We recently connected with Erin Fitzgerald and have shared our conversation below.

Erin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later?

I’ve known I wanted to write since I was ten years old but wasn’t sure how I’d get from Point A to Point B. Studying journalism in college seemed like the answer, but instead I landed in the world of finance for a long stretch.

In what I call a “positive midlife crisis,” I hit forty and questioned everything I was doing with my life. It was plainly “Now or never,” because if I didn’t start somewhere, I wouldn’t at all. Yes, I wish I’d started earlier but I don’t think my brain was ready. I’d spent years writing snippets of stories, half-finished manuscripts with no resolution and no hope. It took my brain time to figure out whether there was a story worth telling and whether I could “close the loop.” So while I wish I’d started earlier, I also think it came full circle when I was ready.

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’m only half joking when I tell people I’m in the business of hope. Since I write contemporary and romantic suspense, there’s obviously a very strong relationship element in each of my stories (thus the romance genre). Somewhat accidentally, I found myself writing in my own age bracket (midlife/later in life) and found that I favored stories with deeply flawed characters. The whole redemption arc, often with a twist of suspense, has become something of my signature and there is nothing more encouraging than opening my DMs to find messages like “Your books have gotten me through chemo treatments,” or “When I read your characters–and they’re SO broken–it gives me hope that if they could sort things out and find their happily ever after, I can too.”

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Early on in this career, I learned the hard way that not everyone is benevolent or has your best interests at heart. I didn’t have many author friends yet and formed what I thought was a close relationship with an author who seemed similarly driven. It took a long time to realize the “helpful advice” I was receiving was actually holding me back. I hadn’t put nearly enough time into building a real social media presence or building a reader base, because this professional relationship kept me completely occupied–to the point nearly all my energy was being consumed trying to be supportive. It took walking away from that and putting into play *everything* I’d been advised to avoid before I started to see any real traction.

Do I have regrets over the time wasted? No. That was an incredibly valuable lesson, and perhaps the greatest motivation to push harder.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

In my own case, the resource was actually relationships. Relationships with like-minded people, both writers and readers, and when starting out I didn’t know where to find either of these groups. It took a real “Aha!” moment for me to realize that an entire reader community was out there on Instagram (Bookstagram) that I wasn’t tapping into at all. I wrote a script, researched my comp authors, then started targeting their followers, asking folks if they’d be interested in reading my most recent book. That ended up becoming the basis of my ARC (advance reader copy) and street teams, and as a result of establishing those teams I have seen demonstrable growth in the past year and-a-half.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.erinfitzgeraldwrites.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erinfitzgeraldwrites
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinfitzgeraldauthor
• Other: My “more personal” Facebook page is:

  https://www.facebook.com/ErinFitzGeraldWrites/