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

Hi Sheila, thanks for joining us today. Do you have a hero? What have you learned from them?

One of my heroes is author Pamela M. Kelley. She’s a women’s fiction author who has had great success over a number of years. She’s got a good, thoughtful approach to her business and a clear understanding of what her readers want. She is very generous with her advice to other authors. Almost daily, she shares her hard-earned wisdom in a variety of author-centric groups. She taught me everything from how to think more strategically about my business to the nuts-and-bolts of placing Amazon ads. I appreciate Pam and the stories she writes.

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 an author of smart Southern women’s fiction. In my forties–and in the midst of a career as a VP of Human Resources–I realized it was time to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d always had a love of writing, but had veered away from a journalism degree in college because I didn’t want to always be covering murders and wars and child kidnappings and whatnot. So in my forties, I decided that I wanted to be a novelist. The very next morning on the way to work, I heard a segment on the radio advertising a writing conference the next weekend near my house. It felt like a sign from the universe! After studying the craft of fiction for several years, my first book was published two days after my 53rd birthday, so I’m a good example of “It’s never too late to pursue your passion.”

I write women’s fiction set where the South meets the sunshine state. My stories are about women seeking to find the peace we all deserve—whether they’re battling an external foe or an internal one (or both). Readers are drawn to my work because they believe that everyday heroes can make a difference in our world.

I’m proud that so many book reviewers mention how my stories deal with sometimes heavy topics, but in a way that feels light-hearted and easy to read.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a writer is the ability to spend hours living in a world that is disconnected from the real world. It’s an opportunity to explore themes or subjects or time periods or conflicts that are of interest to me and my readers. It’s a privilege to be able to write a story that might help even one person through a difficult period in their life, or to help them realize a truth they’d not previously seen, or to give them comfort by allowing them to escape their “real life” for a few hours.

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

One pivot I’ve had to make since becoming a writer is to realize that I’m also an entrepreneur/business owner. When I first started studying the craft of fiction, I thought it was all about the story, as in “I would write a book and it would magically make it out into the world.” What I now realize is that writing the 80,000 or 90,000 words of a novel is just part of the process. There’s the setting up of a small business, the hiring of a CPA, the marketing of the books, the managing of the sales dashboards, the quality control portion of listening to the audiobook, the managing of social media accounts, the overseeing the design of a new website, etc. I spend as much time with my businesswoman hat on as I do with my artist hat on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.SheilaAthens.com
• Instagram: https://www.instragram.com/sheilaathensauthor
• Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/SheilaAthensAuthor
• Other: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/sheila-athens

Image Credits

Author photo: Tammy Harrow
Book covers: Ebooklaunch.com