Author Conversation: Mary Carroll Moore

Thanks for reading the Rebel Author Newsletter! This week, I’m in conversation with author Mary Carroll Moore about how to keep going, where to find inspiration and how to build an author-career. I feature fellow authors monthly while the Make Meaning Podcast is on hiatus.

Quick note: there is still time for you to join my June classes!! Click here and here to reserve your spot.

Meet Mary Carroll Moore, a bestselling, award-winning author of 14 books in 3 genres. She received an MFA from Goddard College, like I did! Before moving into fiction, she worked as a chef, cooking-school owner, cookbook author, and syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her first cookbook won a JuliaChild/IACP award. Over two hundred of her essays, stories, and articles have appeared in magazines and literary journals. She lives in New Hampshire with her family.

On First Writing Memories

A lot of detours and dead ends led me to writing.  I wish I could say I loved it from a young age, but I was actually not a writer as a kid; I was the visual artist in our family. I painted and drew all the time.  My parents were very encouraging. I remember the thrill of “publication” of one of my drawings at age eleven, first prize in a holiday contest sponsored by my father’s company (my art was on the cover of their employee magazine).  

My younger sister was a great reader and writer.  We competed for books in the house, lived at the library on weekends.  She wrote a poem about being sick and talking with her stuffed bear; it stayed with me and got me excited about the power of words.

In my twenties I lived for a year in France as an au pair and art student.  I came back with a love of French cooking, which led to a job as a cook on an Arizona ranch. Later, I opened a cooking school in the Bay Area and was invited to write recipes for the California Culinary Academy series of cookbooks.  That led to a food journalism career that supported me for three decades.  I wrote or contributed to at least ten cookbooks, one of which won a Julia Child award.  I wrote a syndicated column for the L.A. Times that appeared in 86 newspapers. I got contracts from various publishers to work on books as a writer and recipe developer.  It was satisfying work and I was grateful for the income as a writer. 

Secret Longings

Since my family supported my artistic pursuits, I faced only self-made obstacles.  One was a secret longing to write fiction. After some economic struggles when I was just out of college, I learned to be practical about career decisions, but there was always something missing—maybe the longing stemmed from the novels I read voraciously. 

In my early forties, I branched out from food journalism to write other nonfiction books, mostly in health and diet.

My secret love for fiction was nurtured by a weekly writer’s group where I tried to draft a story a week—to shed my journalist persona and craft the kind of stories I loved to read.  Then I took a year-long course with the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, to write a first novel.  I imagined that a professional nonfiction writer, well published and well paid, could transition to fiction effortlessly.  Not so.

Connecting to the Love

In my mid-40s, I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, which brought a full stop to my journalism career. During treatment, I took a year to consider my life.  Food was still a great love, but I was tired of smelling like garlic all the time!

When my health was strong again, I completed my last cookbook contract and enrolled in a two-year MFA program at Goddard College.  I wanted to really hone my fiction-writing craft.  My thesis novel, Qualities of Light, about a teenager who inadvertently causes a boating accident where her younger brother is injured, was accepted by a small press, published in 2009 and nominated for a PEN/Faulker and Lambda Literary award.

How Novels Come to Be

I always wanted to write about my mother, who was a pilot in World War II as part of the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots, a non-military program designed to free up men to fight overseas.  Out of 20,000 applicants, only 2,000 women were accepted. My mom flew everything from small planes to four-engine bombers, transporting them to different airbases and training male pilots. She fought prejudice and had to prove herself as a woman in a male-dominated aviation world.  I was intensely proud of her as a kid, although she stopped flying when she had my older sister. She also didn’t talk much about the war years, so she was a big mystery to me.

A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue — a story about two estranged sisters, both pilots, who are forced to reunite when one of them flees from the law — was published in October 2023, and it became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release in two categories. My mom passed away at age 98, five years before the novel debuted, but the book is dedicated to her and all strong women who break barriers.

My fiction tends toward the literary thriller genre, which combine a focus on character with a suspense-filled plot. I write about women heroes who don’t know they are heroes—and who struggle to move past their past. I love writing about intergenerational female relationships; I believe women save other women.

I wrote my current novel, Last Bets, while my agent was shopping A Woman’s Guide, to distract myself from waiting for news. I decided to release it sooner than later, so it came out April 21, six months after A Woman’s Guide.

My Last Bets tagline is: “Escape to paradise. Find trouble instead!” It’s The Queen's Gambit meets The White Lotus, where female ambition and morality collide in the darkness of a gambling underworld on the idyllic, exotic island of Bonaire.

The Ups & Downs of an Author-Career

It has been a very intense learning curve for me, transitioning at midlife from a writing career that was stable and predictable to try something I’d always longed to do. Facing the possibility of death forced me to think about how much I’d regret not trying this. Fortunately, I recovered and started a brand-new life.

Novels require huge amounts of skill and focus to write and revise, then there’s the marketing.  I hadn’t published in a decade—my last book was 2011—so I needed a lot of help when A Woman’s Guide launched. I hired a publicity coach, Dan Blank, who helped educate me on the market today. I also worked with a podcast tour publicist and a blog tour publicist. My pre-launch work for both books was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.

A Heartwarming Story from the Author Journey

When I was considering all the different options for pre-launch marketing, I read about a writer who had organized a launch team of volunteers who helped spread the word. I thought that was brilliant. I emailed about 100 people, from family to close friends to past clients and students, asking if they’d like to be part of my launch team. Sixty-six said yes. They each received an ebook of the manuscript ahead of publication, for free, with the agreement that they’d write reviews, ask libraries and bookstores to carry the novels, and share the news with their circles.

I believe the team helped A Woman’s Guide rise to those bestseller lists. I’m still hearing about new readers who found the book in their local libraries or learned about it from a friend. I’m very grateful.

Advice for Aspiring Authors

Don’t go it alone.  Writing is a solitary pursuit, but our communities offer incredible support. Reach out, ask for help. Many writers are generous and quite willing, since they’ve been helped in the past. Also, pay it forward—if you’re asked and can give, help another writer.

June Book Giveaway - There’s TWO!

In last week’s Substack, I mentioned two different books as the June book giveaway, so guess what? There’ll be TWO lucky winners this month among my paid subscribers. The books I’ll be sending out will be The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau and The Heather Blazing by Colm Tobin. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider supporting this effort at the button below! I so appreciate you.

Thanks for reading this issue of the Rebel Author Newsletter! I’ll feature another author next month so we can learn from and support others on this path. Now go write!

Love, Lynne