Hello, everybody. My name is Victoria, and today we are talking with Teresa McAvoy, a professional creative working from and within South Carolina. As we get started, can you tell us a little bit about your current career and where you’re currently located?
00:14 T.A. McEvoy
I’m in Anderson, South Carolina.
I have been writing epic fantasy books for about six, seven years now. I started out as a paralegal and worked, and the legal background helps a lot with your author career.
00:33 Victoria Bartolotto
Awesome.
So, before we get into the details, we have a brief section of our interview called “One Career Sixty Seconds,” where you describe your job in sixty seconds or less, similar to an elevator pitch. Are you prepared?
00:46 T.A. McEvoy
Yes, I’m ready.
00:48 Victoria Bartolotto
You can go ahead.
00:49 T.A. McEvoy
Okay. I am T.A. McEvoy, an epic fantasy author and world-builder , best known for the Dragons of Vicari series. My work combines character-driven storytelling, ancient dragon lore, and interconnected fantasy realms centered on themes of hope, unity, and resilience.
Beyond writing novels, I also create audiobook productions, cinematic fantasy content for YouTube, and expanded lore that allows the readers to engage with the world of Vicari.
My goal is to create an immersive world where dragons are not simply creatures, but living emotional beings woven into the soul of the story itself. I don’t like them being just beasts.
01:42 Victoria Bartolotto
That’s great. Thank you so much.
01:44 T.A. McEvoy
Thank you.
01:45 Victoria Bartolotto
So as an author, is there anything about South Carolina or Anderson in particular that brings something to your work? I know it’s a fantasy series, but do you ever take some inspiration from South Carolina and implement that?
02:00 T.A. McEvoy
Sometimes, I do the forest because I have four forests in my books. Of course, they’re not called [the Forest], but they got their own special things like purple fire. But yeah, the forests. I can take the forests or the outdoors. That would be pretty.
02:25 Victoria Bartolotto
When you decided to start publishing, was there anything that helped you make that decision or was there some sort of defining moment that had an impact on your creative journey?
02:38 T.A. McEvoy
I’ve always liked writing. When I was in high school, I wrote mysteries and my best friend would read them. She would read all those books, but my dad didn’t think I could make it, so I went into law.
But I’ve always loved to write. My mom accuses me of having a vivid imagination. I am a self-publisher because I am very picky on the person who does my covers. Everybody wants these covers like this and that, but I have – no. And if I can’t connect with the cover designer, forget it. But I was very lucky. I’ve had this cover designer I’ve been working with since I started, and she is awesome.
03:25 Victoria Bartolotto
Can you talk a little bit about the self-publishing industry and why I understand being very picky. I’m a writer myself, so I know how it is to be wanting specific things. Can you talk a little bit more about the decision of self-publishing and how that experience has been for you so far?
03:42 T.A. McEvoy
For self-publishing, it was easier for me to do it because I knew what I wanted and I knew what I didn’t want. The only thing you can get very aggravated with is KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing] and Amazon because they keep changing their mind.
My recommendation is unless you really want to, do not do the KDP Select because they restrict it for ninety days, which means you can’t publish your books anywhere else.
I didn’t do that. I went wide. Now, Kobo has it where it’s sort of like KDP, but you can publish it, and people can have a membership there. They can read your book or even listen to your audio book for free, and you still get paid, but they let you do it wherever you want. So, I think Kobo’s a better idea.
04:35 Victoria Bartolotto
I know you mentioned having a book cover designer. Can you talk a little bit about the process of editing your novel and going to somebody and freelancing people to help you work on your books?
04:50 T.A. McEvoy
Most of the editing I do myself, but I have like seven stages of editing, so it takes a while. They’re broken down into dialogue, world building, and grammar. That’s what was OK for me.
I don’t know about some people. I have a background in legal, so of course I’m very critical. Whenever you’re doing motions and stuff, they have to be critical. So, you’re going to need to be so critical.
But you can do it. Now sometimes some people do need an editor because they don’t catch the spelling or the grammar. It’s one thing, but you can do it pretty well on your own. I would, though, except not for a book cover. I would never do it. Never. I don’t know how. My book cover designer is awesome. She’s really sweet. I will give her an idea, and she’ll give me four or five ideas. Then I’ll say, “well, can you take this one and put it over here?” And she’ll say, “let me see,” because she’ll do it.
06:00 Victoria Bartolotto
That’s great. Because I know in comparison to self-publishing, traditional publishing, you don’t get as much of a say in your cover or your editor or, you know, the specific nitty gritty details of something that self-publishing would give you. I understand that you have a lot more freedom in it.
06:23 T.A. McEvoy
It can be, a little. You also have to learn how to do your marketing and stuff. But that’s where I say AI works good for marketing. Do not use it in your books, but you can use it for your marketing. I’m real picky about writing like that. No, that’s where your imagination has to come in, too.
06:47 Victoria Bartolotto
So, having a legal background, you said you did paralegal work. What was the, I guess, motivation behind wanting to switch from legal work to creative work? And if you had any fears about doing that and kind of transitioning, and if there was some sort of fear, what inspired you to continue beyond it?
07:10 T.A. McEvoy
Well, partly I stopped working, and we moved from Texas to South Carolina. My mom is bedridden, so I’m a caregiver. A lot of that has to do with making sure she’s comfortable. I can be there whenever she needed me. I’ve always loved writing and she always got mad at me for not writing. But I was afraid when I first started writing that nobody would like my books. My first series was just about the elves. The dragons came into it but, I went into the Dragons of Vicari, and I’ve always loved dragons. Not like how most people want to make the dragons into beasts or, shall we say, glorified mouths that carry on from point A to point B. My dragons have personalities.
