E.R. Major adopted her pen name after discovering her real name was taken, then shifted to self-publishing during the pandemic. Her debut Neighbor Girl became a series after reader interest, and she emphasizes that danger precedes romance in her plots. Major sees marketing as her biggest challenge and views AI as a useful tool for editing and design.
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Welcome to Author to Author. This is Author to Author, and I'm Tim Trott. My guest in this chapter is Elizabeth Major, who writes under the name E.R. Major. E.R. Major has authored 2 books with more on the way. In a moment, we'll meet E.R. Major. Author to Author is presented by Cybershoot Hosting, the right place for your author website. Stop relying on social media for your marketing. Build a permanent home for your books, your brand, and your readers with your Cybershoot Author Package website. Your website isn't just for readers and search engines anymore. It's how AI large language models learn who you are. When your books, bio, and brand live on a professional website, AI models can recognize you. Your name and work are less likely to be confused. Your brand gains credibility. Future-proof your discovery in a world where artificial intelligence is replacing search engines. Owning your platform means when AI points readers to authors, it points them to you. Check it out at cybershoot.net/author or scan this QR code. You write under the initials E.R. Can you tell us a little about the person behind the pen name and what drew you to writing romance and suspense?
Ooh, okay. Behind the pen name was, um, I initially wanted to use my real name, which is Elizabeth Major, or some form of Liz Major. But as I started doing research, I found out there were already people who were authors out there by those names. So I thought, well, now what do I do? I don't want to vary, you know, too much from my own reality. So I just shortened it down to E.R., which are my first two initials, Major. And what drew me to romantic suspense was Actually, years ago, now I'm going to date myself, I wrote two manuscripts, and that was when traditional publishing was the rule. That's just what you did. You had to find an agent, you know, hopefully you could convince them to sell your product to one of the bigger publishing companies. At the time, I shared that information with someone whose opinion that I thought mattered. Turns out it didn't. But at the time, it kind of destroyed my self-confidence, and I burned those manuscripts. And even now, I could barely tell you what they were about. One of the things, fast-forwarding, that the pandemic brought into our world, in addition to devastation, was a change in a lot of industries. And suddenly self-publishing became an option for a lot of people, me included. I still didn't write at that point. It was only 2 years ago that I had an idea floating around in my head that I couldn't get rid of. So, totally frustrated, I sat down one day at the computer, my personal computer, and wrote out like a 3-page synopsis and said, "Okay, that's it. I'm done." And a few days later, my brain went, "Well, what if we went in this direction? And what if this character did—" So you get the idea. It wouldn't leave me alone. And the fact that it turned into romantic suspense just happened along the journey. So I wrote the first book. I thought, okay, that's it, I'm done. And I just sat on it because, quite honestly, I didn't have the self-confidence to do any more with it. But again, it would not leave me alone. So I started attending functions at the local library. There's a librarian there by the name of Michaela, who is also a writer, and she was also putting forth all kinds of programs in the community, and that library is less than 5 miles from my home. So I had no reason not to attend, because in this world, publishing and writing, there's a whole different language and a world associated with that, and I wasn't familiar with that information. But slowly, by attending all those classes, groups, asking questions, meeting people that genuinely wanted to share information, I began to understand. Then I met another individual, a guy by the name of Robert Irvin, okay, and Robert is a 7-time best-selling local author. With quite a, quite a back history, but he agreed to be my coach. And because of that, I said, "You know what? I think I can do this." Now, not that I didn't make mistakes. Oh boy, did I make a lot of mistakes. But I published my first book and something in me felt complete. You know, at that point. And I couldn't stop. I can't stop now. I can't not write at this point. So, you know, a long answer to a short question. That's how I arrive at today.
I happen to be slightly familiar with that group that you're talking about. You were born in Indianapolis but raised in rural Tennessee, and how much does that southern small-town upbringing show up in your fiction, particularly in a book like Neighbor Girl?
Everything. Everything about that. Because that is a setting. It is a setting, small rural area of Tennessee, because that's, you know, the majority of my background. And it was, just came naturally, I think, because small areas like that have a different dynamic because, you know, big secrets get hid quickly, and, you know, we think no matter what neighborhood we grow up in, you know, people know what's going on in our lives and our business and all that stuff, but do they really? So, Neighbor Girl is about perception versus reality and the somewhat isolation that can be of a rural area and how people sometimes want to escape that. And it progresses from there. You think this young woman is just trying to better herself through work and education to get away from the area, but you know, as you get into it, you realize there's a whole lot more going on here. So what we think of our neighbors or their children or something like that is, you know, based on surface. And I guess that's true anywhere, but it's a whole lot more fun to write about an area that you know and that you did. I wound up, you know, growing up on a farm, and so does this girl, so I was able to interject that experience there. They say write about what you know, so that, that came into play. I mean, yes, I left, I went on to other areas, lived other places, but that memory was there enough for me to draw on and create these characters and a timeline and a dialect, you know, to work with. I had a lot of fun doing it, so, and I hope people enjoy it. People seem to.
