HANK
PHILLIPPI RYAN: Is there anything more fabulously rite-of-passage than the
publication of a FIRST BOOK? Happiest of book birthday days—well, next Tuesday
but who’s counting and always good to be prepared—to our dear and beloved Grace Topping, a loyal Sister in Crime (and VP of the Chessie chapter!) and a great pal and wonderful person.
Her terrific
new STAGING IS MURDER will soon be coming to bookstores near you—and look at
that great cover.
Standing
ovation!
And Grace,
ever thoughtful and analytical, has been thinking about how she got to today.
She’s an overnight success—if overnight is ten years. And now she’s generously
revealing what she learned along the way.
Things I Had to Learn on the Way to Publication
Sitting in
the audience at a Malice Domestic conference, I heard members of a mystery panel
agree that it took them about ten years to be published. Ten years! Fortunately, I was hearing that years after I started
writing; otherwise, I might have given up then and there. But here I am with my
first book coming out April 30—ten years after I started it.
What took
me so long? Like the members of that panel, I had things to learn.
I had to
learn how to write a mystery. Working in IT, I spent years writing lean, boring
material like procedures for operating banking systems. Ho hum. Good skills to
have, but hardly the stuff mysteries are made of—unless you count the time I
wanted to murder the person who changed a system I’d worked overtime to
document. Good to learn early about motives.
To learn
how, I took an online class through my community college on how to write a
mystery. I wouldn’t have gotten far without it. It gave me a solid foundation
for the mystery I wrote. Unfortunately, my first draft was only 45,000 words.
Remember what I said about writing lean?
I had to
learn not to go it alone. I heard about Sisters in Crime and the online
chapter, the Guppies, and joined. The Guppies gave me an uncritical support
group that cheered me on. It also linked me with some beta readers who let me
know what worked in my manuscript and what didn’t. The Guppies also enabled me
to take more classes and learn about the benefits of attending conferences like
Malice Domestic, Sleuthfest, and Crime Bake, where I made supportive friends
who helped me on the path to publication.
I had to
learn not to give up and revise, revise, revise. I continued to take classes
and read every book I could get my hands on about writing fiction. Every time I
learned something new, I revised my manuscript and created a new version. As I
got closer to publication, I stopped counting at version 38. Did I neglect to
say that I was too stubborn to give up?
I had to
learn it’s not a race. That was a hard one to learn as I watched writers who
started out when I did go on to write a number of books, while I still flogged
the same one. In my mystery, Staging is
Murder, I had created Laura Bishop, a woman starting a new career midlife
as a home stager. After bringing her to life, I refused to bury her in a bottom
drawer.
I had to
learn to celebrate small accomplishments—my accomplishments and those of
others, and how much pleasure can be gained from helping other writers succeed.
I had to
learn not to become demoralized by rejections. That was a really hard one.
I had to
learn that getting an agent isn’t a guaranteed path to publication and that
sometimes no agent is better than one who let’s you languish for five
years—half of my ten-year journey to publication. But I never said I was a fast
learner—just a slow and steady one.
I had to
learn to take chances, like leaving that agent and signing with a very small agency.
That move paid off, and my new agent sold my book in two months to one of my
dream publishers. Sometimes dreams do come true.
So please
celebrate with me, on my tenth anniversary of writing fiction, the publication
of my mystery, STAGING IS MURDER.
What have you learned on the way to
meeting a goal?
HANK: Grace, I think your suggestions are perfect! And
hurray! Grace will give away a signed copy of STAGING IS MURDER to one lucky
commenter!
Laura Bishop just nabbed her first decorating
commission—staging for sale a 19th century mansion that hasn’t been
updated for decades. But when a body falls from a laundry chute and lands at
Laura’s feet, removing flowered wallpaper becomes the least of her duties. To clear her young assistant of the
murder and save her fledgling business, Laura’s determined to find the killer.
Turns out it’s not as easy as renovating a manor home, especially with two
handsome men complicating her mission: the police detective assigned to the
case and the real estate agent trying to save the manse from foreclosure. Worse still, the meddling of a
horoscope-guided friend, a determined grandmother, and the local funeral
director could get them all killed before Laura props the first pillow.
Grace Topping is a recovering technical writer and IT project manager, accustomed to
writing lean, boring documents. Let loose to write fiction, she is now creating
murder mysteries and killing off characters who remind her of some of the
people she dealt with during her career. Fictional revenge is sweet. She’s
using her experience helping friends stage their homes as inspiration for her
Laura Bishop mystery series. The first book in the series, STAGING IS MURDER, is about a woman starting a new career
midlife as a home stager. Grace is the current vice president of the Chesapeake
Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a member of the SINC Guppies and Mystery
Writers of America. She lives with her husband in Northern Virginia.
To learn
more about Grace, visit her at