08:02 Victoria Bartolotto
That’s great! Do you have any advice for students or young adults who want to pursue becoming an author? Is there any interest, do you think, that they should have or any kind of programs you think they should look into?
08:18 T.A. McEvoy
Well, I would definitely tell them to look into critical writing because critical writing will help. Also, you better love to write and find a genre you love to write in. I know some authors go from one genre to another, but I stay with everything. Find something that you really love to do.
And then be very careful after you publish your first book, because all these people are going to say, I can do this. I can do this for you. Ninety percent of them are just scammers. So be very careful.
08:53 Victoria Bartolotto
Thank you so much for talking with me. I really appreciated it.
08:56 T.A. McEvoy
It was nice meeting you.
08:58 Victoria Bartolotto
Yes, it was nice meeting you as well. Have a great day.
It’s okay. To start, could you do the favor of introducing yourself? Spell out your name, tell us where you’re located currently. And yeah, we’ll start there.
00:10 Glenn Meganck
My real name is, that I rarely use is Glenn Meganck. And right now, I’m in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
00:20 Victoria Bartolotto
Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about your job? I know you do multiple things, songwriter, ghostwriter, author. Can you just tell us just a little bit about what you do and what you specialize in?
00:35 Glenn Meganck
Well, that’s it. Every day I do some writing and some music. Both are equally important to me. So, I tend to write every morning, seven days a week, and then switch to music at some point in the afternoon, and work on more songwriting and recording and that sort of thing. I’m always working on at least two or three novels at a time, it seems, these days as well, under a lot of different genres. So, there’s no one kind of thing that I do in terms of that.
01:07 Victoria Bartolotto
I know one of your books, “Booking a Killer Vacation”, is set in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Is that correct?
01:16 Glenn Meganck
Yeah, that’s a J.R. Ripley book, and that’s more like a light mystery, which I do a lot of those. I did a bunch of them in a very short period of time, and now I just do a few here and there, but…
It was something I had never done before, and then I just sort of fell into it for a couple of years where people were asking for them, a publisher. And so, I ended up doing about, nine a year for a few years. Kind of cranking them out until I got kind of tired of it, because it really wasn’t what I did. I really didn’t even know the genre at all. It was like, “oh, I better read some of those and see what they do.”
02:01 Victoria Bartolotto
Can I ask specifically about that book? What about South Carolina or Myrtle Beach itself drew you to that specific location? What did you think was unique about it that you were like, “yeah, this needs to be set in South Carolina?”
02:15 Glenn Meganck
Well, for that genre, of these sorts of cozy light mysteries, that are amateur sleuths, right? So the setting is important. You want someplace unique and that makes sort of like its own little world that can be fun and has enough interesting things going on. Not necessarily a small town, but most of them are in a small town. I mean, there are a few that are probably in New York City that people do, but in general, they tend to be a either real, a fictionalized version of a real town or again, just something you make up or use like Myrtle Beach. I like Myrtle Beach and I’ve been there a lot. And it was a good setting. And I just finished a couple more of them. And it has a nice vibe.
I love music. I mean, I’m a musician. So, the next one, when I finally got back to doing more of them, the next one, which comes out in, I don’t know, a couple of months, maybe, that one involves music as well. And of course, in the Myrtle area, there’s lots of live music and bands that come through and theater. So I was able, in the ’60s kind of music and stuff, so I was able to incorporate that. Then in the third one, which I wrote already as well, but I don’t know when that one comes out, but that one involves more surfing. So, it has people surfing yeah, so. But yeah, it’s just a fun place. And because it’s a place a lot of people know and have been to, at least in this country, and lots of tourism. It has a lot of interesting characters too, the kind of people that come there and the partying and then the motorcycle events and things like that too. And yet it’s a small, sort of a small town feel in and of itself, you know?
04:10 Victoria Bartolotto
Definitely. Overall, throughout your creative career, was there a defining moment that you can think of that led you to wanting to become an author or wanting to do kind of multiple pen names? Was there anything that really stood out to you when you were like, “yeah, I want to be a writer? Yeah, I want to pursue this kind of career?”
04:34 Glenn Meganck
The writing and music, I’ve always been since the youngest that I can remember. I loved to read. I didn’t grow up in a household where reading mattered or music. I mean, my grandparents loved music and played, but my parents weren’t into music, didn’t play at all. They listened to country music, but they didn’t play any instruments and nobody read books in my family except me. And, I always wrote whether it was writing poetry or whatever, when I was a little kid. And I always wanted to learn the piano and then the guitar and whatever so I just kind of started on my own with all that. And it’s just sort of like a compulsion. I’m not happy or satisfied if I don’t do it.
The pen names is because when I started out getting published, I remember I was still living at home. I was young. One day I was home alone and, at my parents’ house, and a girl came knocking at the door and wanted to meet me because she’d seen an article about me in the paper. It just freaked me out, you know, and it was a book that came out under my real name. And I hadn’t thought about it at the time. This was when I was living in Florida. It just freaked me out that people knew who I was. And so, I liked the idea from then of using pen names, because I like being anonymous.
So, I’ve done a lot of books and a lot of music where, and for the longest time it was new book, new name. New record, new name. Just so nobody would ever know who I was because I like my privacy. So, I’m still not keen on a lot of that. I know, especially these days of social media and everything, it’s kind of hard to remain anonymous. And of course, publishers or music people and whatever in the business, they don’t want you to be anonymous because that doesn’t sell, it’s not good for business. It’s not good for your career. In a perfect world, I would be completely anonymous.