Books have a bad habit of, or good habit you might say, of turning into a series, and that turned into Steeplewood, and it blends romance with real tension and danger. When you sit down to write, what comes to you first, the love story or the threat? The threat.
For me, the threat is there, you know, there has to be for me anyway, a little more to it. And some of the situations that I write about are people and characters that I have known. And, you know, no character is an exact copy of anyone or anything, but I actually see the threat or the danger or the negative side first, and it's Okay, how is, how am I going to interject that, you know, good triumphs over evil sort of a situation? You know, first one was perception versus reality. Second one is, you know, good versus evil. Who's going to win?
In Silent Threat, your protagonist Darby has to figure out who she can trust, including people close to her. Is that kind of internal conflict harder to write about than external danger?
Yes. Yes, because you're, you're writing about two things at the same time. There's an external threat, but internally, who, who are you going to turn to to help maybe solve that issue or confide in to do that? And, you know, in real life that can be a difficult thing to do. You know, no matter how much you love or care about a person, they may not be the best person to advise you in a situation, especially a negative situation. So, you know, you should go, go where you know the answer is. And I think that's where I tried to to push her and how she juggles that information to make everybody happy, in a sense. Not truly happy, but, you know, even out the rough spots. So, yeah, that's a little more difficult to write about, for me anyway.
The tagline for Neighbor Girl is, "Love is never just love. It's gossip, tragedy, strategy, and survival." Where did that idea come from, and I want to ask you, is that drawn from real life?
Possibly. Well, yes, but it is because this isn't just a happy, happy romance in the first one. Neighbor Girl, we have a young girl in a small area who suddenly becomes the object of attention of more than one suitor. Now, some people would think, oh, that's a bit much. No, no, especially not in a rural area. It's just usually the prom queen or the head cheerleader. Nothing wrong with those people, but that's usually who attracts the most attention, or maybe the higher number of suitors. In her case, she's the somewhat quiet, educated daughter of two schoolteachers who, because she attends her first high school dance, suddenly comes on the scene, even though, you know, she's been there all along, but she's just now becoming visible and attracting attention. And you think, okay, this is just going to be another one of those novels where she has to make a romantic choice. And as you get into it, you very quickly realize there's a whole lot more going on here. An acquaintance of mine read the book and she said, "I was only going to read this, skim through it, because I knew you and I just wanted to know a little bit about it." So she could fit in because we attend a similar group. And she said, "And I got really interested and I had to read the whole thing." And I thought, well, okay, thank you. Yeah, it's really interesting. And the thing is, there's always more to everyone's story. I don't care what age you are, you know, there's always more to your story. Hopefully it's not tragic, but who knows. So again, perception versus reality.
On that subject, some of your readers, I understand, describe your books as page-turners they can't put down, as you just kind of alluded to. What's your approach to pacing, and how do you keep the tension alive without burning out readers?
A lot of editing. Be honest about it, because when— for me, the important part is to get the story down as it is occurring to me, or is revealing itself to me. And sometimes there's too much to whatever. So editing and letting it settle in your own mind. Is this necessary? You know, does this lead the reader anywhere? If it doesn't, you know, you don't want the reader to get bored. No. So, editing is important, and asking honest opinions of others. It's good to have people you can turn to that you trust to read in advance, you know, and trust their opinion, because you don't want to put a product out there that just amuses you or fulfills something in you. If it doesn't have a broader appeal, then Where have you gone? You know, what have you done? That kind of thing. I hope that answers the question.
A lot of authors say their characters surprise them mid-story. Has that happened to you, and if so, what character went somewhere that you didn't really expect when you started?
Wow, that has happened to me, and we often say the characters talk to us and tell us what they want us to do, and that's true to an extent. I mean, not in the creepy sense, but that's true to an extent. I did have that happen, and it was actually with a sub-character that wound up having a much bigger, bigger point or a bigger part in the delivery than I anticipated. And I have to admit, you know, neighbor girl, we're building a world here, and they it has a lot of characters. So, you know, you have to try to stay focused on who's doing what and when. And I said, "Yeah, I had a character sneak in there when I was going, 'Oh, this is good. You can do this, and that will tie things together very nicely here.'" And I think it worked. I've had no complaints about it for sure.
Going back briefly to Silent Threat, did you know that, always know that it would be part of a series, or did the Staplewood thing kind of grow into, on its own, and grow into bigger as you were writing it?
