Catching The Trade Winds with Vicki Tyley

(Vicki Tyley is one of the Kindle success stories and I'm friends with her agent, so we've struck up a correspondence and she was kind enough to blurb The Skull Ring. I haven't read her new mystery Sleight Malice yet, but if it is anything like Thin Blood, you can expect taut, intimate drama with high command of language--and, hey, Australian isn't that different from English. I'm off on the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour, schedule in the sidebar. Welcome, Vicky, and thanks!)

Catching the Trade Winds

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Eight years ago, I threw off my bowlines and set sail for unknown literary shores. It’s been one hell of a journey but is that land I can see? I’m sure that island wasn’t charted when I set out. Technology is changing /has changed our world, and that includes the publishing world.

When I started writing, my dream – like most new writers’ – was to be a “published author.” I didn’t expect it to take so long. I was naive, but in hindsight I don’t think that’s a bad attribute to have when you start out. If I’d known that I’d write two novels, only to consign them to the bottom drawer, would I have even started? I don’t know. Would I have given up everything to write if I’d known that my third novel, Thin Blood, even though agented, would fail to sell in large part because most of the publishers refused to even look at the book? (“Americans don't want to read Australian mysteries,” my agent was told.) I don’t know.

But “would haves” don’t matter. It’s what I did that’s important. I just kept writing and my agent kept pitching my work to publishers. Six novels later, Thin Blood, the novel rejected by publishing house after publishing house, has sold in excess of 25,000 digital copies, peaking at #1 Mystery in the Kindle Store (#6 All Paid Kindle Books). Another novel, Sleight Malice, has just been released on Amazon and Smashwords and is selling well. None of which would’ve been possible without digital publishing.

With the rapid rate of technology innovation, who knows what tomorrow’s trade winds will bring. Are your sails up?

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