A Writer's Road to The List
Linda Castillo was 13 years old when she wrote her first book. Having little to entertain her on the 20 acres where she lived with her family in Ithaca, Ohio, creativity grew out of boredom.
“It was called The Long Journey. It was about two girls who ran away from home on their Appaloosa horses,” she laughs, sitting on the back patio at her Bushland home. “I had a lot of time on my hands.”
The Amarillo resident is the author of 23 books, not counting The Long Journey, and as of July 1, is a New York Times Best Seller. Ironically enough, it was in the middle of the interview when she got the call from her agent that Sworn to Silence, her latest book and first full-on thriller, debuted at No. 35.
“It’s mind-boggling, indescribably good news. I just can’t believe it. I am sweating and I have goose bumps,” says Linda, beaming post-phone call. “I told my husband today’s the day and I’ve been Googling like a mad woman waiting to see. Wow. 35. It really is unbelievable. I am now a New York Times Best Seller.”
Linda’s previous work experience has little to do with being a published author. While her love of words dates back to childhood, her resume contains a smattering of jobs like making oil filters on an assembly line in Dayton and laying out newspaper ads for the Daily Advocate in Greenville. When she and a friend decided to leave their blue collar jobs for a life outside of the mid-west, they packed up their belongings, jumped in their red mustangs and headed south to Ft. Lauderdale. It was one April day in 1985 when Linda met her future husband, Ernest, who was vacationing from Dallas. Seven months into the long-distance relationship, Linda moved to West Texas to marry him. They moved to the Panhandle five years ago.
In 1988, Linda started thinking seriously about writing for publication. She was working for Domino’s Pizza as the Franchise Accounts Manager, and since her husband worked second shift at the time, her evenings were free to write.
“I lived about 12 minutes from the Galleria where I worked, which means I’d rush home on my lunch break and pop something into the microwave while my computer booted,” she recalls. “I would probably write for 20 to 25 minutes on my lunch hour. Then I’d come home, take a walk, stick a baked potato in the microwave and sit at the computer until about 10 p.m. when Ernest came home. That’s how motivated I was.”
Her hard work resulted in two books that didn’t sell. When other wannabe writers would’ve jumped ship, Linda pressed on, even quitting her long-time job with Domino’s in 1997 to write full time.
Persistence paid off, and Linda got her big break through Harlequin, the leading paperback publishing company for romance and women’s fiction. She sold her first book, Remember the Night, in 1999, which was published the following year. That got the ball rolling and Linda was soon publishing several books a year for Harlequin. In 2002, she sold her first single title, The Perfect Victim, to a second publishing company, Berkley, which meant Linda was writing almost nonstop.
“In order to be successful, you need to write about three or four books a year, which is really difficult. You’re working seven days a week and you make a lot of sacrifices to do that. I pretty much dedicated my entire life to writing, and even too much of a good thing is bad,” she says. “As a writer, you never want to get burned out, and you don’t want your work to suffer. I knew I wanted to move onto bigger and better things, which is difficult to do because it’s like starting over.”
It was on a four-mile stretch of dirt road in Little Elm, just north of Dallas, where Linda found her balance between writing and needing something else. His name is George, the Appaloosa who came into Linda’s life on Valentine’s Day in 2004. She’d write in the mornings and reserve her afternoons for riding George. That time of transition was pivotal for Linda because it coincided with their move to Amarillo and when she got the idea for Sworn to Silence, the first in the thriller trilogy set in Amish country.
“My brother in law, Bill, grew up in a 200 year old farmhouse and he and my sister, Debbie, and I went back to Fredricksburg, Ohio, to see it. There was snow on the ground and we were standing in the front yard when I heard the clopping of the horse,” she recalls. “I turned around and saw the buggy, and it was so stark that I immediately thought – what if something really horrific happened in such a peaceful place? That stuck with me.”
Linda soon formulated the outline of her would-be New York Times best-selling book. After writing her last book for Berkley, she sold the trilogy to St. Martins Minatour in November 2006.
“In order for me to survive in this business, I had to do something big and different. I know the rural lifestyle. Amish country is about three hours east of where I grew up,” she says. “I wrote six single suspense titles for Berkley and the rest were Harlequin, and while I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t what I wanted to write in my heart. There’s always been a big thriller in me waiting to get out.”
From the looks of it, Linda has accomplished exactly what she set out to do. The first thriller is out, and with two more to follow, it begs the question – what comes next?
“The saying goes that every writer has a manuscript or two under her bed,” Linda says. “I think I have two and a half.”
Click here for more information about Linda Castillo.
by Jennie Treadway-Miller
Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.Sowing a Seed and Sharing the Benefits: The Randall Master Gardeners
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