All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

You know the scene. Jack Torrance, alone in the Overlook Hotel, typing the same sentence over and over and over. Hundreds of pages of it. A man who sat down to write and somewhere along the way lost himself entirely.

Every writer I know has felt some version of this.

Does your writing still feel like play? Or has the business of writing swallowed it whole?

Think about why you started writing in the first place. Not the craft, not the platform, not the query letters and the marketing plans — before all of that.

You wanted to make something up. To slip into a world that didn't exist until you put it there. To build characters and conflicts that mirror the messy, complicated truth of being human — but shaped, controlled, purposeful. Compelling.

That's fiction doing its singular job: transportation. Pulling a reader through a portal into somebody else's problems, somebody else's world — giving them escape, beauty, and the shock of recognition all at once.

That compulsion to make things, to dream and envision and build — that's not childish. It's the most essentially human thing there is.

And the creative path, almost by design, buries it. Under craft. Under revision. Under promotion and platform-building and pitch emails and the relentless professionalism of creating a writing career.

Until we almost forget why we started.

After decades writing crime fiction and coaching authors, I've written my first nonfiction book in twenty years — and I won't pretend it doesn't feel like a milestone. Writing nonfiction is serious business, and I feel genuinely awed and proud that I was able to do it. It feels very grownup, somehow — more so than writing fiction.

Here's what I kept seeing in my coaching practice: authors who had lost the thread. Not the craft — the why. The thing that made them writers before anyone told them what a writer was supposed to look like.

The ME Factor: Your Secret Weapon For Author Visibility is about rediscovering that — and using it as the foundation for everything else. Your authentic identity, connected to real market intelligence. Not another checklist. A framework for bringing your real, unique self back into your writing life and using what makes you different as your unfair advantage.

The ME Factor: Your Secret Weapon for Author Visibility releases on April 8, 2026. Pre-Order it here.                       

The Hole in My Heart

I started writing a new standalone thriller back in November. Between consulting, podcasting, the magazine and promoting my own books, I've barely had a moment to touch it. But this week I finally finished Chapter two. A small, early milestone but I couldn't be happier.

When I'm not actively writing fiction and spending all my time editing, strategizing, and promoting, there's this sort of hole in my heart.

Finishing Chapter two this week fed me. For now.

I entered both books hoping they might win something. The fact that they both did tells me that Mari Ellwyn and Thea Riggs — the extraordinary women at the heart of these stories — were powerful and memorable enough to matter to readers and award judges alike. That means everything.

Specimen received a Silver medal and Switch received a Bronze medal in the Reader Views Reviewers Choice Awards, Thriller/Suspense category.

In February, I spoke to the Sisters in Crime NorCal Chapter about readers - specifically how to find your target readers and understand what they really want. The answer was surprising: readers don't want polish. They want truth. They want to feel like they know you.

The Weight of Cold Things is in final edits for August 2026 release. Deputy Sheriff Gretchen "Gree" Gooding returns to the Arctic Circle to face what she's been running from her whole life. More on that soon.

Next month I’ll have a lot to share from the Story Impact platform - the magazine, the podcast, and some spring speaking events I’m so excited about. In the meantime, I’m delighted to be on this journey with you.

Pre-order The ME Factor here: https://a.co/d/02LYVFMk

Read more about me and connect: https://linktr.ee/authortowles

Stay tuned…and keep shining!

Lisa