06:54 Victoria Bartolotto
Yeah, I can relate to that a little bit. I’m a writer myself. I’m in school to become a writer and I’ve been thinking about pen names and things like that because, like you, I really don’t like people in my privacy, especially with, like you said, social media. Everyone wants to know who you are. Everyone wants to know everything about you. And it’s like, that’s not how it should be. Celebrities are people too.
07:20 Glenn Meganck
Exactly. I’m not in it for that. I don’t care about celebrity stuff. I don’t care about other celebrities. I don’t care. I mean, for a long time I lived in LA full of celebrities and the gym I would go to was full of all these really well-known people in every aspect of the arts, especially, actors and musicians and writers. I mean, because it was in this little studio in this area of town where they all went, and that’s where I happened to live and go too. But it didn’t mean anything to me, and I just wanted to be left alone.
And when I would go to the gym, I never talked to anybody. I always felt like, I always feel invisible, that nobody sees me anyway. I can just come and go, and nobody notices me. And then one day in the gym, a woman came up to me and said, “my friend is afraid of you.” I thought, “huh?” I never talked to anybody. And she said, “yeah, you come here every day. You never look at anybody. You never talk to anybody. You’re just kind of freaking her out.” So, I said “I didn’t even know you saw me, I just feel like I’m a ghost.”
And the other thing, for you as a writer, what evolves though, uh, with the writing. What kind of writing do you do? Do you have any preferences?
08:43 Victoria Bartolotto
I’m very into historical action, very much like treasure hunting. I love any kind of contemporary story that involves history, that involves big impacts on the world. Right now, I’m currently writing a treasure hunting series that takes place in Key West. So I’m super excited about that project. I’ve been thinking about it for so long. So, I really want to go in the direction of kind of this contemporary adventure that isn’t so much commercialized. I feel a lot of things are, especially commercialized fiction nowadays. I feel it’s so quick and rapid and not deep, if that makes sense.
09:27 Glenn Meganck
Oh, sure. I mean, the market right now, because the people who run the business, they’re business people. They’re not the kind of people who, when you read about the days when Hemingway and stuff was writing, where the editors really loved books and cared about books. Now they’re just marketing people and that’s all they care about; how many followers you have. Whatever kind of book succeeds, they just want more of those. So, it’s tough. But so like with yours, I mean, so you have historical elements in it too, or just more of a modern day?
10:04 Victoria Bartolotto
It has some historical elements. I did a lot of research on this one fleet of Spanish ships that went down in the Keys, and there was someone who went and found all the treasure in that, fleet. One of my questions was, for the novel to take place, because it is obviously fictionalized. I don’t want to just pull directly from history and do whatnot. But one of the questions I had was, “what if there was a third ship?” Because there were two that went down. And so, I’m like, “what if there was a third ship with a secret treasure on it that no one knew about?” And it draws from some people who actually lived in Key West. It draws from this one guy who actually owned it at one point before America bought it. Not Mel Fisher, I know who that is and that’s who like found everything. I actually went to go see his museum there and I did like the whole walkthrough which was an amazing experience.
11:05 Glenn Meganck
I’ve met him in the past a long time ago yeah.
11:07 Victoria Bartolotto
Oh really? Oh wow! That’s cool!
11:10 Glenn Meganck
Because he lived in Florida so I met him there, yeah.
11:15 Victoria Bartolotto
Yeah, kind of just really want to incorporate the history of Key West and how it kind of became the kind of big tourist spot that it is now. Maybe draw a little bit of attention to how it’s not just a tourist spot. There’s actually a lot of history here that no one really knows about. So that’s kind of my goal with that novel, with that series.
11:37 Glenn Meganck
So that’s it, you’re planning it as like a series?
11:40 Victoria Bartolotto
Yeah, I want it to be a three-book thing.
11:43 Glenn Meganck
Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. Anyway, again, my advice is because I remember sometimes, again, when I was starting, you’d write a book and you’d think “that’s it, that’s just all I want.” But then the publisher would want more. And like, wait, there can’t be more. I mean, that was the end, but they wanted it to be a series because it did well enough and they liked it.
I had thought, well, I boxed myself. Where am I going to go? How am I going to do that? But you find a way. Now, whenever I do a book that even as a standalone, I always tell myself, leave some room that it could be a series. And then to get back to your point again with the pen names, though, the way it develops too, because of the business side of it over time as it’s become harder and harder and tighter and tighter and more labels become more important.
So certain pen names and most of the names I use are just ones that I can’t say anyway, even though they’re pen names or names that publishers asked for. I do the ghostwriting too with other authors. But so, if you have a certain name, for a style of book that you do, then if I write a book that’s like the, what was the one you said, the Myrtle Beach one? I forget the titles because I write so many books in a year. But the Myrtle Beach series, when you write a book like that, and then you say you write a book that’s more like Carl Hiaasen kind of novels, which are kind of Florida thrillers, but there’s a lot more sex and violence and all that kind of stuff. Well, you can’t very well do that under the same name because it’s a different audience, they’d be offended by the language or whatever. So it’s better the publishers would rather that was under a different name.
So your name sort of becomes your label. They know you’re buying a certain name that they’re going to get a certain kind of book, right? If you buy a James Patterson book, you know what kind of the vibe and feel and language are going to be, right? Or if you buy a, I can’t think of anybody modern. I mean, but they’re a lighter novel or someone who writes literary things.
