We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eileen Stephenson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eileen below.

Eileen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

My favorite literary genre was always historical fiction, and generally the older the time period, the better. My favorite topics within that genre were English history and Roman history. I sometimes thought about trying my hand at writing historical fiction, but there already seemed to be an over abundance of writers in my favorite areas so I set that idea aside.

My day job was a lengthy drive from home so to relieve the tedium I turned to audiobooks from the library. One day, unable to find anything else that looked interesting, I picked up “A Short History of Byzantium” by John Julius Norwich. The intro to the book ended with the author saying “there are many things you can say about the Byzantines, but boring is not one of them.” That seemed a little ridiculous to me, at least until I had finished the book!

I was soon searching for information about the Byzantines everywhere, mostly books but also websites. One website gave a lengthy history of a fascinating 11th century Byzantine woman named Anna Dalassena. As I was sitting reading her life story it was almost as if someone was tapping on my shoulder saying “This is who you are supposed to be writing about.”

The first thing I needed to do after finding my heroine was buy some bookcases to accommodate all my research materials. I also took writing classes at a local facility, The Writers Center. I bought a laptop and eked out my first dozen pages. Joined the Historical Novel Society and began attending their conferences. I also found an editor/cover designer who nursed my dreams along.

I learned that the publishing industry would not be interested my novels (Sadly, the Byzantines have not been a popular era for their readers.). So I travelled the route of indie publishing, helped by many others who have gone before me. I admit that while I have sold over 20,000 copies of my four books, I haven’t gotten into the black yet. Even so, the journey has been worth it!

Eileen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My books are about the Byzantines, a civilization that is too often denigrated by historians. It is also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, surviving the Western Roman Empire by 1,000 years. It was, at times, powerful or weak, holy or corrupt, brutal or benevolent, wealthy or poverty-stricken. What contrasts could provide better story material?

I have spoken at book clubs and with a meeting of a local numismadic society focused on Byzantine coins where I discussed the effects of currency devaluation.

For readers who love historical fiction but may have read enough of western Europe, the Byzantines have more than enough material to keep you fascinated for years!

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

Building a presence on social media has been critical to my success at selling my books.

I first started out on Facebook, randomly looking for people who were interested in Byzantine history and found a Roman and Byzantine History group! Later on I discovered more than a few other groups focused on them. I didn’t approach the groups as just a “Buy my book!” troll. That’s one way to get kicked out of the groups! I started out by contributing to them, making comments on posts other people made. I let people get to know me and respect that when I commented on something, they could be confident I knew what I was talking about.

Later, I got onto Twitter/X. That’s an easy platform for low cost ads. I use BookBrush to create images to advertise my books there and on Facebook. There are also Byzantine groupies on X, and random other people there who have my same interests in ancient and medieval history. Also, Byzantine X has fewer discussions that descend into the acrimonious than most other topics!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an indie writer is developing many different skills to write, publish and market my books. There’s a lot more to publishing a book than most people realize.

Proofreading is most important and sometimes you can get through 4 different proofreaders and the last one finds a mistake on your first page (true story!).

Word count. Developmental edit. Copy edit. Cover design. Ad software (like BookBrush). Formatting books for e-copies and print copies. Navigating Amazon’s changing terms & conditions. All of these areas can be a challenge to learn, but are important for the quality of the product your produce.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://eileenstephenson.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eileen.stephenson.847083
• Twitter: https://x.com/byzyeileen

Image Credits

Eileen Stephenson