Laura DiSilverio & the unexpected silver lining to her adventure in self-publishing

HALLIE EPHRON: Talk about reinventing yourself! The first book by Laura DiSilverio that I read was one from her Swift Justice series with a delightfully wacky pair of female detectives (I remember thinking: Cagney & Lucy!) A ton of books later, last year I was blown away by her RECKONING STONES, a riveting, thought-provoking standalone.

After that...

Laura, shapeshifter that she is, talks about her dystopian YA trilogy, INCUBATION, and her strange and wonderful (and frequently frustrating and demoralizing) journey through the world of writing and publishing

LAURA DiSILVERIO: Some of you probably know me as the author of 17 traditionally published crime fiction novels--18 if you count the forthcoming THAT LAST WEEKEND (Sep 2017). You may not know that I have also written a Young Adult (YA) dystopian trilogy.


Taking the Plunge

Yup. About this time last year, I decided to dip my toes in the self-pubbing waters to see if there was more money in that ocean. (Did I mention I'll have two kids in college come August? Money matters.) I self-pubbed the first book in my Incubation Trilogy. (More about the trilogy at the end--this post is about following dreams and perseverance and the serendipity that happens because you've put in the work and positioned yourself to succeed. Cue "La-La Land" soundtrack.)

Reality Bites

My agent, who told me dystopia was dead, had shopped Incubation to about four editors who all told us dystopia was dead. I loved, loved, LOVED this series, so I swallowed hard and made the decision to self-pub. INCUBATION went on sale in April 2016 to rave reviews and disappointing sales.

You read about how hard it is to get a book discovered in the vast ocean of self-pubbed books, but until you put a book out there, you don't understand how hard it really is. I've had trad pubbing success--national bestseller status, awards, and all that hoo-hah--but it didn't matter. Relatively few people found INCUBATION.

The same held true when I pubbed INCINERATION and REGENERATION later in the year. Let's just say I wasn't paying for tuition out what I was making on the trilogy--I was maybe paying for textbooks.

Everything Will Be Okay in the End--If It's Not Okay, It's Not the End

You knew there was a "however," right? My agent gave Incubation to her foreign rights person to take to the Frankfurt Book Fair and, lo and behold, we sold the French language rights for the first two books to a French publisher for a five figure advance against royalties.

Whoo-hoo!

My self-pubbing experiment was now well in the black, potentially providing a profit equal to my traditionally published books, although it hadn't ended up there the way I expected.

Who knows? It may be a blockbuster in France, and then a producer will come looking for the movie rights . . . I'll keep you updated as this story unfolds.

What I've Learned (and It Wasn't All in Kindergarten)
- If you love something you've written, don't abandon it because an agent, editor or industry big-wig says it's out of favor or unpopular. A great story will find its audience.

- There are many routes to publication these days --and to financial success.

- Having industry connections--an agent, in my case--helps. There are things they can do for you that you almost certainly can't do for yourself, like foreign sales.

- Work your butt off, practice your craft obsessively, network and market, and be open to capitalizing on opportunities that arise, even if they're not the ones you expected.

- Celebrate all of it. It's a crazy, exhilarating, and mad, mad, mad, mad publishing world.

I'd love to hear about strange or unexpected twists in your professional journeys--in publishing or other endeavors--if you want to share them in the comments.

For any Jungle Red reader who is interested in reading and posting an Amazon review of Incubation, I will send you a Kindle copy if you email me at ldisilverio AT gmail DOT com.

INCUBATION by Laura DiSilverio

Bio-chemistry whiz Everly Jax wants one thing: to know who her parents are. Raised with other repo kids in InKubator 9, she has pinned her hopes on Reunion Day, the annual event where sixteen-year-olds can meet or reunite with their parents. When her Reunion Day goes horribly awry, she and her pregnant friend Halla escape the Kube, accompanied by their friend Wyck who has his own reasons for leaving.

In a world where rebuilding the population is critical to national survival, the Pragmatist government licenses all human reproduction, and decides who can--and must--have babies. The trio face feral dog packs, swamp threats, locust swarms, bounty hunters looking for "breeders," and more dangers as they race to Amerada's capital to find Halla's soldier boyfriend before the Prags can repo her baby and force the girls into surrogacy service.

An unexpected encounter with Bulrush, an Underground Railroad for women fleeing to Outposts with their unlicensed babies, puts them in greater peril than ever. Everly must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to learn her biological identity--and deal with the unanticipated consequences of her decisions.

