So let's start at the beginning. How did you get started writing?

Well, I, I didn't write my first words until I was 35 years old. So I got started late, which I would not recommend to people. I recommend starting a little earlier. I kind of wasted ten years. During the nineteen eighties, I had a little voice in my head that was telling me to write, and I didn't know what that was at the time. I didn't understand it. I now know that every writer has a little voice in their head telling them to write. They're actually born with that little voice in the head that tells them to write.

Now it doesn't tell you how to write and didn't tell you what to write, but it does tell you, that I need you to sit down and I need you to write. But I ignored it until the summer of nineteen ninety. And when I did that, I decided at that time to write a novel. And I sat down and I wrote a book, and it took me twelve months to write it. And I wrote what I knew. Now, subsequently, I teach writing. I've taught about 3,500 students around the country in writing, and I will tell you that writing what you know is extremely bad advice. Do not write what you know.

No. Instead, write what you love. If what you know and what you love are the same thing, fine. But if it's not, pick the one you love. I didn't. I wrote a legal thriller. And, of course, at the time in 1990, legal thrillers were really hot. That was really going high.

And it was about six inches, seven inches thick, which tells you how bad it was. It's not supposed to be that big. It was a 70,000 words, and it was horrendous. It's a good story just told horribly, but it's the only manuscript I kept. It's the only one I have. I've written 27, and it's the only one I've kept because it's the best thing I'll ever write in my life. And you know why? It's because I started it, and I finished it.

Oh.

Ninety percent of all writers do not finish what they start, but I finished it. Well, over the course of the next eleven years, I wrote seven more manuscripts. So I wrote eight manuscripts over twelve years. Finally, five of those went to New York publishing houses. They were rejected 85 times. I made it on the eighty sixth time twelve years after I started, and that was The Amber Room in 02/2003. And now here we are 26 novels later, and I get to keep doing it. So I had a very long process to get here, but it was worth it in the end.

Yeah. That's incredible. So you've been writing eleven, twelve years submitting manuscripts before you had one picked up. Correct. And you said you had five submitted to

Five went to New York houses. Yeah. They were rejected by at that time, there were 17 New York publishing houses. Today, there are four. So it shows you the what's changed. So there are, they were rejected 85 times. I made it the eighty sixth time finally.

Wow. So you had an agent at that point when you're submitting?

I was fortunate enough to get an agent, which is incredible because getting an agent is just harder, harder than getting a publisher. Yeah. But for some reason, Pam Ahern in New Orleans took me, and she stuck with me do a through 85 rejections. She was there all the way through. Why she stuck with me, I have no idea. She should have fired me long ago. But, she told me later, she said, that I just had a feeling we were gonna make it one day. I thought we were gonna make it.

You were you were determined, and I wanted to be there when you did it. And so she, she she did it. And now she gets 15% of my first ten novels for the for eternity. Yeah.

So that's incredible persistence. And you were working, at that time, I imagine you were Yeah.

I was a lawyer. Yeah. I was working as a lawyer full time. I would go to the office at 06:30 in the morning, and I would write from around, you know, 06:30 to about nine. And I wrote I wrote probably thirteen, fourteen manuscripts that way. I I did the first eight books after I was published that way. No one actually saw me write a word. You know, I I was alone when I wrote.

So, that was the way it was until about book nine, somewhere in that neighborhood.

And so when you're you've got an agent, you've done eight books, five of them have been rejected, you keep submitting. How do you have, like, the persistence or, I guess, the self esteem to keep going with that

Well, it wasn't easy. I'm I'm not gonna fool you, and I'm not a Superman. I quit about three times during that period, but I credit the little voice in my head. The little voice would come back after a few days and say, okay. The pity party's over. Let's get back to work now. Let's go to work. So and and it did.