Meet George Weinstein, Author in Roswell

Today we’d like to introduce you to George Weinstein.

George, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I write because I have to — it’s how my brain is wired. As much as I like to listen and talk, I communicate best through writing, both as a means to initiate a dialog and to respond to what I’ve read. When I was six years old, I wrote plays for my stuffed animals to act out, to entertain my brother and sister. No one told me to do this; it’s just something that came naturally. While growing up, I continued to write to entertain others and myself. When I was 25, I romanced my future wife with love letters, a practice almost unheard of by the 1990s, which is probably why it was so effective. For the past 27 years, my wife has encouraged me to keep writing. To date, five of my novels have been published, spanning a wide range of genres — from Southern Gothic to historical fiction to mysteries. I think I write novels instead of nonfiction because I’m also a born storyteller: as a kid, I preferred telling lies to see what I could get away with and for how long even when there was no penalty for telling the truth.

I learned how to write largely by reading closely and studying how others did it. My writing career has taken a number of wrong turns. Because of this, starting back in 2001, I decided to make it my mission to help other writers. I joined the Atlanta Writers Club (www.AtlantaWritersClub.org), which was founded in 1914 and is dedicated to teaching the craft and business of writing. In 2004, I became its president and in 2008, I launched the Atlanta Writers Conference (www.AtlantaWritersConference.com), which brings top publishers and literary agents to Atlanta twice each year so club members can get their work seen and learn more about the publishing industry. I consider my ongoing volunteer position of Atlanta Writers Conference Director to be more important than my personal writing career, because of the satisfaction I derive by helping to make other writers’ dreams come true.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It’s been far from smooth. I’ve had to fire two literary agents for their inability to find publishers for my work. I fired the first publisher I’d found on my own and worked with on four books because they stopped paying the royalties they owed me. This necessitated finding a new publisher for those four books; during that search, none of my work was available for purchase. As of April 2018, my best-selling novel, Hardscrabble Road, is back in print but my other novels will take much of this year to republish.

All this means that I’ll spend 2018 starting over again by rebuilding my marketing platform and reacquainting readers with me while trying to complete new novels for the marketplace. After 18 years as a novelist, I’d hoped to be much further along in my career, but, as I keep telling Atlanta Writers Club members, the only writer who fails is the one who quits. So, it’s back up the mountain I go, pushing that literary boulder alongside Sisyphus.

Self-employed as an author (no pen name) – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m a self-employed author. I specialize in writing novels that range in genres (so far) from Southern Gothic to historical fiction to mysteries, with side trips to modern romance and an adventure story for kids.

Among readers, I’m best known for the Southern Gothic novel Hardscrabble Road, which is loosely based on my father-in-law’s gritty childhood in South Georgia during the Great Depression. He had a psychopathic bootlegger for a father and a mother who had no interest in raising her children; as a result, he and his brothers had to raise each other.

Among writers, I’m known for my volunteer work in the Atlanta Writers Club (www.AtlantaWritersClub.org) and directing the twice-yearly Atlanta Writers Conference (www.AtlantaWritersConference.com). So far, more than two dozen Club members have received representation and/or publication deals as a result of these conferences, and one of these just had her first novel made into the major motion picture Love, Simon. I had the honor of staging a screening and book signing for her in March 2018 to celebrate this dream come true.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
As a writer, I think I succeed whenever I string words together in just the right way to evoke the emotion in readers I intended. That’s the only thing I can control in the slightest, and even that is dependent on the mood and mindset of others. I have even less influence on actual book sales, so that’s not a useful metric. When readers tell me my book made them feel mad, sad, glad or scared in all the right scenes, I count that as a win.

As an Atlanta Writers Club volunteer, I define success when Atlanta Writers Conference participants tell me they now understand the industry better, are more confident in their ability to pitch their manuscripts and absorb critiques and can take another step in their writing career due to my efforts. When one of them actually gets a representation offer from an agent or a book deal from a publisher, they met at one of my conferences, that’s icing on the cake.

Pricing:

• Hardscrabble Road is $16.99 on Amazon.com in paperback and $2.99 for the Kindle version

Contact Info:

• Website: www.GeorgeWeinstein.com
• Email: georgeweinstein@gmail.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/george.weinstein.5

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