Hi,
I’m Michael Monhollon, the author of five legal thrillers, three of them featuring Robin Starling. What I like about Robin are her athleticism and her refusal to take personally the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” In the courtroom she is pure gladiator. The books in the series, in order, are Trial by Ambush, Juggling Evidence, and Dog Law. Book four is in progress and should be available on Kindle sometime in 2014.
I was trained as a lawyer (University of Virginia Class of 1984) and have worked as a lawyer in Amarillo and Dallas, Texas, and in Richmond, Virginia. Penguin USA published my first book, Criminal Intent, in 1992, styling it as “the most shocking thriller since The Firm.” It was not the bestselling thriller since The Firm (unfortunately), but I was hooked on writing. Partly in search of writing time, I drifted into academia and now, in addition to some administrative responsibilities, teach various courses in law and economics in the Kelley College of Business at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.
In terms of my writing, the outlier is a novel based on the life of Jesus. Divine Invasion is not a parody, but a straight narrative account with a little juggling of the time element. For example: When Pilate provoked a riot by marching his soldiers into Jerusalem with his standards bearing the bust of the emperor, it was almost certainly prior to the beginning of Jesus’ public life. Because the building tensions between Pilate and the Sanhedrin are part of Jesus’ story, I moved the incident into the timeline of my novel. My other liberties revolve mostly around assigning personalities and personal characteristics to historical figures, including Jesus, his followers, Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod Antipas, and others. Some aspects of personality are apparent in the dialog in the gospel accounts, of course, but where the historical record is silent, I have relied on my imagination to fill in the details. In 1998, Booklist, the trade journal of the American Library Association, listed it as one of the top ten Christian novels of the year.
Give one of the Robin Starling stories a try. If you like it, please take time to write a review on Amazon to serve as a guidepost to others in search of a good read. If you don’t like it, of course, I wouldn’t want to intrude on your busy schedule. 🙂
Michael,
Congratulations on winning Kindle Scout publication!
I nominated Devil in the Dock and am looking forward to reading it. Also downloaded Dog Law (I’m a sucker for covers with dogs, but also really like your writing voice!).
If you’re willing to share your experience, I’d be most interested in hearing why you chose Scout in contrast to KDP, especially from a lawyer’s perspective. Currently, I’m debating whether to submit my suspense novel Instrument of the Devil to Scout or go KDP.
Again, congratulations and best of luck with Scout!
Debbie, Thank you for the good word.
The short answer to your question is marketing. I already had 4 Robin Starling books on KDP and 2 other legal thrillers. Early in the game, when my first 2 books were priced at 99 cents, I sold pretty well, usually staying in the top 100 legal thrillers. The sales were okay after I raised prices to 2.99: Because of Amazon’s royalty-rate brackets, I sold about a third as many books, but my royalty payments doubled. I was still selling about 400 books a month. Sales would drifts downward, but I’d put out another book, and they’d rebound.
The new-book strategy stopped working very well, though. I was hovering around the 60,000 mark in terms of “best-selling” authors. New books didn’t help much. Paying for Amazon marketing didn’t help much.
Publishing Gone Ballistic on the Kindle Scout program did work. I jumped into the top 10,000 authors within a month and climbed to the top 6,000 for several months. Where Laughing Heirs, my previous book, had sold dozens of copies a month, Gone Ballistic sold hundreds. My backlist recovered as well.
It’s been 6 months since Gone Ballistic came out, and I’m back around the 10,000 mark. Going the Kindle-Scout route seems to offer the most promise for revitalizing sales. The royalty is 50% instead of 70%, but it’s 50% of a significantly larger number. And I’m building my audience, which is the really important thing.
Once again, I appreciate you. I hope you enjoy Devil in the Dock.