By Dan White – Special to the Sydenham Current
For this column, I interviewed local writer Marcy Kennedy-Saylor.
I met Marcy through the Wallaceburg Concert Band, where she plays flute, and recently discovered that she is a writer. Marcy knew long ago that she wanted to be a writer, and in 2016 she launched her writing career.
Marcy is a Wallaceburg girl, growing up and living on a farm just outside of town. She has lived all of her life within a kilometer of where she and her husband now reside. Marcy was very clear that she does not farm; she has a massive garden but doesn’t even like gardening. She happens to love the food that comes from it.
Marcy went to Western, where she received the “made-up” degree of Social Psychology. A degree that she tailored to her planned career as a writer. She took the widest array of courses she could to foster the broadest base of knowledge she could imagine to assist her in her career. After her undergrad, she pursued her Master’s in Theology where she “learned more about grammar and editing than in any undergrad writing course.”
Upon graduating, she tried a stint as a grant writer but found it too dry and static for her. She wrote for a magazine for a few years as she launched her career as a developmental editor. As an editor, she was able to hone her skills as she assisted other writers in identifying plot holes, inconsistencies, and generally troubleshooting their works prior to going to print.
Marcy was in her 10th year of this career when her husband became seriously ill, and she was struggling with a health concern of her own. While she always knew that editing, while satisfying, wasn’t fulfilling her purpose, it would be this health crisis that would be the catalyst for her launching her own writing career in 2016. Prior to that moment, she always had a floating goal of what event would signal the time she would focus on what she truly needed to do: after the summer, after this event, after that deadline. It was a crisis that forced her to evaluate her goals and determine to create a living from creating her own novels.
Marcy has now penned six non-fiction books in a series called The Busy Writers Guides for people trying to fit writing in around a, well, busy life. She views these works as giving back to the writing community. Marcy has also written a fantasy novel with two more on the way, but by far her most prolific genre is cozy mystery. Technically, cozy mystery is a subgenre. Wikipedia defines it as “a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence occur offstage, the detective is an amateur sleuth, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.” For this writing, Marcy changes to a pen name, Emily James.
Marcy chose the alternate name to assist readers in easily identifying the genre, and if I had been on the ball, I would have asked her why she chose that specific name. The writer has penned 20 books in this genre, with the 21st due out this month. There are three series with 13 books in the first series, The Maple Syrup Mystery series, 5 in the second, the Cupcake Truck Mysteries, and 3 in the current series, the Cat and Mouse Whodunnit series. Marcy noted that each series has a sleuth that is in each book, and she writes until she feels that the character has wrapped up their story.
Marcy can spend as little as 30 minutes writing in a day when appointments and other commitments take priority, to several hours at her computer. She structures her stories prior to beginning the writing process so she knows where the story will twist and turn and how it will end. This allows her to stay focused and not waste time staring at the screen wondering what will happen next.
On a good day, she can write 3,000 words, and if all goes smoothly, she can generate a novel from start to finish in two months.
Her inspiration stems from a desire to provide “clean fiction,” creating a novel that avoids offensive writing or subject matter which falls in line with her personal values. She noted that “we create to impact the world. The first reason we create is not monetary; it is to give others freedom from a moment in their lives or change something we see in the world.” It is an altruistic goal, but that is what truly creative people strive for – to make a difference.
Marcy is self-published and does all of her own marketing and promotion. Fortunately, her experience as an editor has assisted her in navigating the process of what needs to be done to create a finished, marketable product. Like all things of value, it takes a great deal of work and perseverance, and a huge learning curve. Like many creative projects, the writer can see very little return on their creation if they take a traditional route to the market.
Marcy noted that selecting a traditional publisher to print and promote your work will result in 75% of all revenue being directed to that publisher, and if you have an agent helping you negotiate (and taking another slice), you can walk away with as little as 10% of the profits. It is amazing how many people want to dip their hands into the bank accounts of creative people and siphon off the revenue for the mundane tasks of post-creation. While these tasks are essential to any level of success, with grit and determination, artists can retain a reasonable share of the profit from their creation, now more than ever before, by learning those skills.
To be clear, this isn’t about a get-rich scheme but rather a value for the work of a creative person and an ability by that person to create a reasonable standard of living.
If you would like to support this local artist, you can find her Cozy Mysteries at https://authoremilyjames.com/book-tag/cozy-mystery/ or search for her books on your favorite retailer or Amazon. She even has audiobooks which she is now producing.
Next up – a place where you can self-publish right here in The Burg!