Laura DiSilverio
A retired Air Force intelligence officer, Laura DiSilverio is the national bestselling and award-winning author of 20 mystery, suspense and young adult sci-fi novels. Library Journal named her most recent book, Close Call, one of the Top Five mysteries of 2016, and The Reckoning Stones (2015) won the Colorado Book Award for Mystery in 2016. 

We've Got Your Number

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Happy back to school (notebooks!). Happy back to work (progress!). Happy end of summer (sweaters!). Happy everything.   And what’s your must-have item for all these great beginnings? 

Yup. Your cell phone.

The brilliant and wonderful Laura DiSilverio has been a treasured friend of mine for—gee, I don’t know how long. She’s a retired Air Force intelligence officer (is anyone ever retired from that?) and a devoted mom and wife and an astonishingly prolific and successful author (ooh, and see below for an amazingly generous giveaway of her newest CLOSE CALL!) 

 But. Up until very recently, she didn’t even…

Well, I’ll let her tell you.  And, because it’s back to school after all, here’s a quiz!

appy back to school. happy end of summer, happy back ot work, happy everything.

 Close Call

          by Laura DiSilverio

Most of us have them. Some of us think we couldn't live without them. Some of us wish we could chuck them down the nearest sewer grate. What am I talking about? Cell phones, of course.

In my new release, CLOSE CALL, my heroine, Sydney, picks up the wrong phone and stumbles on a plot to assassinate a Congressman. Since a cell phone plays such a central role in the book, I thought it might be fun to do a little cell phone trivia quiz on JRW today. For instance, did you know that the first commercially available cell phone came out in 1984 and cost almost $4,000 dollars? That's a long dang time ago and makes the latest iPhone look cheap!

Guzzle some caffeine now and put on your thinking caps. Free copies of CLOSE CALL to everyone (okay, max of five winners) who gets 100% (without cheating). I'm counting on your integrity while taking the quiz and reporting your scores! 

Answers on the comments page.

We'll start with some matching. 

Match the number in the first column with the fact it goes with in the second column.

1. 340,000                     A. Percent of mobile phone malware aimed at Android users

2. 18                             B. Number of iPhones sold every day in 2012

3. 250,000                  C. Number of times the avg person unlocks her Smartphone each day

4. 110                                    D. Number of cell phones dropped in UK toilets every year

5. 100,000                    E. Percent more bacteria on cell phones than toilet handles

6. 99                             F. Number of separate patents for technologies in your Smartphone

Now for some true/false.

7. More people in the world have cell phones than have toilets. True or false?

8. Scientists have invented a way of charging mobile phones using urine. True or false?

And we'll finish with a couple of multiple choice.

9. Who invented the mobile phone?

         a) Anderson Cooper

         b) Martin Cooper

         c) Cooper Cronk

         d) Alexander Graham Bell

10. In what country is mobile phone throwing an official sport?

         a) Finland

         b) Ghana

         c) New Zealand

         d) All of the above

Tell us how you did (if you want to) on the comments page. 

Otherwise, when did you get your first cell phone? (I confess that I didn't get a Smartphone until this year.)

 Are you one of those people who suffer from nomophobia, the fear of being out of mobile phone contact, or are you just as happy to leave your phone at home?  

What's your biggest pet peeve about cell phones?

CLOSE CALL comes out in two days. Preorder now! 

HANK: Oh, dear, don’t even ask me. I actually, seriously, get nervous if I can’t find my phone on the first pawing through my purse. I know this is bad.  I am trying to calculate how often I unlock my cell phone each day, And I can’t. 

But hey, Reds and readers, how about you?

About Laura:
A retired Air Force intelligence officer, Laura DiSilverio is the national bestselling author of 19 mystery, suspense, and YA novels (including the Lefty- and Colorado Book Award-finalist Swift Investigations series, the Readaholics Book Club series, and the Mall Cop series). Her standalone suspense novel, The Reckoning Stones,was a Library Journal Pick of the Month and won the Colorado Book Award for Mystery in 2016. Incubation, the first book of her young adult dystopian trilogy debuted in April to rave reviews. A Past President of Sisters in Crime, she pens articles for Writer’s Digest, and teaches writing in various fora. She plots murders and parents teens in Colorado, trying to keep the two tasks separate.

