In my first author blog/newsletter takeover of the year, I want to introduce you to Nova Scotian author Aren Morris!
A revived segment of my blog is The Author Takeover, where an invited guest is asked to contribute a blog to my site. This allows my readers to connect with more authors and celebrate the world of literary in a different way. Today, welcome Aren Morris as she talks about her love of theatre, her kids and, of course, her book and dreams. Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for a special monthly question and answer with her, too!
I’ve always been a storyteller, although my mediums have shifted over the years. As a young girl, I wrote poetry and short stories, until high school when I discovered theatre. From then on, I wrote scenes and plays and decided that I wanted to tell stories through performance.
After theatre school, I got a BEd and became a drama teacher and then for a decade I helped students tell their stories on stage. It was a glorious time of nurturing others’ creativity, but as my own children got older and I had more time for myself, I felt a call to return to the written word.
I had been experimenting on and off with a One Act play about Halifax at the end of the Second World War. I had also been saving for a six month deferred leave from teaching. In conversation with a former student who was writing for television at the time, I decided to dedicate those months to living life as a novelist and once again changing mediums, to turn the play into a book. Each day, I got up with my children, got them out the door and onto the bus, kissed my husband goodbye, walked the dog and then settled in to research and writing. I did that Monday to Friday, September through January and by the end, I had the first draft of We Happy Few.
When I returned to my classroom, it was hard to find the time to research, edit and revise but bit by bit, in the margins of my life, I wrote a second draft that I shared with a few trusted Beta readers. Then I took their thoughts and advice and developed a third draft that I kept hidden away in a digital file for another year. I had written a historical fiction novel but it was hard to think of myself as a writer with the demands of work and family on my time.
In the Fall of 2019, I was brave enough to participate in Pitch the Publisher at Word on the Street, where every panel member expressed interest in my manuscript (although no one decided to publish it). Leaning into the interest instead of the rejection, I submitted it to a manuscript competition with another East Coast publisher. While it didn’t win, it did catch the eye of the head editor at the time, who reached out with a publication offer. Sadly, they wanted me to rewrite it as a YA novel, which I didn’t feel was the right move for the story, and so it returned to the darkness of that digital file for another year.
In 2021, I had saved again for another deferred leave and as it approached, I reached out to a friend, another former student actually, who was working as an editor. I asked if I could pay her to read the current draft of my book and give me some honest feedback. She agreed, and in the back corner of a local diner, over eggs and coffee, she sobbed as she told me how much my book had meant to her at this particular stage in her life. She had a few suggestions, she said, but it had potential and Polly’s story would be meaningful for other women.
Up to this point, I had my heart set on a traditional publishing route, but my editor suggested we consider doing this ourselves and from there, we built the short-lived and somewhat defunct Black Box Publishing House.
Together, and with the help of skilled artists, editors and printers from across Nova Scotia, we produced and published We Happy Few in the Spring of 2022. It was released with more than 300 pre-orders and we did it all with old school ethos – physical copies only, in small batches, printed in Halifax, as required. Beyond orders taken on our website, sales were in indie bookstores only at the start. For a small and unknown company, we have done well with 500 sales of our first and only book over the past two and a half years. Not bad when you consider the often cited stat (and I’m paraphrasing here) that a traditionally published, unknown, regional author could expect to sell 1000 copies of their book in the first two years and less than 5000 over the lifetime of the book.
When I look back, what I wanted most from that experience was a reason to continue writing and I did get that. Readers are still discovering my book. Just this week, someone I follow on social media shared a post made by a reader I don’t know. The post read that she had “just finished an excellent local HistFic book”… it was We Happy Few.
Although I haven’t yet decided how I will proceed with publication, I’m happy to have completed the first draft of a second novel, another historical fiction that takes place in Nova Scotia that I am now editing and revising for Beta readers.
And Black Box Publishing House is moving forward this year too… becoming Black Box Creative Development Agency, a container large enough to hold and promote all of my creative interests and pursuits, including regional indie publishing.
There are as many ways to do this as there are stories to tell, and I think that’s the only consistent truth in the ever-evolving industry of writing and publication.
Please be sure to sign up for my newsletter for the special Q&A.
Thank you, Aren Morris, and thank YOU reader, for joining us today. If you’re an author who wants to be featured, please reach out and we’ll schedule your Author Takeover soon!