You spend years working toward the publication of your book. Take writing classes. Attend workshops. Mingle at literary conferences. Develop your craft. Work with a writing coach. Write the manuscript. Hire an editor. Revise and rewrite. Build a website and blog every week. Grow an audience platform. Write reviews of books by authors you admire. Polish a proposal. Query agents. Receive rejection after rejection. And you wonder if it will stop hurting so much if you simply give up now. When you get a “no” it hurts. You doubt yourself. You question whether the book you’ve written is any good. You wonder if you’ve been suffering from grandiose delusions about your own talents. When you reread the latest rejection letter a few days later, you might see a glimmer of hope. The agent complimented your writing but didn’t think it was right for them or didn’t think they were the right person to sell the project. So maybe, you think, it’s not you or your writing but simply this wasn’t the right agent. Or maybe the agent is right about an insufficient audience platform, the lack of character development, or the first 10 pages didn’t have a strong enough hook. And you go back to work. You struggle to improve the manuscript. Tighten the narrative arc. Deepen the characters. Figure out a way to repackage the project. Submit essays, poems, or short stories for publication in literary journals or popular magazines. Give readings of your work-in-progress. Expand your social network.…

“Caught Between Worlds is a fantastic story set in Iraq in 1980 about a kidnapping—except instead of a kid, it’s his father who is taken hostage when war breaks out with Iran. Tom O’Hara’s father is taken by armed militants shortly after they move to Baghdad. Grieving the loss of his mother a year ago, Tom relies on his memories of her, an anthropology professor, and their mutual interest in Alexander the Great who appears to Tom as a guide. With the help of his new friend Mikhail and a dog named Ursa, Tom rescues his father and learns the power of friendship which transcends religious or cultural differences. A page-turner with a terrific plot twist.” – Jill Swenson Therese has been a voracious reader since early childhood. Heaven, as she saw it, was discovering the Carnegie Library in walking distance of her Springfield, Illinois, home. Her father’s sisters and her mother were readers and tale-tellers. Her two grandfathers were instrumental in forming her core value that everyone can hold their own beliefs and still get along, a central theme of her writing. Therese’s connection to the Arab culture came from her Iraqi husband, whom she met in college, and his family. As soon as they met, she started reading everything she could on Iraq. When she opened a conversation with him based on her reading, he often said: “Really? How do you know that?” He spent his youth dreaming of America. She dove into Iraqi culture and cooking as if…

Who are your readers? They are not your family and friends. And don’t expect them to buy the book when it comes out. Unless they are in it. And that might not always be a good thing. Who are the people who don’t know you and will be pulled to your book enough to take money out of their pocket to buy it so they can read it? Do you know who those people are? They are book-buying customers. If not, it’s time to get to know them. The whole point of getting published is to be read. It IS about the readers. What will they think of it? How will they respond? As an author you can’t pretend you aren’t writing to a reader. Imagine who that is. Who are you talking to as the narrator of your book? What do you want them to think, feel, and do as a result of reading your book? When I coach radio journalists, I encourage them to identify their listeners. To whom exactly are they telling the story? If they can’t picture the specific person they are speaking to in a conversational manner, then they sound like the sing-songy news readers we all hate and tune out. Your writing will be stronger when you write to a specific audience. Let’s face it. Most of us don’t have time to read many books anymore. Buying a book is a luxury, not a necessity in most cases. If readers buy a book, they…