CLOSE CALL

Living through the media shaming of a political sex when she was in college, Sydney Ellison fears notoriety above all. So when she stumbles onto a plot to assassinate a senator, she resists telling the police. Before she can make herself do the right thing, the hit man tracks her down and kills her fiancé.  Now a murder suspect and a killer's target, Sydney needs help. She reluctantly enlists the aid of an investigator, the estranged sister who betrayed her fifteen years earlier. Sydney must overcome her distrust and put all she has worked for on the line to stop the hit man and his employer before more people die.

“DiSilverio’s excellent plotting in her stand-alone thriller will keep readers on the edge of their seats rooting for Sydney to triumph. A treat for Megan Abbott fans.” (Library Journal, starred review)

Better to Give?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s a classic way to enrich and expand your characters’ personalities—what’s in their fridge? What’s in their wallet? What’s in their wastebasket?

But dear friend of Reds Laura DiSilverio has another idea. What gift do they give? And she’s giving YOU a prize—her brand new book AND a t-shirt--if you have the best answer.

Better to Give

    By Laura DiSilverio

Reading Rhys Bowen's recent post about her upcoming Molly book Away in the Manger, I realized that in my 15 published books, none has a Christmas scene. Not one. I plan to rectify that, but in the meantime, it got me thinking about the Readaholics and what Christmas would mean to each of them. 

Even though their new adventure, The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle, is set in August, I'm fast-forwarding them to Christmas and spying on their present buying.

         - Lola, with her limited budget and love of plants, gives everyone on her list (besides her Grandma and Axie), a vibrant poinsettia, or an amaryllis from her nursery, Bloomin' Wonderful.

        

- Brooke, the animal lover, tries to talk all her friends into adopting an aging dog or kitten (like this Misty-lookalike my daughter wanted a few years back) from Heaven Animal Haven and underwrites the adoption fee for them (since she married into the richest family in town).

      

   - Kerry, lover of all things practical and Heaven's part-time mayor, gives them each tickets to a singalong performance of The Messiah by the combined choirs of Heaven's churches and high schools, thereby killing three birds with one stone--increasing the audience for a town-sponsored event, boosting the coffers of Heaven's Arts Council, and giving them all a chance to celebrate the season together.

      

   -Maud gives all the Readaholics custom-made calendars constructed from photos her significant other Joe (a wildlife photographer) took of them and the beautiful areas surrounding Heaven, Colorado.       

-Amy-Faye, founder of the Readaholics, gives them all books (of course!), carefully hunted down at used bookstores and garage sales throughout the year. For Maud, she has two Helen MacInnes spy thrillers that she knows Maud has been looking for to complete her collection. For Lola, she found a signed copy of The Language of Flowers.  For Kerry, she got Nora Ephron's essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck (because Kerry has begun complaining in a humorous way about the downsides of aging now that she's closing in on fifty), and for Brooke she got the illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because they read the whole series together back before there even was a Readaholics book group.

Let's take it a step farther, now that we're thinking about characters and presents. What would your favorite literary character get that special someone on his or her Christmas list? I can see Hannibal Lecter gifting bottles of Chianti, or Jack Reacher tucking a toothbrush into a stocking.  Ishmael might wrap up that special bit of scrimshaw.  

I'm giving a copy of The Readaholics and the Poirot Puzzle plus a Readaholics T-shirt to the best comment (chosen with total capriciousness, so it might be for the funniest one or the most insightful, or simply the twenty-second one).

HANK: Books, books! Love this.  Charlotte McNally still gives All the President’s Men, she’s old school. Jane Ryland gives the Complete Sherlock Holmes, since she’s all about tracking down bad guys and solving crimes. She’s also giving subscriptions to MORE Magazine, because, yeah. Non-book gifts?  Hamlet is giving a Magic 8 ball, to help his friends decide at least. And Lady Macbeth? Hand sanitizer. 

Please, Reds.  You can do better.
And YAY! The Readaholics gets a starred review from Booklist! Laura, tell us everything!

***********

Laura DiSilverio is the author of the Swift Investigations and Mall Cop mystery series, as week as the standalone thriller THE RECKONING STONES and the new best-selling READAHOLICS series.

After twenty years as an Air Force intelligence officer – serving as a squadron commander, with the National Reconnaissance Office, and at a fighter wing – she retired to parenting and writing full-time.

