Authorship Unlocked: Lana Mcara's Journey from Reluctant Writer to Publishing Powerhouse

In this inspiring episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we sit down with Lana Mcara, the founder of Vendera Publishing and an international bestselling author. With over 50 books and more than a million copies sold, Lana shares her incredible journey from a reluctant writer to a passionate educator in the world of fiction. Discover how she transitioned from hating writing in school to becoming a sought-after ghostwriter and writing teacher. Lana discusses the current landscape of publishing, the impact of AI on creativity, and the importance of genuine human connection in an increasingly digital world. She emphasizes the need for authors to view themselves as career writers rather than just book sellers, offering invaluable insights on marketing and building a lasting literary career. Tune in to learn about her unique publishing model that prioritizes author control and creativity, along with exciting upcoming projects from Vendela Publishing, including cookbooks and memoirs that reflect diverse experiences and perspectives. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for aspiring authors and seasoned writers alike, reminding us all to honor our calling and embrace the journey of storytelling.
For more information on Lana Mcara and her work, visit www.vendelapublishing.com.
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Transcript

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today, I am joined by the founder of Vendera Publishing, Lana Makera. Lana is an, international best selling author and a ghostwriter to 50 books selling more than 1 million copies. Lana works with authors to grow their careers and reach readers beyond the algorithm. She has spent more than two decades teaching fiction writing and teaching authors the publishing business. So we're gonna be talking to Lana about how she can help, especially if you are an aspiring author or you're trying to grow your career. Listen up, Lana, thank you for joining me.

>> Lana Makera: 1:11

Thank you so much, Curtis. My pleasure.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 1:13

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

>> Lana Makera: 1:18

Well, I didn't like to write when I was young. I know a lot of people think that if you're an author, you must have wanted to write your whole life. But I hated writing in school and I never dreamed I'd be an author one day. But I picked up a ladies magazine one afternoon, I was about 24 years old at the time, and I saw this ad. It said, you can write children's books. And it intrigued me. And so it had a little form to fill out, like a little test you could take. And I took the test and it said, you have a high aptitude for this. And I thought, you know what, I'm just going to give it a try. I'm just going to see what it's like. And I did. And I found out I love writing. Not, not school writing, story writing, totally different.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 2:18

Well, when did you become, a writing teacher?

>> Lana Makera: 2:23

Well, it wasn't until around 20 years later I became a writing teacher. I, I started writing at that point, but it took me 14 years to get published. I worked on that book and worked on it, put it away, said, I'm done forever, picked it up, and eventually I did get published. And four years later, I won a national award. That was in 2001. And I had so many people just begging me to help them get their book done and bring it up to par and all of that. And I thought, I just don't have time for everyone, so I'm going to create a writing class. And I did. I created a course. Now my college major, was education, and I had an English minor. So I was a teacher and I knew how to do that, how to create a course. And so I started that in 2001. And I've been teaching fiction ever since.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 3:33

Well, talk about. What do you see as the landscape, of the writing world today?

>> Lana Makera: 3:40

Well, it's a mixed bag because so many people are worried about AI taking over, the writing piece of it. And I think there, you know, there could be something to that. I, I heard a statistic. I don't know if it's true or not, but it says that 1 million books are being published that are written by AI right now. there are more than 2 million that are written by humans. so, you know, it is a viable concern, I think. But I also believe that as, as writers, we put our essence into the book. Our mindset, our heart, our emotion. And that's something that AI can't do. AI can scramble words together and they sound pretty good. But the essence of reading a good book is more than just words. So I see that. I see, that Amazon has exploded where they're putting out two plus million books every single year. And, and yet they open doors for people. But that marketplace is so flooded that we need a way to determine what's a good book, what would we really be interested in? And people are out there cheating the algorithms, and they know how to work it. And so sometimes you think you're getting something that you're not. And I was in a meeting, about, I don't know, two or three months ago, and it was a, it was a, like a think tank for publishing companies. And I have a publishing company, and so I wanted to go and see what they were talking about. And one of the women there was laughing. She said, I got my client to bestseller status because I put her book in the category of horticulture. And it was a fiction book, but she put it in horticulture because somebody had a garden in the fiction book. I mean, that is just. To me, that wasn't ethical. That wasn't being honest with the reader or honest with the algorithm either. But, you know, if someone is cheating the system like that, it really is hard to justify in your mind why you want to play that game. we emphasize live events, getting in front of human beings in a room together, where you're breathing the same air. I mean, that sounds gross, but yes, where you're in the same room, so you can make human connection with people and build your following. Like a grassroots kind of thing. It takes a little longer, but it's real.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 6:54

