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Between readings and signings, local authors recall how they found their voice

Space opera romance author J. C. Hay.
Courtesy of the author
Space opera romance author J. C. Hay.

Last week Word Missouri told the story of a group of bookstores in St. Louis supporting each other through events like bookstore tours and literary speed dating. These events aren’t only good for booksellers – they also benefit local authors who write in niche genres and don’t have the support of an academic setting or a big-name publisher. Fortunately, the realm of social media is good to genre writers. 

There may only be a handful of people who write space opera romances, as J.C. Hay points out, but they tend to stick together, and blogs are a great place for that. I talked to a few of those authors during the tour, and asked them how they found publishers and got word out about their books - and whether they feel like they've really made it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNPOw5WP8PE

Profiled in the video above (click on the author's name to go to their website):

Children's book author and creator of Petalwink the Fairy, Angela Sage Larsen, interviewed at Rose's Bookhouse in O'Fallon

Gothic fiction author John McFarland, interviewed at Rebound in St. Louis

Sci-fi / paranormal romance author J.C. Hay, interviewed at Get Lost Bookshop in Columbia

 

Davis Dunavin grew up in the bootheel of Missouri and worked for the Southeast Missourian and Off! Magazine before moving to New York City in 2006, where he worked as a freelance writer and a bookstore clerk. He's a Masters student in Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and served as a Convergence Journalism teaching assistant at KBIA before launching the Word Missouri project in August. He lives in Columbia with his wife Elizabeth, coincidentally also a bookstore clerk and organizer of the Cold Reading poetry series at Get Lost Bookshop in downtown Columbia. When he's not there, he can sometimes be found leading a double life as a street musician.