Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Mack.
Hi Stephanie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Every story has a beginning—and so does every writer. From the time I could pick up a pencil, I felt it deep in my bones: I was made to write. To tell the stories swirling in my imagination. To search for deeper meaning. To find connection—with people, with the world—through words. The call never left me. I’ve always believed that if something is truly your calling, it will keep calling. Guaranteed.
Still, when it came time to choose a college major, I wanted something that honored my passion for writing and led to a practical job. I earned my BA in public relations (with a communications in entertainment minor) from the University of Southern California. After graduating in 2007, I started my career at a marketing agency, working long, demanding hours as a junior account coordinator. But within a year, the friction between my love for writing and the grind of the job became too much. As a young newlywed, I made the leap and returned to USC for my Master of Professional Writing.
I commuted from Orange County, working odd jobs—hostessing at Houston’s, freelancing for magazines—and eventually landed my first real break: a full-time writing role at Echo Media Group. That job launched a successful business-writing career throughout my twenties. It wasn’t fiction yet, but it was strategy, storytelling, imagination. I was writing all day, every day, helping clients tell their stories.
When my oldest daughter was born in 2013, I made the difficult decision to step away from the corporate world and stay home with her. I began freelancing for various companies and found it both stimulating and surprisingly lucrative—fitting projects into nap times and the rhythms of new motherhood. I kept freelancing through the births of my next two daughters. Then, in 2019, that old familiar call roared back to life: I wanted to write a novel. By the time I turned thirty-five. I was thirty-four. Time was ticking.
To make a six-year journey as short as possible: I wrote my first novel, When We Blinked, in three months. I couldn’t stop. The book poured out of me. I was completely possessed by this thirty-something divorced couple, Seraphina and Connor, who weren’t done with each other yet. I finished in February 2020. Then…well, you know what happened next. COVID hit. I queried for eight months, but the publishing industry was frozen, stilted, confused, like the rest of the world. I received encouraging feedback but no yeses. So I self-published. Readers adored it.
I wrote Suing Cinderella next, and after another round of close calls, frustrations, and almost-offers—including pulling it from an editor at Penguin Random House who was strongly considering it—I decided to self-publish again for a number of reasons. Again, readers adored it. The momentum continued and my audience grew.
But truthfully, I was exhausted. Self-publishing is empowering and phenomenal—light years from what it used to be—but it’s also utterly taxing. Outsiders might not see this. You’re the marketer, the financier, the project manager, the art director, the final word on everything. I didn’t want to quit writing. I wanted to quit running a tiny publishing house out of my home office. I craved a team. I craved people who believed in me. I desired to write—and to partner with publishing professionals who could do the rest (and there is a lot) far better than I ever could.
So I wrote a third book with one single-minded goal: get an agent. I honed my craft. I studied the business like never before. I made a list of dream reps. And facing my own fortieth birthday, I wrote an It’s a Wonderful Life–inspired story about a woman who gets knocked out in a birthday pickleball accident and wakes up with the chance to relive her twenties—single, free, and out of order. Twenty Something Else became the book that changed everything. It caught the attention of my dream agent, Danielle Egan-Miller, and ultimately led to a four-book deal with Tyndale House, including my first two indie novels, Twenty Something Else, and one brand-new book I’m writing now.
Twenty Something Else releases June 9, 2026. I still can’t believe it—how persistence, faith, and obedience to that relentless call led me here. That maybe I wasn’t crazy after all.
Along the way, I also fell in love with podcasting. I currently host Underline That, where I interview leading women, bestselling authors, bookstagrammers, and more. I’ve had the privilege of speaking with some of my all-time favorite female authors—from Katherine Center and Patti Callahan Henry to Annabel Monaghan and Sophie Cousens. It truly feels like a dream.
I live in Orange County with my husband, Doug, our three daughters, and beloved mini-Bernedoodle, Stanley. Writing books and recording podcast interviews is the most fulfilling career I could have imagined. For my girls, I hope to model hard work and tenacity, but also imagination, passion, and whimsy. I hope they have the courage to chase dreams that feel too big. To live a little in the clouds. That’s where the miracles happen.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
See previous entry! 🙂
The road has been far from smooth. I’m so glad nobody told me just how hard getting traditionally published would be, because I may never have mustered the courage for that first step. I have been challenged, tried, rejected, and crushed, but I never stopped believing. Hope and knowing will always prevail. My incredibly wise dad has a saying: “There’s always another train leaving the station.” Don’t linger too long on the setback. Every closed door is also an arrow. To this, I’d add: “You can’t miss your own train.”
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I write women’s fiction novels with romantic elements for female readers facing the complexities of modern life. My heroines are not in their early twenties. They are millennials. faced themselves with the reality of challenges we all endure. In marriage, motherhood, heartbreak, loss, and betrayal. One author friend has said that my books combine “the voice of a rom-com with the depth of women’s fiction,” and I think this is exactly what sets me and my books apart from the pack. My themes are deep and my pages prompt genuine introspection, while also being fun, frothy, and perfect for leisure reading.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think audiobooks will continue to rise and occupy a huge chunk of readership. It counts, it matters, it continues exploding! My team worked to secure #1 NYT bestselling author Abby Jimenez’s narrator (Christine Lakin) for Twenty Something Else, and I screamed when I found out, because I know in my soul that the book will reach thousands more readers this way.
I personally am not scared of AI. Time will tell, time will show. No technology can never replicate the soulful artwork of human beings. I will die on that hill. We might need stickers–“human certified”–but you’ll find all my books slapped with that label. I’m in good company there. AI has never been heartbroken, grappled with history, struggled through blood and tears. Will AI books become more commonplace? Acceptable? Entertaining, even? Maybe. I’m not threatened by that. There will always be cheap junk food and Michelin-star rated restaurants. Gossip magazines and Vanity Fair. Reality TV and Emmy-winning series. I see AI work the same way. It’s here, and we can’t ignore it, but if we stand our ground, it doesn’t ultimately have the power to take us out. It wouldn’t exist without us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stephaniemack.com
- Instagram: @stephanienmack
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanienmack
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/underline-that/id1840270907
Image Credits
Blaire Going Photography
