Paying the price
Springs Ranch woman sacrifices to see her first book published
BY KERRY MCGINLEY Special to The Slice
Original article
Between real estate deals, parenting, grandparenting, tropical sunsets and winter snows, Madge Walls worked on her dream.
The Hawaii native turned Springs Ranch resident painstakingly wrote, re-wrote and revised a manuscript over the course of eight years until the book finally found its way into print.
"I was educating children and trying to earn a living in a very, very expensive place," she said of her writing efforts while living on Maui. "There were months when I couldn't look at it all because I was so sick of looking at it."
Her final product, "Paying the Price," will be released Monday by Dialogue Publishing, an independent publisher in Black Forest. These last five days before its release has the real estate sales associate for Keller Homes watching the clock like an expectant mother.
"Oh, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it," she said. "I feel like I'm about to have a baby and I've gone in and begged my obstetrician to induce and he says, ‘No, no no — you have to go full term.'"
Despite the added work load, Walls thoroughly enjoyed her foray into fiction. She wrote for an hour every morning and on weekends when she wasn't selling real estate on Maui or in Colorado Springs.
The novel is set in Maui, and chronicles the struggles of a divorced Realtor who finds herself juggling a demanding career and raising an abandoned granddaughter.
"I would say it's exaggerations of my own experiences," she said. "You make your characters larger than life, you make the situations larger than life to make them dramatic."
Walls also wanted to improve the image of Realtors, a profession she said is often maligned in popular culture.
"I picked up a murder mystery about a Realtor who was overly madeup, over-dressed, nasty, in 4-inch heels and of course was the murderer," she said. "I thought, ‘I'm tired of this. I'm going to write a book about a Realtor who's a nice person.' That's where it came from."
Walls moved from Maui to Colorado Springs four years ago, in part to be closer to her children and their families, but also because she was convinced she needed to be on the mainland to get published.
After 35 to 40 rejection letters, Walls tried her luck with an independent publisher.
After attending a conference in Denver, she hired an independent editor to work on her manuscript. That editor passed the novel on to Sue Lutz, owner of Dialogue Publishing in Black Forest.
Walls' manuscript made it to the top of a two-foot tall stack of wouldbe novels on Lutz's desk — based on the word of that editor.
After reading Walls' manuscript, Lutz decided she'd found the second novel her year-old company would publish.
"She was right. I loved it and off we went," Lutz said. "With fiction, I'm looking for strong, powerful, emotional books. I'm looking for the kind of fiction manuscript that will be good for book discussion groups, so we can get some good word-of-mouth going and begin to sell 10 to 12 copies at a time."
Lutz is working to get the book on the shelves of local bookstores.
"Paying the Price" also will be available through Amazon.com and Dialogue Publishing's Web site, www.dialoguepublishing.com.
Walls' first trip to promote her book will be at her mother's retirement home in La Jolla, Calif. A book signing tour of Colorado and Hawaii will follow.
Before she hits the road, Walls will introduce her novel at a sales meeting at work "because everybody at Keller Homes has been very interested and supportive."
Every stop on the tour, every conversation with a reader and every autograph on the inside cover will hopefully bring Walls closer to her long-term plan.
"My goal is to sell a whole bunch of books so I can have more time off to write my next one," she said. "I hope this will be a series of at least three books."
Walls is already more than 60 pages into the sequel, but she's taking a few moments to savor seeing her debut novel in print.
"I am just over the moon," she said. "I'm absolutely thrilled, by golly, I am."
On the Web
Dialogue Publishing
www.dialoguepublishing.com
Molly Hauxwell/The Slice Madge Walls of Springs Ranch (left) will have her first book, "Paying the Price," published Monday by Dialogue Publishing, which is run by Sue Lutz of Black Forest. The novel, set in Maui, chronicles the struggles of a divorced Realtor juggling a demanding career while raising an abandoned granddaughter. Walls wrote the book over the course of eight years.