The business just expects you to stay within that. And the bookstores, they don’t want a cozy mystery by someone who writes hard thrillers. Well, no, that’s not going to fit or that doesn’t sell. They’re looking at that name. They would rather have it under a new name. than the other name, even though people know that name. They would rather you start with a fresh name. So, the little things of the business that come up that, you know, for better or worse, that’s the business.
14:40 Victoria Bartolotto
With changing up the names, because every time you take a new name, you kind of get a fresh blank page, fresh slate. Is there any kind of fear that comes up that maybe the project isn’t going to work out or maybe dipping into this genre isn’t going to be received well? Is there any kind of fear or something around that that you experience?
15:02 Glenn Meganck
Not for me, because I don’t care. I mean, I do what I like to do, and it’s all I’ve ever done, you know? So even within a certain genre, if I don’t like it, I’m not going to do it, and I don’t need to do it. So, I don’t do it for the money. I don’t do it for fame, clearly. I just do what I feel like writing, and it has to excite me. It has to make me want to sit down the next morning and do some more of that and have it in my head like you, you’re a writer you know, so it’s in your head.
You couldn’t pay me enough to write something I didn’t want to write. And whether it succeeds or not in a genre, again, I’ll get asked to do things and I can’t go into them because they’re for other well-known authors. But, in genres that I don’t necessarily write in, they’ll say they’re stuck and, “oh, can you help me?” And I don’t really want to, but people ask and it just becomes, “oh, fine, I’ll help you.”
Then it’ll often be where I have to research the genre a little bit. And then even then I’ll kind of twist it to the way I see it, like one that I just recently doing with, again, a bestselling author, but I thought, when he first asked me to do it was because he felt like he couldn’t write the next one. I said, “yeah, no, I’m just not the right person and I don’t want to write it, it’s just not my thing.” And I said, “you went too dark and that kind of violence. I just don’t gravitate.” And he said, “well, don’t make it like that. Make it sound like me but make it like you too. And you can make it what you want.”
Ah fine. I just try to always truck myself out of jobs. So, things succeed. I’d rather write what I like and have 10 people like it than write something I don’t like and have a million people like it. You know what I mean? Because I would. And I would be out of it and I’d feel like I’d cringe. So, I worry about failure if I’m happy, though I’m never happy. So that’s different.
17:11 Victoria Bartolotto
As we kind of wrap up, do you have any kind of advice or skills that you would give to college students like me or people in high school that maybe want to pursue becoming an author? Do you have any kind of advice to give to those kinds of people?
17:25 Glenn Meganck
Well, just kind of what I was saying. I mean, write because you love it. Don’t write because you think you’re going to make money. Don’t follow the trends. Just write what you love because you’ll find your audience. It’s easier now in some ways because you can always self-publish, indie publish, whatever, and get started and get your name out there. So instead of trying to be like everybody else, which is how I feel about life in general. There’s an old song called “Dare to be Different”. And that’s how I think. Don’t be afraid to be different. Don’t be afraid to say what you feel.
And another thing people get into when they write their first book is they hold back because they feel, well, “I can’t put too much in it because what will I write about in the next book?” Don’t worry about it. Just throw everything. It’ll come. And for me, and again, this is just my advice. Plenty of people will tell you different, but for writing and music are two things that I absolutely love. And just, I mean, I can’t live without them. I do them every day just because I can’t not do them and I’m not satisfied if I don’t. But they’re also the two things I would never go to school for personally, because I don’t want anybody else telling me how to do it.
Isaac Asimov, when people would ask him, how do you write a novel, he would say, write a million words. I mean, all these people, they would say, don’t go. I mean, all you’re going to learn is how someone else did it. If you want to be unique, do it your way. Just don’t worry about the rules or whatever anybody else tells you. Just go figure it out your way. And that’s, that’s what I’ve always done. And whether people like it or not, I mean, I don’t care. So it all worked out okay for me anyway.
So, I mean, I had a friend who, her father, an old girlfriend, whose father, he had been in World War II as an American soldier. And when he got out, he wanted to be, he was an artist, a painter, and a writer. And they decided to stay in France after the war. And the mother taught at an American school. And he would paint in the summer and write in the winter. Never sold anything. Couldn’t sell a painting, couldn’t sell a book, couldn’t sell anything, right? Until he was about, let’s see, I would say he was 55 or 60 years old. And then out of the blue sells a book for half a million dollars. And took off from there. They made some movies, some other books, but I mean, he just kept doing what he did. And he again, did it under a pen name because he didn’t want anybody to know who else. And he wanted to paint under one name, do his books under another name, and have nobody know any of the names. And when he died, he had a huge warehouse with full of thousands of paintings because he didn’t even want anybody to see him or make them for sale at that point. He just thought, oh, I don’t need money now, so I’m not even going to try to sell them, right? He just hoarded them all.
20:23 Victoria Bartolotto
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
OK, so to start, can you just introduce yourself, spell out your name and tell us where you’re from?
00:06 Kristen Ness
Yes. My name is Kristen Ness, and that’s spelled. And I grew up mostly in Columbia, SC.
00:17 Victoria Bartolotto
So, what do you do for work and where are you currently working from?
00:22 Kristen Ness
I am currently living in Charleston, SC, right near the coast.,And I am an author, so I write novels and my first debut novel was published in 2023. It’s called At Loggerheads. I mostly work from home, although because I’m a writer and my lifestyle, I can kind of write anywhere, even if there’s white noise in the background. So sometimes I’ll pop around to bookstores or coffee shops. There’s so many great spots in Charleston, or even out by the beach.
00:52 Victoria Bartolotto
Do you have a favorite spot to go or…?
