Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to J.G. MacLeod. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, J.G. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

As an author, I made the decision to take a risk with each project to force myself out of my comfort zone and develop new skills with my craft. My first book, Abalone, was semi-autobiographical. I wrote a fictional version of my life story, which contained a lot of traumatic moments. It was risky to publish this, since I knew it would expose difficult areas of my life, and reveal key people who were involved in those moments. Still, I knew I was stagnating in my life, because I was holding onto these painful memories. By purging them, I was finally able to get past the ‘block’, freeing me to write any sub-genre I wanted. Thus, began the challenge to myself to take a risk each time I wrote something. With my next 3 novels, The Adventures of Lady Ellen Montagu series, the risk was to write about historical people from places I had visited, and work their lives into one larger story. It was a big undertaking, and ended up spanning two continents and four suitors for my main character. The major challenge with writing about real people is there are limits to how creative one can be with their life story. I vowed to write my next arc about something I would have complete control over. My Future Bride series was the result. I combined my daughter’s karate competitions, research into my own family tree, and my love of hiking into a trilogy that some say is a mashup of Outlander, Leap Year, and Frankenstein. This story was the most fun to write, because there were no boxes to try to fit into. My risk to try new things has paid off, and I feel satisfied with the lessons I’ve learned as a result.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always been a writer. From a young age, I wrote stories at school, at home, in the car, and on family holidays. Now, I am a published author of nine books, all integrating an aspect of Romance with a ‘Happy Ever After’ conclusion. I am a secondary school, English teacher by day, so reading and writing have been integral to my career for the past twenty-two years. Publishing was not a great leap, and more of a natural branching off point. I also offer professional beta reading and editing services through Fiverr. In addition, I am an active member of the writing community on X, and because I’ve had success with marketing my novels on there, and using their paid advertising feature, I also offer marketing services for authors through Fiverr. While my promotional assistance can never guarantee sales, it does boost their book’s visibility, and often leads to sales and/or Kindle Unlimited page reads. I try to teach new authors various strategies to get more eyes on their work. It’s been well received, and I am always booked.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I have grown my audience on X slowly, and organically, over the past 6 years. I now have a following of 96k, and spend time nurturing the relationships I’ve gained on that platform on a daily basis. My advice is to see it as a long game, and to never forget that these are real people, and not numbers. I interact with the writing community in many ways, including answering questions, promoting other’s content, contributing to writer’s lifts, sharing my success stories, and offering snippets of my writing. My growth has been slow and steady. I respect other’s boundaries and I advise new members of the platform not to jump into people’s DMs uninvited. While this may be common practice on other SM platforms, it isn’t on X and is considered spam. I recommend people ‘tweet’ at least 2-3 times a day, and reply to other posts to build a brand/presence.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

While my side hustle isn’t my full-time career yet, I have set a date of two years for retiring from teaching. This is because I started out as an author, and soon noticed areas where my skills from over two decades in teaching could be used to create more income opportunities. These include beta reading, editing, and book marketing. I created a profile on Fiverr and created gigs related to my specific skill set. I soon found that I was regularly booked and had a long queue waiting to use my services. I was unable to assist everyone, due to my day job, which is when I started planning to retire from teaching early and commit to writing, editing, and marketing full time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jgmacleod.com/
• Twitter: https://x.com/jgmacleodauthor
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@j.g.macleodauthor3830
• Other: Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/J.-G.-MacLeod/author/B07F25Z73T?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

  Fiverr Book Marketing: https://www.fiverr.com/s/Ld3vag0