Today we’d like to introduce you to Martin Dugard
Hi Martin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’m an author. My journey as a writer began after college when I landed a corporate job and realized immediately I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world. I began writing freelance magazine articles on the side. I started off with small, fifty-word pieces and moved up to major magazines like Sports Illustrated and Esquire. It got to the point that I was making as much as a writer as my day job. With a growing family and a mortgage, the choice of whether to quit my job to write full-time or continue doing the practical thing grew more difficult. One day I got a call to do a piece an endurance event known as the Raid Gauloises that was taking place in Madagascar. The caller was a guy named Mark Burnett, who was still a decade away from Survivor. The gig involved taking three weeks away from the corporate world. Talked it over with my wife. Made the trip. Had a great time. Got fired my first day back. I’ve been a full time writer ever since. I moved into writing books in 1998. I write fast-paced history, designed to read like a really exciting novel instead of a dry boring recitation of facts. I’ve sold twelve million books in the last twenty years. I write in a small office in my garage, working morning until noon. In the afternoons, I coach high school cross country, which I’ve also been doing for twenty years. It’s a great work-life balance.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The writing life is feast or famine. My wife and I know this feeling in a big way. The worst was 2007 and the collapse of the economy. The publishing world cratered and nobody was buying books. I made it through thanks to my great agent, Eric Simonoff at WME. Hard times come and hard times go, but the good parts about being a writer more than make up for the sleepless nights. I travel the world, am in charge of my own schedule, and live the life I want. The hard part are those gaps between paychecks. Back when this wild ride started, there was more than one occasion where I wondered where the mortgage payment was going to come from.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
The way I write history sets me apart from other writers. I take the deep dive on my subjects, immersing completely in the travel and research so that my characters rise up off the page in three-dimensional fashion. So much history is written in a boring academic fashion. A sleeping pill. I’m of the belief that history is way more exciting and unpredictable than daily life, so why make it boring? My challenge every day as I sit down to write is putting words on the page in a way that will make the reader want to keep reading deep into the night. I love it when my audience tells me they were exhausted at work after staying up to late with one of my books.
What were you like growing up?
My dad was an Air Force pilot so we moved a lot. I went to four different high schools. I’m a total introvert. I was the sort of kid who loved sports but also spent so much time at the local library that on one occasion the librarians gave me a going away party when we moved. When I was young, my mother told me that writing was a horrible career idea because writers didn’t make money, so when I went to college (Cal State Long Beach), I felt stuck because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But deep down I wanted to write. Instead of class, I’d buy two beers at the 2 Wongs Market in Newport and spend all day on the sand at Sixth Street reading. As you can imagine, this was not good for my grades and it took me a very long time to finally graduate. I think I always knew I was meant to write for a living, but it took a lot of courage (and encouragement from my wife) to take the leap of faith and make this my career.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://martindugard.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authormartindugard
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martinjdugard
- Twitter: https://x.com/martinjdugard
