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

Hi Peggy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I’ve always been a writer. I was the kid with the pink lock and key diary when I was 8, but i never wrote down things about my life, instead I made up stories and wrote them in that book. Fast forward a few decades. I was 54 and going through the worst menopause mother nature ever bestowed on a woman. Menopause induced insomnia had me in its grips and I was sleeping 2 hours in 24. So I wouldn’t keep my husband up with me all night, I went into my home office and began writing a story that had been swimming around in my brain for a while. After 3 months I had a manuscript. I had no idea if the story was any good, so I decided to submit it to a writing contest. I had to send the first 3 chapters, so I did and then I forgot about it because I was so tired, LOL. A few months later I was notified that I’d won. The final judge was the publisher of THE WILD ROSE PRESS and she called me and asked if I had a completed manuscript and if so, would I send it along. I did, and did. 3 months later I had a contract for my first published book. That was in 2015. Since then I’ve had 4 publishers and over 65 books published.
Taking that risk to see if my words were any good was the most, well, risky, thing I ever did. I had no expectations, not even a hope that it would pay off. But it did. In spades. I quit my day job and have been writing full-time for 10 years.

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 write contemporary romances and rom coms about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them. I hope my stories make you believe in happily ever afters. I’ve won many writing industry awards and contests for my romance books and feel that validation proves that everyone wants that Happily Ever after ending.

Family and food play huge roles in my books because I believe there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, I try to bring all aspects of life into my stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness, and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents, I longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through my books, I’ve created the families I wanted as that lonely child.

As a lifelong diarist, I caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit me at peggyjaeger.com where I blog about life, writing, and stuff that makes me go “What??!”

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

So, I had a book series contracted with a new publisher for 3 books. The first book released and did…okay. Nothing to break the literary world bank, for sure. I was still a relatively unknown author, but had a modest following. When it came time for me to submit the second book I was told that the publisher wasn’t going to publish any more of the series. I guess they had anticipated more sales than actually occurred and they didn’t want to put any more advertising/publishing dollars behind another book.

I understand that because to publishers, money and sales are their bread and butter.

I understand that NOW. At the time I was devastated and the pissed. I already had the second book ready to go and the third was halfway completed.

What to do? i didn’t want the books to just die a poor death. I enjoyed the series and the characters.

Up until that time I’d always been a traditionally published author. 3 different publishers over 5 years of full-time writing, several contracts, and series out in the reading world. I never considered self publishing because i knew the learning curve to do it correctly was so high. Let’s be honest here: I was almost 60 and learning the new tech required to self publish wasn’t something I thought I had the mental bandwidth to do.

But… I wanted the series to continue. So, I bit the proverbial bullet and learned everything I could about self-publishing ( indie publishing) and put the book out on my own.

And I never looked back.

Now, 10 years into my career, I am 80% indie published and 20% traditionally published and I’ve never been happier.

Would i love a big 5 publisher to give me a contract? Of course. Their marketing machine is so much better than mine! But there are some perks to being indie that I am loathe to give up, as well.

Time will tell if a publisher comes knocking at my door. I am not keeping my fingers crossed, though. LOL

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I love this question.
When I first started writing romance, I did it solely for me. I wanted to write. I wanted to write stories that I would read, as a reader. And I wanted to make some money ( if only I’d known at the time how little authors really make!)

All those reasons are egocentric and I own that.

But…

The very first time a reader came up to me at a book signing, with tears in her eyes, and told me how much my story meant to her, I reevaluated those narcissistic feelings.

She told me her mother was dying and she’d read one of my romcoms to her while she was in hospice. Her mother laughed – actually laughed out loud for the first time in a while – at my words and that made the daughter feel ten feet high. She was able to give her mother some joy before her passing.

Right then and there, I reevaluated my whole writing purpose. I wanted to make other people feel that way. I wanted to make them laugh when days were dragging them down. I wanted them to feel all the good feels of falling in love with someone, to happy cry when the HEA came out about. I wanted to make someone’s bad day better for having read my words,

So when you ask what the most rewarding aspect of being a writer is, it’s this: I bring joy to people when they need it. A bad day gets better, a lonely night gets filled, a need to escape into a fictional world gets taken..

It may sound conceited to say I bring joy to people, but I believe most romance writers do bring joy to their readers. Our stories are about love. What is more joyful than love? All aspects of it, from falling in love, to finding love, to filling your life with love.

My reward is the happiness I bring to my readers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://peggyjaeger,com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peggyjaeger_author/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeggyJaeger.Author/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peggy-jaeger-296ab878/
• Twitter: disabled.
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeggyJaeger
• Other: tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@peggyjaegerauthor
  amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Peggy-Jaeger/author/B00T8E5LN0

Image Credits

No professional photographers took these shots. I did them as selfies.