00:55 Kristen Ness
A couple of my favorite coffee shops. I like Kudu Coffee right downtown on Vanderhorst St. and Starbucks. Pretty much any Starbucks. I’ll go to those as well and book stores. There’s a new bookstore called The Archive that just opened up. I like to sit in there. They have a little coffee spot, like a little coffee bar and wine for later in the evening inside their bookstore. I’ve only been there once, but I’m planning to spend more time there and then so many great bookstores around town that I’ll occasionally pop into, but those are a few favorite.
01:30 Victoria Bartolotto
That’s awesome. So being from South Carolina, I did a little bit of research on your book. I’m a big reader myself, and I’m also a writer. So like when I was looking your stuff up, I’m like this looks so interesting. I love murder mystery novels. And so one of my questions is, what does South Carolina bring to your work? What about it is unique and influences you compared to anywhere else, any other kind of place?
01:56 Kristen Ness
Oh, that’s a good question. OK, so why set my novel in South Carolina? Well, first of all, I grew up here, so I grew up coming down to the coast right here near Charleston, to Isle of Palms.
What’s unique, I think about our coastline is the way the barrier islands are set apart from the mainland, so those islands become sort of small towns of their own. And I know that happens in other places, but there’s something about our beaches in particular, the way the marshes are in between the mainland and the barrier island.
I think there’s something unique about the people in South Carolina. We tend to be friendlier and kind of create little microcosms of bigger cities in our smaller towns, so you have just a big mix of people and everybody kind of knows what’s going on in everybody’s business. I like that about small South Carolina towns.
That beach in particular became a big inspiration from my book. I did fictionalize the barrier island in my story only because I wanted to be able to control everything that was happening in the setting, but it is loosely based on Isle of Palms.
Another big reason why this state in particular worked for my story is the loggerhead sea turtle. So I’m on the Island Turtle Team on Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island and I’ve been doing that for about a decade; a little more than a decade since I moved down here and loggerhead sea turtles are the most common species of sea turtles that nest on our beaches. And I needed a setting where that was going to be the case. And the loggerhead sea turtle is also the South Carolina state reptile.
So, so many things, you know, made it work as the best setting for my story. Everything from the small town feel to the way the barrier island ecosystem works to the way that development is happening on those barrier islands that plays into my story a little bit and I’ve seen a lot of the changes take place on some of the barrier islands here on our coast.
So, that gave me a great background in what the setting would be like over time and why my main character, Brooke, would be so connected to it both through the sea turtles and because she grew up there.
04:14 Victoria Bartolotto
Wow, that that seems it just fit perfectly and that’s — that’s great. Oh my goodness. So could you define a moment in your creative journey that really had an impact on why you became an author, why you wrote At Loggerheads? Was there anything that kind of struck you as: “this is the time I need to write this novel”?
04:37 Kristen Ness
Yes, that’s a great question. I’ve first of all, I’ve always, I think I am a writer at heart. From the start, I’ve always, even when I was little loved to write, I would keep journals from the time I was probably in first grade. So I went on to try to turn all of my papers in other classes into creative papers. Any chance I got, I would go to my teachers or professors and just say ‘instead of writing this boring, like research paper, can I just turn it into a creative version, like fictionalize it and make that my final paper?’ and some of my professors would humor me, but there was always that lean toward fiction that lean toward making it into a creative writing piece, and I majored in English.
I would say what eventually kind of kicked me into gear to write my first novel was about the time when I was practicing law, so I went to law school out of college and I’m a lawyer and I was with a big firm in Charlotte and I was practicing immigration law, which is what I still do a little bit on my own. I have my own firm now, but I was with this big firm and I was thinking in my office. I had all of these favorite quotations from different writers and I would still, I would still be doing a little bit of research, like ‘what would I want to write about?’ and even while I was in my office doing law work – shhh, don’t put that in the story – but I was supposed to be doing my work, but anyway it was clear that I was wanting to do more creative writing. I needed a creative outlet.
About that time I’ve been practicing law in big firms for about 7 years and I had decide as much as I enjoyed that practice, I didn’t want to do it that way. I didn’t want to be a partner at a big law firm, so I needed to get off that partner track and so. You know, I did something that most associates at big law firms never do, and I just resigned. I just decided; “you know what? I want to start a family. We’re in Charlotte and this now is the time. If I keep going and stay on this track, I’m going to end up being a partner at a big law firm and I’m never going to have time to write my novel, and I really want to give it a shot.” So I left the big law firm world.
I thought probably at some point I’ll start my own little firm, but I wasn’t doing it yet and about a month after I left, I got pregnant with my daughter, so we started our family! So I was pregnant, and I figured now’s the time. I haven’t started my new firm yet. I have a lot of free time. I need to find that idea for a novel. I wanted it to involve something on the coast. I knew I wanted it to be connected back to the sea. I always loved marine biology as a young child and growing up too, so I thought that’d be a great way to marry my love for writing with my love for marine biology.
And the reason that was such a perfect time is because not only did I have more time to get started on the idea, but I happened to be down at the beach with my mom, pretty soon after. So that summer, after I had left my law firm job and I saw a sea turtle track for the first time in real life. And so, it planted the seed of an idea. I was kicking around like ‘which creature would I wanna write about? Which genre am I gonna be in?’ I really like reading mysteries and thrillers and suspense. So probably that.
We saw this track on the beach and it was at Isle of Palms and I just the seed of an idea came to me like ‘what might be going on if there was a track, a turtle track on the beach?’ And when you read my book, you learn about it. Normally there’s a track going on from the water to the dunes. She makes a nest and then she leaves a track going back to the water. And I thought, well, ‘what would be going on?’ Maybe if you just saw one track from the water up to the dunes. But then there was no nest, no turtle, and no track going back into the water.
