We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matthew Lasley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Matthew, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think that success is a word that is often oversimplified by society. If you become the best or famous or make a lot of money, that is considered success by many. We set the bar high and anything less is failure. Yet, that is not true. Or at least not celebrated. It creates a world where we do not celebrate the individual and the hurdles they overcome. And it is often those that have reason to celebrate that don’t because there is always someone else who can do it a little bit better or even a lot better, so we have self doubt if we are really successful. We end up with imposter syndrome.
This is only amplified today by devaluing success by making sure everyone wins. We hand out trophies and awards for impersonal things that in the end undermine the value of achievement.
Despite the pressures the world puts on us and we doubly put on ourselves because of the world, success is very personal.
When I was a kid, suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, I didn’t learn to read until I was in third grade. Nothing miraculous happened, I just decided I didn’t want to be called lazy or stupid anymore. When I learned to read, I set a goal of publishing a book one day and seeing it on the shelf.
Fast forward 34 years and I would finally see that goal. Was it a number one best seller? No. Did I become famous? No. Did I make a lot of money? LOL No!
But that does not take away from my success. I had accomplished my goal. It was mine. Not the worlds. Mine.
34 years of doubt, self defeat and “failures”. Or were they?
When I became serious about writing, I sat down and committed over a year to writing my first real novel. When I shared it with a friend who was a librarian, she asked me if I had ever read “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen. I had not, but my story was there. Anyone reading my manuscript and had read “Hatchet” would have accused me of plagiarism.
I was so frustrated and angry that I had spent all that time on this story only to find it wasn’t as original as I thought. And I did what every great writer did, I gave up. Every story has been told, so why even try.
It would take me a few years to pick up a pen and write again. And when I did, I realized something. My story, so similar to “Hatchet” didn’t take away from my ability to write or my success. Instead, I had to turn and think about it differently. I had written an award winning best selling book. Unfortunately, someone else had beaten me to it.
When I looked at it that way, it bolstered my confidence and helped me start again. When I changed my thoughts from failure to success, it helped me become better and find more success.

Matthew, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Late in 2017, I sold my first picture book manuscript. Strangely, it was my first submission of my first book and it was accepted! It often takes hundreds of rejections of dozens of manuscripts before you find the first home for your story, but I was lucky. Luck is another tricky word. I had put in the effort and it was really someone else believing in me enough to pass my idea on to someone they knew that was searching for what I was writing. In February 2019, my story, “Pedro’s Pan: A Gold Rush Story” was published. In approximately 16 months of me selling my picture book manuscript, it was on bookstore shelves. Again, this was amazing. It can take 2-3 years if not longer to publish a picture book and mine was done in half that time! Again I was lucky.
“Pedro’s Pan” was a success for the publisher and I enjoyed seeing my dream come true. I enjoyed seeing friends and family and fans taking pictures of my book when they found it.
As I put things together to do school visits and interviews, I came to realize why my story was successful, not to the publisher, but for me. I had poured myself into the story. I had drawn upon my own experiences and that is what gave the story life. It is what helped it resonate with readers, that and amazing illustrations by Jacob Souva.

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

I have continued to write and in 2021, I sold my second picture book, “Max & Ed Bike to Nome” to the same press that purchased my first book. With the success of the first book, that fast tracked this book as well and I was paired with the same illustrator. Everything was going great! We finished all the final edits ahead of schedule and Jacob produced some more amazing artwork. I began to prepare for the launch making all my normal plans, setting up interviews and creating materials to hand out at school visits.
In October of 2022, there were a few final adjustments made before sending the book off to print. So, one final meeting was to be held by the editing and marketing team to make sure everything was finalized and ready to go. When they showed up to work, they were barred from the building. The press had been sold and a hold was being put on everything.
The next month was chaos as no one really knew what was happening. When was the book going to print? Was it going to be delayed?
In the end, the acquiring company dropped “Max & Ed” along with many other stories through a legal loophole, despite having a contract. I was crestfallen.
Over the following months, things went from bad to worse. The new company still had the rights to the manuscript, even though they were not going to publish it. Even if I had the rights, the market for this kind of book was limited, even if the story was good.
After five months, the acquiring company released the rights for the story back to me and I immediately set out to find it a new home. No one was interested and I was left with the option of vanity presses or self publishing which cost a lot of money.
During this time I set aside the story and decided to do some research while I focused on my wife who was having her first manuscript published by a regional press in Hawaii, a far reach from Alaska.
Then one day, out of the blue, her publisher asked her if she had any Alaskan stories or knew of anyone who did.
Wait! What?
As it turns out, that company had bought a distribution company in the tourist market for Alaska and wanted to use the same model as they did for their Hawaiian market to produce Alaskan books.
Again, was this luck? Or was it more about the people we surround ourselves with?
Just to be clear, they purchased the manuscript and the illustrations and are looking at having the book on shelves in time for the summer tourist market!

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

Success and luck come down to putting in the work, not giving up and most importantly, the connections that you make. I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) which is an international organization that educates, supports and promotes books for children. I learned so much from other authors, illustrators and industry professionals.
My first big break with “Pedro’s Pan” came from this group during a writing retreat. A former acquisitions editor for Alaska Northwest Books and a prolific Alaskan author, Tricia Brown, saw my manuscript during a retreat and encouraged me to submit to her former company which had gone dormant years prior and was preparing to open its doors again.
My luck equalled my resilience to return to writing after being so discouraged by all the hard work I had put in before and had given up. Luck equalled putting myself back out there to be rejected. Luck equalled finding a group that could support me. Luck equalled taking the time and money to go to a retreat, to submit my work without any expectations. Luck was listening to a mentor who shared her knowledge and experience to put me in the right place at the right time.
With “Max & Ed’, my luck came from building on my first success. Despite everything that went wrong, I never stopped believing in my story. Rejection always sucks, especially when it follows success. Again, my luck came from my associations and people who believed in me and my story.
In the end, I had become the head for my region for SCBWI and was able to invite my wife’s publisher (and now mine too) to come to Alaska for a conference where it not only benefitted me, but opened the door to so many other authors who needed a little luck on their side.
I think that is the most important thing about success and luck, you have to pay it forward to truly appreciate it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.matthewlasley.com
• Twitter: @Lasley_Matt

Image Credits
Images by Jacob Souva