Persistence in Publishing
Persistence in Publishing
By Julie Tollefson
D. M. Pulley has experienced the highs and the lows of publishing. Her debut novel — the first book she ever wrote — won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2014, a life-changing event that saw Amazon imprints publish four novels by her in four years. Then came a seven-year hiatus until this month, when Blackstone Publishing released Stone Mad, her first novel since 2019. Here, in a testament to the power of persistence, D. M. gives five tips for weathering the slow times.
1) Keep writing — D. M. says in some ways, it feels as if she built her publishing career backwards.
“Every artist struggles at some point along the way,” she says. “Mine came midway through. You’re forced to confront everything about this business and everything about your work and try to find your audience again.”
D. M. wrote three novels during the publication slump. “I was still on a book-a-year writing schedule because I had gotten into that habit and I wanted to keep working,” she says. During that time, which saw the arrival of the COVID pandemic and other shifts in the marketplace, her agent provided a steady source of support and encouragement. Their work paid off when Stone Mad found a home with D. M.'s new publisher, a relationship she hopes will help her launch the next phase of her successful writing career.
“I’m excited to be at a small publishing house like Blackstone that maybe has more focus on cultivating writers,” D. M. says.
2) Write the story that speaks to you — D. M.’s return to publishing may have been hampered, she says, by the mismatch between the type of books she writes and readers’ appetites.
“The sort of books I write tend to be darker, more gothic,” she says. “They tend to look at more sinister themes. I think my style of story was a little too dark for parts of that period when people needed to escape, needed comfort.”
But, D. M. says, she’s never been the kind of author who writes on spec. Her projects are always directed by her interests, what she calls her wheelhouse of architecture-inspired gothic thrillers.
“That’s my aesthetic, and that’s where my interest lies. I like telling stories about Cleveland, because that’s where I live,” D. M. says. “Every book is kind of a continuation of that larger story of what’s haunting Cleveland, moral ambiguity, and corruption.”
Her persistence in riding “the knife edge between thriller/horror/gothic/mystery” has paid off, in the form of a two-book deal with Blackstone.
3) Lean on (or build) community — One of the things that kept D. M. going during the dry years was the support of family and friends. Every month during the pandemic, she and a group of writer friends got together on Zoom for a “pitch and bitch session.”
“We talk about our frustrations with the business. We pitch ideas to each other,” she says. “Having that kind of community gets you through. I wasn’t the only writer in that group struggling.”
The friends still meet once a month and continue to support each other.
“There are very few people on the planet who can really understand what this life is like, working alone almost in a vacuum,” D. M. says. Having the support of those people is crucial, as is surrounding yourself with friends and family who keep you grounded in the world outside of books, as well.
4) Celebrate every win — While D. M. continued to write novels, she also stretched her author muscles in other ways. She worked on a screen play. She saw the digital production of one of her short stories during the pandemic. She published a short story in the anthology Cleveland Noir.
“My biggest advice is say yes,” she says. “Teach a class, provide a short story, submit to a contest or journal. Find all the little wins along the way.”
In addition to writing, D. M. mentored other authors and stayed active in Literary Cleveland, an organization that offers classes and promotes authors and storytelling in Northeast Ohio.
“I kept my head above water with these wonderful moments of creativity and these wonderful moments of connection and these wonderful moments of seeing words in print or on the screen,” she says. “It makes you feel less alone, but it also keeps you inspired. That really did help me get through some of the losses along the way.”
5) The struggle is real — “Every artist struggles at some point along the way,” D. M. says. “It would be inhuman not to feel down sometimes.”
The key to coping, she says, is accepting the bad times as a normal part of the process.
“There were moments of darkness, of uncertainty,” she says. “You’re forced to confront everything about this business and everything about your work. But you really do get better.”
D. M. Pulley lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband, two children, and dog, Hobo. Before becoming an Amazon best-selling author, she worked as a professional engineer rehabbing historic structures and assessing building failures. Her survey of a vacant building in Cleveland, Ohio, inspired her debut, The Dead Key, winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Since then, her thriller No One’s Home was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award and named one of the “Best of Horror” by Suspense Magazine, and she has sold more than 800,000 books worldwide. Her latest gothic thriller, Stone Mad, tells the story of a haunted house, a missing girl, and the woman who connects them.