Scott Douglas Vaughan

Let me give you some statistics about book publishing. In 2013, Forbes published a story that estimated 600,000 to 1 million books are published every year. (I know that's a wide range, but the story reported that there are a lot of conflicting sources.) Further, about 50 percent of the published books are independently published. (An independently published book is one published by the author. My books are independently published. The flip side to independent publishing is when an author contracts with an agent, who then works to sell a book to a publisher, who then buys the manuscripts and . . . maybe . . . publishes it.) The Forbes article also suggests that the average book sells less than 250 copies (I've seen other sources that project 150 as a goal) and a book has less than a 1 (One) percent chance of being physically stocked in a bookstore. Add to this another stark reality: People don't read. A 2015 Pew Research Center study showed that 72 percent of adults...

Brookwood Road, circa 1980 Since publishing Brookwood Road in November 2014, I've heard from a lot of people pleasantly surprised by the writing style and format of the book and its 2016 follow-up, Elm Street. The books are both written as episodic, meaning each chapter is a stand-alone story but that all the chapters (episodes) come together to craft a larger work of fiction. Think of the book as a television show and each chapter is an episode. In many cases, the episodes build on themselves. This is easy writing for me. Writing for newspapers, 1974-1994, any award-winning success that I had occurred through writing first-person columns that appeared on editorial pages. Through these columns, I told the stories of my life past and present. So, for 20 years I was trained to tell quick stories - usually 500 words or less. That form of writing became my sweet spot. I won awards from both the Georgia and the South Carolina press associations. In 1974, when I promised my Daddy...

In 1991, my maternal grandmother was 80 and her oldest sister was turning 100. I had the idea to bring them together and film them telling the stories of their lives. I especially wanted to hear my 100-year-old aunt talk about my grandmother's childhood. On a cold February morning, near my grandmother's birthday, the three of us gathered in my aunt's apartment at a Georgia assisted living facility. These two ladies - my Mema and her "Big Sister" - sat in comfortable recliners. I sat on a stool with my old VHS video camera on a tripod. I turned it on and started asking questions. It was a little awkward at first, but soon they forgot all about me and the camera. They just started telling stories - wonderful, fantastic stories - about family, first loves and marriage, parenting, school, and heartache. I've since had that recording saved to several DVD copies and stored away. I was reminded then and reminded again when I wrote my first book, Brookwood Road,...

In August 1973, I was 14 years old. My daddy, Doug Vaughan, and me. I was about one. For a handful of years, as a hobby, I had been writing little short stories, mostly about Old West characters because I loved and still love anything having to do with the Old West. Bonanza is my favorite television show. Teachers learned of this hobby and asked me on many occasions to read my stories to my class. I had this reputation as being a young creative writer. Also, I had submitted simple news stories to my hometown newspaper, The Forsyth County News, during junior high school in Cumming, GA. The newspaper had actually paid me for some stories, and so as early as 12 years old I was paid to write. That summer of 1973, I had attended summer school at Forsyth County High School, where I took a typing class. All of these experiences set the table for August 1973, when I told my daddy that I was going to one day write a book for him and for our family. In August 1973, through a series o...