Exactly. And that was going to be my next question for you. But, what kind of help do you feel that authors need to, be able to be successful. And what's your take on publishing since you do have a publishing company?

>> Lana Makera: 7:09

I think for authors to be successful today, they need to shift their mindset. And most authors that I know are just looking at how many books am I going to sell, how many books, what's the numbers? And to me, as someone who's been in the industry for a long time with a lot of books published, I think the answer is to see yourself in a different way. I'm not an author with a book. I am a career author. I have a career. I'm writing books as a career. And take it from that perspective. What would a career author do? How would a career author behave? What would they, what would be their reaction to a book table that doesn't sell many books? This is a long game if you want to be truly successful. And so what does that mean? That means you're putting out books regularly. You're writing and rolling out books and then you're marketing. So you're like 50, 50. Writing and marketing, Writing and marketing. And what that looks like to you is, you know, that's individual. Some authors can roll out one book a year, some will roll out a book every 18 months or two years. Whatever your pacing is, it's totally fine. But you have to also realize that you're going to be doing that marketing piece, which means getting out there in the public and talking to people. Tell the story of why you wrote the book. And what I really like is to find something in the book, fiction or nonfiction, that is life changing, something that is going to give them a takeaway, something to go home and mull over, something unusual that will just stick with them. And if you, if you can find that in your book and you bring it to an audience, they're going to remember you. They may pick up your book this time or may that. They may not, they may pick it up next time, but they're going to remember you as someone notable, someone who has some substance. And that is, that is really what a career author would do. So I always ask my class, and I taught a class at the library this morning and actually asked them this question. M. What do you get when you get a Nicholas Sparks book? What are you going to get? Well, you're going to get a heartfelt story, something that's deeply emotional, gripping, and you're going to cry at the end. Everybody knows that, even people who don't read Nicholas Sparks knows that. People who watch the movies from his books Know that. And so there is a consistency in his brand, for sure. But there's also this heartfelt piece of it where there's something there. I mean, the notebook, you know, where the two of them had this wonderful love story, and then she had Alzheimer's and he. He wrote the story, their story, in his book that he read to her. So those are notable. So what is notable about what you're doing? There's something. There surely is something. If you have enough heart and enough drive and motivation to write a book, you have some things to share. Absolutely you do. Don't tell yourself, oh, there's nothing in any of my stuff that people. Oh, yes, yes, there is. If you can't find it, get someone else to tell you. Get someone else to give you feedback. What did you find notable about this book? What was it that stuck with you after? And then you can use that and talk to people about that point. And it doesn't have to be the whole presentation. It could just be one little nugget. But still, that nugget is golden.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 11:28

Well, talk about, some of your biggest influences in the, writing industry. You know, who influences you to do what you do?

