14 books in 13 years! WOW!

Welcome to the Hope Always Rises blog tour, sponsored by WOW! Women on Writing! This book by Kathie Giorgio is perfect for anyone who has ever known someone who wanted to end their life, or anyone who has ever felt that way themselves.

Kathie has also been generous enough to write her story of how to publish 14 books in 13 years. I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating and will want to take her advice in publishing your own books. Here’s Kathie:

14 BOOKS IN 13 YEARS

By Kathie Giorgio

I’m one of those writers, the ones who know from an early age what they want to do, and then they do it. I’m told I was telling stories before I could actually write, and then once I could write, that was all I wanted to do.

I sold my first short story at the age of 15. I’d written out the story of Christ in 1970’s slang (it was 1975). The only place I could think of to send it to was the Catholic Herald Citizen, who promptly divided it into four pieces and published it as a serial. I was thrilled!

Over the years, I sold many short stories and poems, but the novel remained elusive, much to my frustration. I went through a total of four agents before I gave up and decided to market my latest book myself. Not as a self-published book, but to the small presses. I never ever believed that a writer should pay to have their own work published. We’ve already done the work by writing…we should be paid for it.

It took me just under a year, but I placed that first novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, in 2009 and it was released in 2010, when I was fifty years old. From my first story at fifteen to my first novel at fifty was quite the roller coaster ride. But what happened then was incredible – 13 more books, for a total of 14, in 13 years. 7 novels, 2 short story collections, 4 poetry collections, and 1 collection of essays. The years of publication: 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2 in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2 in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Looking at those years, even though I experienced it, even my eyes boggle. So how did I do it?

First, let’s look at the hard stuff. The internal stuff, the attitude. This is what you have to do – and feel – if you want to produce books in a timely manner.

Determination

Never give up. Give every idea a chance. You often hear that writers have to have a thick skin, and that’s absolutely right. But I modify that. When the hard hits come – and they will – give yourself no more than 48 hours to sulk. But do give yourself the 48 hours. It’s human to feel like the world is against you, or worst, that the world might be right and you should never have taken up writing at all. But at the end of that 48 hours, get back to work. Send the poem, story, novel, memoir, essay out again. I never give up on a piece until it’s been rejected 10 times. Then I look at it again, make modifications if necessary, and send it back out.

Discipline

Take a hard look at your schedule and figure out when you can write. Recognize that it doesn’t have to be a big block of time. I have students who write on their lunch hours and coffee breaks. Others write while they take the bus or train back and forth to work. Some, who know they would never stick with an early morning or late night schedule, instead get up and write for a half-hour before their alarm would normally go off, and they stay up a half-hour later, thus getting in a full hour of writing every day, but not missing that much sleep. Dump the idea that you have to write for hours and hours at a time. There is time in everyone’s schedule. I’ve produced these books and stories and poems and essays all while running my studio, AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, teaching an average of 85 hours a week. It can be done.

Work hard!

As I work with students, I wait for the moment when they turn to me with wide eyes and say, “This is hard work!” YES! All of the representations of writers staring dreamily into space, receiving gifts from their muses, and smiling before, during, and after writing is a fallacy. Writing is hard work. Don’t expect it to come easy.

Now, let’s look at the actual timing of my books. There was a method to my madness.

By the time I sold The Home For Wayward Clocks, it had been making the rounds for three years, counting the time with two agents and then with just me. By the time I sold the book, I already had the next book, a short story collection called Enlarged Hearts, written. The Home For Wayward Clocks was in production for a year, and as soon as it came out, I turned over Enlarged Hearts to the publisher. For the year that Clocks was in production, and then the year that Hearts was in production, I was writing the next book, Learning To Tell (A Life)Time, the sequel to Clocks. So this means we have:

2011: The Home For Wayward Clocks (novel)

2012: Enlarged Hearts (short story collection)

2013: Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (novel)

But while it looks like I was writing a book a year, I wasn’t. I spent the two years leading up to the releases of Clocks and Hearts on Lifetime. Clocks actually took me 3 years to write, Hearts took 2 years, and Lifetime took 2 years. Then we have a passage of 2 years, before we have:

2015: Rise From The River (novel)

