Helen O'Reilly's Spunky Blog
Reading, for me, leads to writing, as day leads into night and night back into day; they are halves of a whole. I was one of those kids who cracked the code early; I've been reading since I was three, and the writing came later once I'd learned to hold a pencil, but when it came, it really burst forth. Everything a working writer does I have done-- I have written and published everything, from corporate annual reports, to radio ads, children's poetry, -fiction and -non-fiction, to memoir and now, my first novel for adults. Spunk, a Fable is a lot like me; "just dirty enough."
Area Woman, 60, “Not Dead Yet,” Pens Novel, Spunk, a Fable
Any author who self-publishes may dream of being "plucked from obscurity" and elevated to fame and riches upon the mere publication of his or her book, but most of those who do will be sorely disappointed. (Fame and wealth may come to a few lucky writers, but I read somewhere that even a New York Times bestselling author only earns about $50,000 a year from his or her writing.) You have to write because you can't not write.
So when, at the age of 60, I self-published my first adult novel after a long career as a children's poet (among other things), I had to get resourceful. Fortunately, that's one thing Over-50s have in abundance; resourcefulness. Here's how I launched myself as a book marketer. This press release has resulted in several radio and print interviews already.
Area Woman, 60, “Not Dead Yet,” Pens Novel, Spunk, a Fable;
Book Rebuts Feminist's Claim Men Are Doomed
August 19, 2013
Las Vegas, NV— When it hit bookshelves in the fall of 2012, journalist Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (Riverhead, 2012) provoked debate about her premise that men are obsolete, and that women are becoming the dominant sex. “It certainly got me thinking,” says Las Vegas author Helen O’Reilly. Thinking and writing; O’Reilly’s resulting novel, Spunk, a Fable, just released (Createspace, 2013), and it’s available in paperback and kindle versions from Amazon.com.
“As a heterosexual woman who has married two of them, buried one of them, and given birth to three of them—men, that is—the idea of a world without men irked me. Of course that’s not literally what Rosin’s book is about. But after all, technology has now made it possible to start with a cell, replace its DNA, and cut papa out of the picture. I began to think about the kind of world that would create, and Spunk, a Fable was the result. Eventually.”
Having published myriad titles the traditional way, for Scholastic, Inc. and others, O’Reilly was well aware of the perilous health of the modern publishing industry. “I spent about twenty minutes feeling like a victim: ‘Oh, publishing dies just as I finish my first novel.’ Then I decided to take advantage of what was killing traditional publishing—self-publishing—and became my own publisher.
Living and writing in Las Vegas, NV, O’Reilly works as a book editor for a specialized small press. Her previous titles include The Secret of Willow Ridge, and The Soul Workout, for Central Recovery Press, and A Poem a Day, for Scholastic.
“I think I’m a typical Baby Boomer; we keep thinking of new things we want to try, and don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. I’m also a classic Las Vegan. This is the land of re-invention. I’ve entered my third act now, as a novelist. I've become what I always wanted to be when I grew up.”
Contact: Helen O’Reilly
email: helenhavlin@hotmail.com
website:
(702) 465-5759
(702) 493-7781
(702) 476-1993
http://helenhavlin.wix.com/spunky