That idea just popped into my head. What would be going on the island if that sort of thing was happening and that’s where I got the seed of the idea. And at the same time, because I had a little bit more time, I was taking an evening creative writing course at Queens University in Charlotte and just getting the tools to put together a novel, since I don’t have any actual degree in creative writing, I just wanted some guidance on that.
And so, all of those things came together, and I started putting together my outline for what became At Loggerheads and sat down and started writing it from page one on my computer. Now, that was the moment I started it. Remember I was pregnant with my daughter and she’s now 17 years old.
So, it took, off and on. You know, I started a law firm. We moved to Charleston. I had my son. So, we had a second child, and I was just using any creative time I could find to work on my story. It just became this passion project while I was doing a little more immigration work and raising our kids and enjoying being here at the beach and joining the turtle team and gaining some more insight so I could put that in my book.
I’d say off and on. It took me about 10 years to write the first draft. If you condense down all the time I spent on it, it was probably more like a year of full-time writing. But I was just getting a couple hours here and there each day, or maybe even not even every day. And so, it took me just that long to do the full first draft.
And I was editing as I went and then I edited it a lot before. Then I went and found an agent. That took a little time to work with that agent and then got the published and going. So, overtime it took me a long time to get from Page One to publication, but now that I’ve kind of been through all of that and I’ve done it once, I’m working on my next book and it’s going much faster. So I think I’ll have it finished within-I’ve probably been working on it for about a year and I’ll have a manuscript, I think finished by probably the end of summer, early fall and hopefully get that out from my agent to a publisher pretty soon.
10:54 Victoria Bartolotto
Oh, that’s amazing. I understand the whole like trying to find time because I’m a writer myself. I’ve written a couple of books but just trying to make my way and even as a college student, I’m always trying to find a couple hours, wake up earlier just so I can get a couple words in just like spacing that time.
11:12 Kristen Ness
But so, you’re busy with classes and you have life, and things are going on and the writing. As much as you love doing it, it’s something that you have to really keep doing on your own until at some point maybe you have a publisher who has you under contract and then you have a deadline. But until you have that, it’s really up to you and your schedule can look. However it works best for you.
There’s no right way or wrong way to write. You just have to write. So anytime you can find if even if it’s just 15 minutes for a while. You know when I was working at that big firm, I was just doing sitting down at night and writing for 15 minutes and I called it my free write. And just whatever came out on the page that was creative at that time.
I would just write for 15 minutes, and a lot those little bits of writing ended up being in my book. I pulled from some of those little free writes I’ve done and used them for part of the story. So, you never know where it might be going, as long as you’re just– just don’t give up. Just keep working at it. Little by little, it might take you 10 years, but that’s, it’s OK.
12:18 Victoria Bartolotto
Speaking of how long a span you had to drop this novel, were there any kinds of fears or things that gave you a little bit of anxiety when you decided to pursue becoming an author? Was there any fear around querying, submitting to publishers? How did that kind of go for you?
12:38 Kristen Ness
That’s a good question. OK. So, I’d say some of my fears were, first of all, as you’re in the middle, I’m in the middle of this, you know, trying to write a novel. And I’ve never attempted writing a novel length piece of writing before. So, I had a lot of, I guess, trepidation or like uncertainty around like, “am I doing this right? Like is this making sense?” I had a little bit of an outline, but some people write with outlines and some people just fly by the seat of their pants and I was a little bit of both I guess I had plot points, but then from one plot point to the next, I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to get there. So definitely a little bit of uncertainty about am I going to actually be able to pull this off? Is this going to come together and make any sense to anybody or are people going to read the first chapter and be like “I know who did it.”?
It’s like I’ve got to figure out how to make the mystery enough of a mystery, so they keep reading. Not having done that before, but of course, having read a lot, I’m a voracious reader. So I had read a lot of books, so I kind of knew what it should do. How it should look. So that kind of kept me going. Like I’m just gonna go for it. I just need to write it.
And then when it came to the agent search. Yeah, I was. There was a lot of –I had a lot of nerves around that because that to me, I really wanted to go the traditional publishing route. I figured if I couldn’t find a publisher who wanted to publish my book, I would just write another one. I just didn’t want to, I didn’t want to be in the business of publishing books. I didn’t want to have to go figure out how to do all of that. I just wanted to do the writing.
14:18 Victoria Bartolotto
Yeah, I get that.
14:19 Kristen Ness
I was planning to get the agent and then try to find a publisher and then try to find a publisher. I spent a lot of time editing it myself and trying to get it as in is the best shape it could be in for going to an agent. I really got lucky with the agent search. I was very nervous about it to start, but I think luck and timing were on my side, so I had heard from going, I also went to a lot of author events as I was getting into writing I would.
I’d love to go hear authors talk about their books and their process and how their publishing experience was. So I remembered one of the authors I’d seen had said when you’re looking for an agent, a great way to find one aside from just going into the general list of literary agents is to go to the bookstore and find books that are similar to yours in similar genres or books that you really liked, that you felt resonated with you because of the writing style, maybe, or because of how they put the book together. The structure of it, and then the authors always almost always without fail thank their agents in the back of the book, in the acknowledgements. So, find those books that are similar to yours, or that you really loved. And go look and see in the acknowledgements who the agent is and then query those agents.
And so, I, about that time it was probably 2019, middle of 2019, in the summer, a book that you might have heard of called where the Crawdad sing has become.