Laura says: Spying was easier.

Will Sell Dreams for Food: a guest blog by Laura DiSilverio

 

Julia Spencer-Fleming:  Laura DiSilverio has a pretty high profile in the mystery world. She's the author of ten mystery novels, including the Mall Cop series for Berkley Prime Crime and the Swift Investigations humorous PI series for Minotaur. She teaches for MWA’s Mystery University, and serves as Vice-President of the National Board of Sisters in Crime (where our own Hank Phillippi Ryan is President!) 

But it wasn't until I met Laura in person that I realized how much we have in common. We're both Air Force brats. Like my husband Ross, the USAF was Laura's first career - she was an intelligence officer. We both left practical jobs to try our hand at writing and spend more time mothering. And, most significantly at this point in our lives, we're both dealing with teens and preteens at home. Which is why, when Laura said, "I want to write about the ridiculous ideas lofty goals my kids have for the future," I knew we had to have her here at JRW.

Will Sell Dreams for Food

My older daughter, 15, is planning for a career on Broadway. She takes voice and dance (musical theater and tap), sings with the school choir, performs in school plays, and spent six weeks this past summer working nine to five every day with the youth rep company she auditioned for last March. Her father and I watch all this with a certain degree of—shall we say?—trepidation.

We’re worried for her, that she’s aiming for a career where .0004 percent of the people who try to make it succeed (okay, I made that figure up, but I doubt it’s far off—it might even be generous), and she’s bound to meet with soul-eroding rejection while living on Ramen noodles, selling her blood plasma, and sharing a studio apartment with six roommates of dubious hygiene habits and countless cockroaches.

We’re worried for us, that we’ll empty our retirement funds to support her in NYC and she’ll return home at thirty, disillusioned and worn down, trashing her chances for more conventional employment by quoting Lady MacBeth at job interviews, and making it impossible for hubby and me to continue with our plan of getting frisky in every room of the house whenever we want and as loudly as we want once we’re empty nesters.

Must Be This Tall to Ride the Rollercoaster

Daughter the younger, newly turned 13, plans to attend Stanford on a volleyball scholarship, study engineering and architecture, and become both an architect and an Indian fast food restaurant billionaire. (She has long lamented that there are no fast food joints that serve Indian food and she’s planning to fill that gap.) This might all be more likely if she was taller than 5’3” since the average Stanford volleyballer looks to be about 6’3”. We don’t squelch this dream too hard because she’s got a decent shot at getting into Stanford on an academic scholarship and we’re in favor of the whole billionaire thing since she says she’ll support us.

The Parenting Dilemma

The parenting question we struggle with is this: How do you encourage kids to dream and follow their passions, and yet inject enough sanity into the process that they’re prepared to cope with failure and know when it’s time to try something else? Don’t look at me for the answer, ’cause I got nothin’, although I have been known to extol the benefits of a career as an actuary, mortician or IT specialist with benefits. If you’ve got good parenting advice on this topic, bring it on.

Dream On

This all made me think about having the courage to follow our dreams and passions, even the little ones. I spent twenty years in the Air Force, dreaming of being a novelist, and now that’s how I make my living. (Okay, it’s not much of a living. If I didn’t have a pension and a hubby with a good job, my children would be dreaming of secure careers as Wal-Mart greeters, rather than of Broadway, but if I were single I’d be able to afford Spam with my ramen noodles once a week.) I’m still working on my dreams of visiting every continent and learning to ballroom dance.

What about you? What dreams, seemingly ridiculous or hard to achieve, large or small, have you taken a stab at? Going blond? Getting a college degree? Climbing a mountain? Playing an instrument or learning a language? Pursuing a particular career? Are you glad you tried it or do you regret the time and effort you invested? 

Rev up those dreams, leave a comment and get a chance to win an Advance Reader Copy of Laura’s upcoming release, SWIFT RUN, or a copy of the book when it releases on 27 November!  As a fun bonus, check out the Minotaur Art blog, where art director David Rotstein shows us sketch by sketch how his team came up with SWIFT RUN's amusing cover.

Laura's also offering a chance to win an iPod Nano by commenting on an entry in the Courageous Moment essay contest on her blog, The Year of Living Courageously, between now and 14 November.

You can find out more about Laura and her books at her website and at her blog, The Year of Living Courageously. You can follow her on Twitter as @LauraDiSilverio and friend her on Facebook.