Author Meeting Place Interviews Author Marlayne Giron of Mission Viejo/CA/USA
Bio: Marlayne Giron is a Messianic Jew who found Christ as her Messiah at the age of 17 while watching Franco Zefferelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth” on television in 1977. After coming to faith, she began to read the Old Testament for the first time and was amazed to discover that believing in Jesus was a very Jewish thing to do and not a betrayal of her Jewish religion as she had been taught by her parents and the rabbi’s in her synagogues.
In the course of her life she has had many small ”miracles” occur; the first major one being coming to faith in Christ when she hadn’t even been looking for it and with a built-in bias against Him. The second was meeting and marrying her future husband Michael whom she had prayed for by name as well as writing and illustrating a story (with his image in it) five years before meeting him. The third is the publication of The Victor after almost 30 years with no previous publication credits to her name. All three of these significant milestones in her life occurred on the Easter holidays. The fourth was becoming a mother of an adopted daughter on Christmas Eve in 1997.
Marlayne Giron is a full-time career secretary, wife and mother who likes to read, cook, entertain, draw, ice-skate and scrapbook. The Victor is her first novel.
How many book/s have you written? Just the one and it took almost 30 years to get it published!
Please share with us your book titles: The Victor
What genre/s would you like to write in? Fantasy/Fiction
Please share with us who or what encourages you to write and why? I am a very atypical author and the most unlikely person to have a book published. Most writers seem to have an unlimited store of ideas and constantly want to write. The Victor is the only story I have ever felt "inspired" to write.
How long did it take for you to write your book/s? I wrote and rewrote The Victor over the course of 10 years. I began writing it in the early 1980's before the advent of personal computers, mostly on an IBM Selectric Typewriter and a Smith Corona Typewriter.
How long did it take for you to publish your book/s? I gave up all hope of it being published for a good ten years until August of 2007 when I decided to try one more time. So it's been almost 30 years since I first began writing it until the time of its publication.
Who did you publish with and why? Tate Publishing. I tried for many years in the mid 1990's to get it published but I was told it was an impossible feat. I was a total unknown, had never had anything published, and had no connections in the publishing industry. I was also told by a Literary Agent that my story was not considered marketable enough by any publisher (Christian and secular alike) because it was a blatant allegory of the Bible/Gospels. You can only beat your head against a brick wall for so long.
Tate is a Christian publisher whose niche market is first-time Christian authors and welcomes submissions unlike most traditional publishing houses who discourage unknowns.
Please share with us how you prefer to market your book/s? Since I am rather new to all this, I am learning as I go. I have reached out to all my present and former colleagues and have gotten my book into the hands of Pastor Chuck Smith, Pastor Rick Warren, Arthur Blessitt, Amy Grant (whose song, Fairytale, was the inspiration), the President of the Gospel Music Association (a former boss), and Hugh Hewitt, a nationally broadcast conservative radio talk show host. I have had several blog interviews and I am on multiple social network sites which I think have been the greatest way to get word out out of my immediately geographical vicinity. If The Victor had been published in the early 1990's when I was submitting, there was no Internet, email or social websites available then to get the word out! God's timing is perfect!
Please share with us any event/s that you have planned in marketing your book/s: I have several upcoming book signings which are posted on my book website: www.thevictorbook.com. I am also participating in my local library's book festival in the fall as well as the Sonoma County Book Festival in mid-September.
Do you wish to share any additional information with our readers?: Yes - I have discovered at all my book signings (4 so far) that if you walk around and greet people with some chocolates and bookmarks, rather than sitting at the table waiting for them to come to you that you will sell a lot more books. I am consistently selling out all the inventory at every event and the store managers are so pleased that they are asking for second book signings and ordering more books as a result. I also dress up in medieval costume (but then my book is a medieval theme)!!!
Email to share: thevictorbook@sbcglobal.net
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