I did not know there was going to be a series. I thought this would, might be a one-and-done to satisfy something within me. But turns out at the end of Neighbor Girl, I sort of leave a cliffhanger there with one of the main characters. And when people started reading the book, I started getting emails and from closer friends, phone calls saying, "Well, what happened to this character?" And I'm thinking, "Well, I don't know." But I couldn't say that. And it became more and more. And I always had more ideals about going forward with it, but I was apprehensive. I didn't know what I was doing. But at some point I thought, all right, I've got to write book 2, because book 2 is now the sequence. It picks up 7 years later with, you know, certainly many of the same characters there, and what happened and why. And again, the number one question was, what happened to this character?, and so we, we answer that, and I don't think everybody was really happy with what happened to them, but I was. I'm the author. I was, and it works out, you know, as time goes on. So are we getting more— that's how we did it.
Are we getting more Steepleswood, more from the Neighborhood Girl or Neighbor Girl World, or something entirely new?
What's your direction going next? Well, both. I'm currently working on book 3 of the series, and recently I wrote a children's book, which is totally new for me. It came at me, blindsided me. I heard an individual— this was an overheard conversation— I heard an individual talking about their child. Imagination. And that this child said they could— they walked into a room and said, "I see a giraffe," and there was no giraffe in the room, and they went on with the conversation. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that child, you know. We all need big imaginations. And an idea just popped into my head, and I sat down and wrote the book within an hour. First draft. And then I punched it up a little. I thought, you know what, this, this is good. This is pretty good. And so I ran it by a couple of situations, and they're going, yeah. Well, I've never written a children's book before, so now I have another new world to deal with because graphics are everything when it comes to children's books. And I'm going to pursue that. Not today, but I'm going to pursue that.
Sometimes books go into other directions. I heard a rumor somewhere that your children's book could possibly turn into an audiobook.
It is a possibility. It's very much a possibility. Audiobooks are something that I have not done yet, because in publishing I have tried to learn everything that I could to do myself, because it fascinates me. So, you know, it's one thing to write a manuscript, it's another thing to format it. And do cover designs and upload. So a very nice lady by the name of Victoria Maxwell has helped me and encouraged me, and I'm getting pretty good at graphics now, very much so, and I'm enjoying that. But that's, that is an aside. But as I learn each step, so I think I'm up to audiobooks now. Whether I would do that myself, hire it done, again, it's another piece of the puzzle that I have to learn that process. Even if I hire someone else to do it, I have to learn that process and what's expected and all that. But I absolutely love it. I absolutely love doing that and enjoy it. To the maximum, which surprises me. Never stop learning, you know, is my philosophy.
What is the most difficult part of writing? The creation, the publishing, the market? What seems to be—
For me, it's the marketing. For me, it's the marketing. It's such a vast world. I think there's something like 800 books a day published in the United States. Don't quote me on that because that probably changes per day. And you're fighting for attention. And when you're self-published, you don't have a company doing that for you. And I don't mind, but that's a big, big audience to reach. And so you're doing a lot of different things in order to do it. Social media is a good thing. There's advertising through Amazon. Anything you publish, there's advertising. IngramSpark. All that costs money, so you want to maximize how you go about it, or I do. There's also public engagement, public speaking, public groups that, you know, you can get invited to. I don't know, a book club or even bigger markets than that. I have some coming up, you know, book fairs and all that. And you want to introduce, you know, the world to your work. You want people to read it, you know, now that you've gone to the trouble to publish it. But you have a lot of competition. So marketing and staying current with that, I, for me, is probably the most difficult part. Because what I want to write, that's what I want to do. I want to write and get those ideas down and Doing all these other things takes away from that, but it also can be a necessary part of the entire process. So, yep.
Not to put you on the spot here, but where do you stand on the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence? Is it a threat, a tool, somewhere in between, or is it something else totally entirely?
It's a tool plus. I don't fear it. At all. I know a lot of people do because they think it'll— maybe their job is at stake because of it or something. But it's with us. It's not going anywhere. And I tell people, if you've ever used spell check or grammar check or anything like that, that's AI. That's the beginning. That had to get programmed somewhere. And thank goodness for them. I'd be in trouble. I'm really good at editing other people, but when it comes to editing your own work, that's different because you know what you intended. So that's a big help, programs like Grammarly, if you want to put that in or out, it doesn't matter. But I, as far as my webpage coming, that has been updated recently. Um, through the help of my friend Victoria. I did a lot of the graphics myself, and I did that through AI, and I'm not ashamed of it. And I think they turned out really well because hiring a graphic artist, oh my gosh, you know, we are talking lots of money. Not that they don't deserve it, but By the same token, I did what I enjoyed myself and used it, and I'm not embarrassed to say, and I encourage people. It's just another tool to learn how to use, in my opinion, as far as that goes. And I said, it's not going away. It's going to be more and more with us. So we'll see. I'm encouraged to see where AI is going. In the world. I really am.
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