Sara Gran is the author of the Claire DeWitt mystery series. So one motivation in doing this was just to create that little trail through the woods for any other mid-career writer who might wanna do the same thing.

You want to sort of create a path for other people. And, as I said before, one thing that you like doing when you get older is you don’t want to just do the thing to do the thing for yourself.

I don’t know if it’s gonna be a written thing or a video, but just really outlining step by step what I did. … So one thing I wanna do is put together a little series. Sara Gran: There’s something about–I don’t know if it’s a psychology of the business–I think there is a real sort of weakness and timidity in a lot of novelists these days in general in what they write in addition to how they approach their careers. And if you are a successful writer, get the f*ck out of the industry because you can.”

With characteristic incisiveness, Sara says of her decision to release books outside of the traditional publishing industry after spending more than twenty years as an author within it, “I feel like if you are not a successful writer, get the f*ck out of the industry ’cause it’s not working for you. With refreshing candor, Sara also assesses the traditional publishing business, which she refers to as “Simon’s Random House of Penguins,” and reveals why she has launched-with tremendous early success–a new small press called Dreamland Books. In this week’s episode of Book Dreams, beloved mystery writer Sara Gran talks about how suspense writers create that “compelling unputdownable quality” that keeps readers turning pages from the start to finish. “I always think of that moment in North by Northwest, the Hitchcock movie, when someone is falling off one of the mountains in Mount Rushmore, and he grabs someone’s hand, and then he loses their hand, and then he grabs their jacket.

Claire dewitt mystery