to the shop every day and you’re changing brakes and oil and transmission work, and then every person whose car you fixed then went on to the largest platform on the planet, which is the Amazon and says, One star. Yeah, I didn’t like his overalls. Yeah. It happens that’s
28:03
so, think. Yeah,
Emma Plutnicki 28:05
I can imagine you must have to have tough skin to, you know, brave those reviews develop
Speaker 1 28:12
it. But, you know, a dream is a dream, and that’s just one of the things that a lot of people need to take into consideration. Yeah, yeah. A lot of authors don’t even read their reviews. For that reason. They don’t even look at one of them. I will, on occasion, pop onto Goodreads or Amazon booktuber, but I try not to anymore. It’s just not
Emma Plutnicki 28:35
working. Oh man, oh my gosh, yeah. I don’t know if I could, uh, restrain myself from not reading them. But, um, perfect. Well, just as we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to add about your career advice or anything like that?
Speaker 1 28:51
Follow your dream? I mean, it’s, it’s the cheesiest, most cliche thing out there on the planet. But it’s true, my dog, but, you know, learn your craft, join some writer groups, meet a couple of writer friends, and they don’t have to be in your area. I mean, in this day and age, you know, zoom, or, you know, Facebook chat or whatever. You know, learn your craft. Meet, meet some other authors. Learn, learn how it’s done. Because we do get a lot of authors who don’t even bother reading our submission page before they send it to us, and I’m sorry, but if you can’t take the time to at least think about what we need from you to submit, then that tells me you’re not going to, you know, be open to the other things that need to be done later on. So, you know, when you’re submitting to agents and publishers, you know, follow their guidelines, because every single one is going to have something different. Take the time, you know, breathe. Think about what your goals are. You know, it doesn’t hurt if you’re just starting. Out in college, or coming out of high school, going into college. If this is something that you want to do, you know, definitely think about the degree that you are earning and how you can get into that world, earning a paycheck while you’re working on your book, while you’re working on submitting and any of things like that. That would be my best advice. But don’t, don’t give up. I mean, I had, I want to say it was something like 8182 agent rejection before I got mine. And yeah, and I’ve had a number of small presses all the way up to big five rejections, and most of those came from the series that got me the Spiegel bestseller in Germany, and lots and lots of money afterwards. So, you know, it’s Do it, do what’s right for you. Don’t give up, you know. And it’s, you know. I mean, think about it. Stephen King threw his first manuscript in the garbage, and his wife pulled it out. Look where he is. Don’t give up, you know. And when you’re stuck, move on to something else. We’re authors, we’ve always got something going on in our heads. Move on to something else. Don’t feel dejected, because this is one of the toughest markets to break into, but you have many other options, you know, and follow, follow those dreams and keep going, because, again, a reader can’t read a blank page, so you can do it.
Emma Plutnicki 31:37
That’s great advice. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and words of wisdom. I’m sure this will definitely help some people who want to become authors in the future. So, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye.
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