15:56 Victoria Bartolotto
Yes, I have.
15:57 Kristen Ness
Huge book, right? So Reese Witherspoon had picked it for her book club, and it had just taken off and I’d heard about it. I had seen it in the bookstores, and I was always like, I mean, an interesting title. What is this book about? And so a friend of mine told me you have to read it. You know, she knew how much I love nature and sea creatures and that I was writing this murder mystery set on a coastal beach and in the South Carolina setting.
So I went and read it, and it had so many things I loved. I loved her descriptions of nature. I loved her writing style. And also, the story itself had a murder mystery wrapped into a coming of age. Now mine’s not as much of ‘a coming of age’, but I had a murder mystery, and it was set on a in a coastal location. So, hers was North Carolina mine, South Carolina. A lot of nature and science woven into the story and I thought, “OK well, go big or go home.” I’m going to query him. You know? Why not?
So I looked him up in the back of her book, and then I looked him up online and found his agency. And every agent has a different way that they want to receive submissions from authors. So the way he wanted his submission was just a query letter. The one page query letter that you send by e-mail. So the query letter’s one page, it tells a little bit about why you think an agent will like your book, what your book is about, and then any credentials that you have in publishing. So obviously I had a lot of nervous energy around this thinking like, “OK, well, I’m just going to send it.” And I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing. This is I’m brand new to this. And either it’ll just go into his slush pile and I’ll never hear from him or maybe I’ll hear from him. I don’t know. I have this whole other list of agents.
And so just not really even knowing what I’m doing. I just sent him my query letter and went on about my day and went back to check my work e-mail and he had emailed me back 15 minutes later and I thought that my e-mail had been like, that’s how that’s how fast it was, and now that I know as so, yeah, I messed it up. So I opened his e-mail and it just said “You had me at turtles. Please send me your manuscript.” That’s all it said. That was his e-mail to me.
I screamed and jumped up and down sent him my manuscript and you know, called my mom, called my husband. I was like, “Oh my God. Like, I actually heard back from this agent.” And he read it in about a week and he got back to me and said, “you know, I’m interested in seeing where this is going. Let’s keep in touch and work on it a little bit. If you don’t hear back from any other agents.” I was like, “are you crazy? Like you’re my dream agent. I’m not going, not even looking for any other agents. I’m just working on making sure we can work together.”
So we kind of corresponded back and forth and he was reading my manuscript and giving me suggestions for edits and kind of seeing if he could get it to a point where he felt like it was saleable and by the time we got to that point, COVID 19 hit, and it was 2020 March and none of the publishers were accepting submissions and a lot of their authors, they were having to take off of tour. So we just held it for a while and didn’t submit it to publishers until maybe 20 late 2021, when COVID had settled down and the publishing houses were opening back up. And again, had some good luck there.
We submitted to maybe 7 or 8 different publishers at all ranges to some of the big houses, mid-size houses, small publishers and landed with the small press where the editor had been a volunteer on a sea turtle team up in Pawleys Island. The turtle team, so she knew, she really liked the whole sea turtle piece of it and how that wrapped into the story. And she bought my book and put me under contract. And then I worked with them and we put it out. I think it was. Oh, yeah.
So we my publication day, publication days are always on Tuesdays. In case you didn’t notice that new books are coming, are always released on Tuesday, and so the Tuesday in May that we chose in 2023 happened to be world seat World Turtle Day. So, it was May 23rd, 2023. It was World Turtle Day. It was a Tuesday, and that was my launch day.
So I definitely had some from there to get back to the original question, there was a lot of nervous energy and uncertainty in the whole process of writing along the way and that’s why I say just keep going. Don’t give up, even if this is your first time writing a novel, even if you’re not sure where it’s going, get that first full draft finished. Edit it. Make it as good as you can and then with the agent process, I was very nervous about that and really just kind of blind luck I ended up with an agent; who one of the reasons why he wrote back to me so quickly is because it just happened that the second thing he really loves in addition to being a literary agent. First is he loves conservation and nature and science, and he actually represents a lot of authors who write nonfiction, science related books, as well as fiction that has science in it.
So it just turned out that the book that I was writing happened to be right in his wheelhouse. And that that agent searched was much shorter than pretty much anybody I’ve heard of. So that was a lot like I said, just a lot of luck and good timing. Had Crawdads not been out and so big at that time, I don’t think I ever would have found him. So it was just all it all, I guess was kind of meant to be from my book.
21:46 Victoria Bartolotto
That’s so amazing. That’s cause I-I’ve done a little bit of querying for one of the books I wrote and it needed to be worked on a little bit more, let’s just say. It’s always been such an anxiety inducing thing for me because I’m like, ‘oh gosh, what if they don’t respond? What if, like, this happens? What if that happens?’ It’s, you know, a lot.
22:07 Kristen Ness
And that is way more than normal. That is definitely more of the normal response. In fact, I’ve heard since I’ve been going around doing stuff with my book, I’ve been on panels with other authors and the general average number of queries that people sent out to agents. I mean, we’re in the hundreds, like sometimes people would query 50 agents, 100 agent before they found that one that worked for them and then ended up going on to have a really big book. I think that Shelby Van Pelt, who gave me my cover blurb. She’s the one who wrote Remarkably Bright Creatures about the octopus. I don’t know if you’ve read her book yet, but…
22:48 Victoria Bartolotto
I’ve heard of it, yeah.
