MARCH 20-26, 2023 by Karen Craigo · kcraigo@sbj.net Before becoming a New York Times bestselling author, Nancy Allen learned her way around a courtroom, having served as Missouri’s assistant attorney general and Greene County’s assistant prosecutor. If she ever decked a defendant, the way Kate Stone punches out Max James in the first chapter of “Renegade,” it didn’t make the news. While matters of law are presented with meticulous accuracy in Allen’s fiction, the actions of characters are the product of pure “what if?” “Payback,” Allen’s second title in her Anonymous Justice series of novels and a follow-up to “Renegade,” is due out in May. Meanwhile, the author is at work on her next project and writes six days a week. Her current project is always in mind – the writing doesn’t stop just because she isn’t seated at her dining room table with a felt-tip pen and white legal pad. But Allen finds time more flexible for a writer than a prosecutor. For Allen, who publishes through Hachette Book Group, one of the Big Five publishers in New York, the money is also appreciably better. “I am far more financially successful as a novelist than I ever was in the legal profession,” she said. She declined to disclose her revenue from writing or her readership numbers, but she noted it hasn’t hurt a bit to co-author two books with James Patterson. His titles have sold more than 425 million copies worldwide, according to Investor’s Business Daily. “I’m a co-author with the most successful writer in the world,” Allen said. “And so, one thing that happens is that people read a book that we wrote together, and some of those people will go, ‘I like that. The co-author’s Nancy Allen. What else has she written?’” Those readers seek out her solo books to buy. Allen said an e-book that might have originally been $2.99 is now $11.99 or $13.99, tinged as they are with the Patterson aura. The trick, said Allen, is to keep the momentum going. “If you want to make a living as a novelist, even once you have had vast good fortune, as I have, you have to continue to produce the content,” she said. “That’s your product, and so a publisher will expect a book a year.” Allen published her first book, “The Code of the Hills,” in 2014. Her third Patterson collaboration, “The Number One Lawyer,” is slated for release in March 2024 and will make 10 books in 10 years. For “The Code,” a mystery set in the Ozarks, Allen’s publisher told her if she hit 10,000 copies, that would be great. “I’m still getting checks,” Allen said. “I know we sold 50,000 long ago, so that was a hit for that book that they did nothing to promote or market.” If 50,000 copies is a blue-sky sales number for a Nancy Allen title, a Patterson collaboration is in the stratosphere. “When I write a book with James Patterson, that’s 2 million copies,” she said. For the kids David Harrison has made a name for himself by writing children’s books. He released his first, “The Boy with a Drum,” in 1969, and it has sold over 2 million copies. His 90-plus titles also include education books for teachers. A Drury University graduate, Harrison worked as a pharmacologist in Evansville, Indiana, and as editor of greeting cards for Hallmark in Kansas City before returning HEATHER MOSLEY My vision tunneled, graying out on the edges of my sight. I spun around. Without thinking it through, I acted on pure instinct. I landed a nasty uppercut to his chin. Seeing the surprise explode in his eyes, right as the blow was struck, was delicious. James went down hard. I saw the back of his head bounce off the concrete when he landed on the pavement. Time had slowed for me. It felt like I waited a long stretch for him to react. But once he did, I was ready. —from “Renegade” by Nancy Allen Writing means business for local authors Books That Make Bank 8 · SBJ.NET
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