2 years to write River. When River came out, I’d just started on the next book, and I knew by then that I typically take at least 2 years to write a book. But I wanted something out sooner than that, and so I compiled many of my short stories that appeared in literary magazines, plus some “never before seen’s”. I also put together a poetry chapbook. Consequently, we then have:

2016: Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories of Kathie Giorgio and

True Light Falls In Many Forms (poetry chapbook)

Two books out in 2016, that I already had written. Which then gave me from 2015 to 2017 for:

2017: In Grace’s Time (novel)

And again, I was working on the next novel, but knew it would be 2 years before it was done. But something weird happened, that I did not plan. At the very end of 2016, I started  writing a blog. It was the result of my being assaulted which led to a pretty deep depression. I began to write a blog called “Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News”, in which I put down one moment a day that made me happy. 2017 was a challenging year, starting with the assault, then my husband losing his job twice, my daughter being so severely bullied, we had to move her to a new high school, and my being diagnosed with breast cancer. The blog became very popular, and at the end of the year (I’d vowed to write in it every day for a year), my followers said, “Kathie, it’s going to be a book, isn’t it?” And my publisher said, “Kathie, it’s going to be a book, isn’t it?” And so we have:

2018: Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Collection of Spontaneous  

          Essays

A book which was already written.

Now, while I’d been writing the blog, and in the year Today’s Moment was in production, I worked on yet another novel. I also put together another poetry chapbook. Which meant we then go to:

2019: If You Tame Me (novel) and

When You Finally Said No (poetry chapbook)

Whew. Now again, by the time these two books came out, I was working on another novel. But I needed the usual 2 years to get it done. So while working on the novel, I compiled my poetry that had not been published in the two chapbooks and put them into a full-length collection of poetry. So we have:

2020: No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (poetry collection)

Which meant I had from 2019 to 2021 to put out my next novel:

2021: All Told (novel)

And then, while I finished my next novel, which just came out this past February, I put out another poetry chapbook, written about my daughter Olivia:

2022: Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku (poetry chapbook)

Which brings us to now, when I had from 2021 to 2023 to write my most recent novel, novel #7, book #14:

2023: Hope Always Rises (novel)

And that’s how I published 14 books in 13 years, all with traditional presses, starting at the age of 50.

It always pays to think outside of the box. While you’re working on your next book, what do you have already written that could be put into a collection? And also, always, always, always write the short stuff. Short stories, poems, essays, short memoir; appearing in magazines and anthologies builds up your writing resume, your reputation, and your readership. Throughout these 13 years, I was consistently publishing in magazines and anthologies. My name was always out there somewhere.

And yes, I am already working on my next novel. 15 books in 14 years? We’ll see.

I hope this helps. Don’t ever give up.

About the Book

In Heaven, there is a gated community for those who end their lives by choice. This is a complete surprise to Hope, who ends her life one morning on the banks of the Fox River in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Hope has always dealt with deep sadness. From childhood on, she visited therapists, doctors, alternative medicine practitioners, Reiki artists, etc., to no avail. In Heaven, God reassures her that he knows what caused the sadness, but he won’t reveal it yet.

All community residents are required to attend weekly group therapy. Hope’s first group is led by Virginia Woolf. Several of the book’s chapters tell the stories of other members of this group.

Filled with many moments of striking humor, uplifting realizations, and difficult challenges, Hope finds her way in Heaven. She meets many people like herself, who help her restore her forgotten artistic talent and passion, and God himself, who is amazingly human in the most inhuman of ways. Hope finds understanding and forgiveness, and most importantly, friends.

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

ISBN-10: 1685132421

ISBN-13: 978-1685132422

ASIN: B0BV36PQKL

Print length: 342 pages

Purchase a copy of Hope Always Rises by visiting Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.org. Make sure you also add Hope Always Rises to your Goodreads reading list.

About Author Kathie Giorgio

Kathie Giorgio is the author of seven novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and four poetry collections. Her latest novel, Hope Always Rises, will be released on February 28, 2023. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize.  In a recent column, Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, listed Giorgio as one of the top 21 Wisconsin writers of the 21st century. Kathie is also the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC, an international creative writing studio.