22:48 Kristen Ness
It became a big hit, too, when it was it was picked by Jenna for Jenna’s book club, and it’s an awesome book, but she had a long agent search, so she had gone through, I mean I think probably at least 50, maybe even 100 agent queries before she found the agent who wanted to represent her book, and they ended up landing with an imprint of, oh, I don’t want to mess up the house. I think it’s Harper Collins. But it was Echo Publishing, and they didn’t think, they didn’t know it was going to be such a big book, but again, just a lot of just sticking with it. Sometimes you’re going to get crickets. You’re not going to hear anything back from an agent, and that’s a really common thing that happens sometimes. You’ll just get a couple requests for a partial manuscript or requests for a full manuscript. Even then, they might read it and say it’s not quite a good fit for me.
And I experienced a lot of that when we were going through the publishing process, trying to find a publisher. Even though I had an agent, we were submitting my book to publishing houses, and sometimes they would take a really long time to get back to us. Sometimes we would get responses that were just like this doesn’t fit with our list or you know, we like the idea, the concept of it, but it’s just not for us. So you have to just keep going. You have to have a thick skin. And believe in your work.
I also have heard a lot of authors who have that, that book or several books in a drawer, that those were kind of their practice novels. And those were the ones they’ve written, but they just for whatever reason didn’t find a home with an agent or with the publishing house. And maybe at some point they’ll bring them back out and work on them and they’ll get published. But that’s also a really common thing that I hear and had my book not found a home. I think I would have done the same thing, just chalked it up to this was my this was my training and I’m gonna keep going on and working on my next one.
24:46 Victoria Bartolotto
Yeah, that’s great. Oh, my goodness. As we wrap up, I know we’ve kind of talked a little bit about not giving up and a little bit of advice, but if you do, do you have any advice or skills that you think would be important to have for current college students or pre-professional young adults who want to pursue possibly being author, is anything that you think they definitely should hit before they start their process? Do you have any advice for something like that?
25:12 Kristen Ness
That’s a good question. So if. Yes, and again, novelists can come from any kind of background. You don’t have to have a degree in English or creative writing to be a great writer. If you do have the chance to take some coursework, I think it would be really helpful to take a creative writing course because you will learn some of the tools of the trade of how to structure a novel. I see a lot of novelists who often came from a journalism background, so maybe if you have those types of courses available to you, it helps you.
As you’re researching a novel and putting a story together to learn those who, what, when, where, why, how to investigate your story, how to develop your characters. You know, a lot of characters come from real life. So, learning to pull stories out of what you see and observe around you, those would be the types of classes I would look to take.
In general, if you’re developing your skills as a writer, some of the things that I did that I found to be very helpful were, of course, reading, read, read the authors that you truly enjoy. You enjoy their writing style, or you enjoy their plots. Pay attention, go to those books as a writer instead of a reader, and try to read the book as if you’re taking it apart and paying attention to how did they put in so much background information about this character without slowing down the plot? So go to your favorite books and read them as a writer. That was really helpful to me as I was developing my skills. Go hear authors speak, go to author events and ask questions and find out from them what their process is like. Very much like you’re doing with me. You get little tips and insights that might work for you later.
Sit down and if even if you don’t have a story that you’re working on, or a or a novel or a plot in mind that you want to write, go to the page as often as you can and just write something. Like I was doing a lot of free writing that turned out to be a great way to exercise those writing muscles, and I just would spend, like I said, about 15 minutes a day. Usually at night when I had a little bit of downtime between dinner and whatever I was doing later. Just sat down and wrote for fifteen minutes. It could be what I did that day. It could be something I observed that I thought was interesting. It could just be a completely made-up paragraph about something. I found that to be very helpful too.
And then I’d say after college, if you’re really wanting to go, if coming out of school that what you want to do is become a novelist. Another thing I’ve heard a lot of people do that helps launch you into the industry a little bit is to get a master’s in fine arts. So an MFA degree, or if you if you’re still working on your bachelors, you can get a bachelor’s in fine arts or a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. A lot of times having that tool, the masters in particular. If you go into a master’s program, I didn’t do this myself, but I know that a lot of authors I’ve been on panels with and heard talk have come through a master’s program.
It provides you with a great networking opportunity where you get to meet not only professors who might also be published authors, but sometimes they’ll have agents come or publishing houses come to the master’s program and you might get a chance to connect with one of those and also a lot of times in the masters programs you’re working on, you’re working on a book while you’re in the program and you’re getting immediate feedback from both your peers and from your professors.
So that’s also something to consider if you know going in, coming out of college or even while you’re in college, that you definitely want to see, you want to try to become a novelist and just keep writing. Go to your favorite books and see which kinds of course work, and possibly degree programs might be available to you and go just go for it.
29:08 Victoria Bartolotto
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciated it.
29:11 Kristen Ness
Welcome, it was such a pleasure. Thanks for reaching out to me. I really, I was so pleasantly surprised to get your message and always happy to help pass along what little advice I have one book in, you know, it’s fun to be able to be to have a little bit of experience under my belt. So, I can tell people about it.
29:32 Victoria Bartolotto
Would you before we end the call, would you be open to talking with our team again if we have questions or if we want to contact you for more interviews or things like that, would you be open to that?
29:44 Kristen Ness
Absolutely. Happy to do that. Feel free to reach out to me. You have my e-mail address and my phone number. Yes. Follow up with any questions or anything you’d like for me to do to be involved with. I love talking to people about writing and about my book. It’s just such a thrill. It seems really surreal to me still, so I love it, I’ve been talking to a lot of book clubs that reach out and have me come to their book club meetings. It’s just been so much fun. So I would love to be involved however I can be and talk to students and answer your questions whatever you need.
30:16 Victoria Bartolotto
OK. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day.
