Check Out Stacey Wallace’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stacey Wallace.

Hi Stacey, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
After college, I was sure that I wanted to be a playwright. I think we all know how that went. Ha! After years of getting nowhere in the theater biz and working part-time jobs in floral shops and at Tower Records, (Shout out to Tower Marina Del Rey!) my sister challenged me to write a novel. Specifically, a YA paranormal romance.

My first novel, Glimpse, took me five years to write, and I spent another three trying to get an agent and a book deal. In the meantime, I wrote the second and third books in the Zellie Wells Trilogy, Glimmer and Glow.

When it became apparent traditional publishing wasn’t meant for me, I embarked on my self-publishing career.

Fifteen years later, I’m the author of over fifty books, mostly romance, although I slipped a couple memoir and magical realism novels in there. I’m known for my witty banter, so the playwriting came in handy, after all. I’ve also turned several of my books into film and television scripts with my writing partner, actor Becca Ayers.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The self-publishing business changes, it seems, from month-to-month. I’ve had very good years and years where I had to go back to a day job in order to pay my mortgage. I only hire out for a couple of things – editing and sometimes covers – but I do all of my admin and marketing myself. I’m even getting into narrating my own audio books. I’m taking a great class from Cindy Gunderson called Audio books for Authors.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Self-publishing takes resilience, tenacity, and patience! It’s not for everyone, you really need to be the kind of person who likes doing everything yourself. And while I’ve had several successful years – Covid lockdown was particularly good for indies – there’s no way I would’ve been at this for as long as I have without a love of storytelling and the drive to entertain my readers! In this business, being stubborn enough to keep going is what it takes.

I’ve had to reinvent myself lots of times and thank God for my theater background, because becoming someone new is exciting to me. I’m currently writing under two pen names, but at one time I had as many as six. You can find my steamy romance under the name Stacey Wallace and my sweeter, closed door romance under the name Roxie Clarke.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Funny. Loud. Bossy. Loyal. Extroverted.

Totally the same now except my ability to People has gone way down.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.writefreepress.com