>> Lana Makera: 11:38

Well, I have, I was a voracious reader when I was younger, so although I wasn't, I didn't like writing. I loved reading. And so some of the old authors I admire so much, and they may not even be known today. So if you love to read and you haven't heard of these authors, look them up because they are totally worth it. you might be surprised. Dick Francis. Dick Francis wrote mysteries relating to the racetrack. It was always about horses, races and the racing world and jockeys and owners and all of this. And he has got a lot of books. His books are wonderful. And I found out later that he collaborated with his wife. She was very instrumental in the writing process. Now, he may come up with, you know, he may be the actual writer, but she was the editor, the muse and so forth. And when she passed away, he quit. He quit writing. But his books are excellent quality. And then Alestar Maclean, he wrote Where Eagles Dare. And those books that are, they're like, intrigue, action, adventure. They've been made into movies. And his writing is some of the best writing I have ever read. And Alestar is a L I S T A I R. Alestar McLean. M A C L E A N. look him up. He only wrote one book a year, and he doesn't have that many. He may have 10, 20. I don't know, but they're all amazing. And if you're a serious writer, look at his, his beginnings and his endings. The way he opened a book was absolutely incredible. He had a way about it. One of his books opened with a man standing in the doorway. It was first person, so the, the protagonist, the main character was standing in the doorway and he saw a gun. And the gun was in this man's hand who was, had it sitting there like totally solid, pointing right at him. And he described the gun and all of this long thing about the gun and what it looked like looking down the barrel of this gun and, and all of that for a paragraph or so. And then he moves and he noticed that the gun didn't move. And so he steps around and the shocker is the man is dead and he's holding this gun, pointing at the door. And Well, now you're in it. I mean within like half a page you're in that story. Totally in it. So that is Alestar Maclean. Highly recommend him. He's an old author, been dead for a while, but what a great writer. Yeah, Rex Doubt is another one. Rex Stout S T O U T was unusual because he would write his books from front to back and make almost no edits. He could write a book sequentially. It was amazing. But he would sit and stare into space for an hour before he wrote a sentence. So he was doing it in his mind and then he would write the sentence and then he would go for the next sentence. It took him a long time, but he wrote right through the book. What a genius mind he must have had. But he wrote mysteries where, there was a, genius that was a, recluse, a reclusive genius who never went out, who solved murder mysteries. And he had his right hand man, who would go out and do the research and check the clues and all of this stuff and bring them back to him. And then he would study what his sidekick there had brought him and solve the crimes. Really well done. Again well done. And the dialogue in the, in that book, those books are just absolutely amazing. So check out Rex. Rex R E X Stout S T O U T. And those are just three. There are so many. And I used to, when I was learning to write, I used to go in and look at all the beginnings. If I was working on a beginning of a book, I would just pull books off the shelf. What's this beginning like? What's that beginning like? I wanted to learn from these masters and I actually created a list of templates. Beginning Templates. And like the gun, that template was zero in on one thing and then expand out so that, that, those, those writers are excellent. There's so many more. I mean, you talk about Agatha Christie and modern day Nicholas Sparks is awesome. Stephen King, there's just so many. David Baldacci and of course John Grisham, Tom Clancy, all of them. Study them. Read, the beginnings, read the endings, see how they work their characters and the kind of changes the characters have so that when it comes for you to do character development, you get a little idea of how that works.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 17:23

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you and your company are working on that listeners need to be aware of.

>> Lana Makera: 17:30

Well, Mandela Publishing is about to celebrate its first birthday. This is April, and we have nine authors, 11 books in the pipeline. Contracts are out for signing and we are rolling. And I am just absolutely delighted. Mandela Publishing is a traditional publisher, but we have an untraditional model. And what that means is I'm an author. I've been an author for a long time. I've got a lot of books out. I've worked with several publishers and I found myself with 10 of my titles back. I wanted to publish them again. They were big sellers. Some of my best sellers were returned to me and I could not find any kind of model that I wanted. I just didn't want to do the same old, same old. And so I created a company that was my dream for myself. It's author owned and operated. And, I have a team, but almost the entire team is all authors. So we care and so we do not require huge social media numbers, we don't require massive mailing lists, we don't keep any royalties. Did you hear that? We don't keep any royalties. We Give the author 100% of their royalties and we don't keep any rights. So the author has a lot of control, a lot of creative control over their book. What we want, we have one major criteria. We want a good book. And so there is a submission process. when you submit your book, you'll get a 10 page report telling you what we found. And if we see some potential and there's some changes that we think might need to be made, we'll tell you what the changes are and you can go change it and bring it back and we'll look again. So that's a completely different way of working. And then we have a guided year with the author. Once the contract is signed, you begin to, you begin a guided year of training. And we hold, meetings every Monday night where we give teaching on how to do marketing, how to do book launches, how to do book tables, all of this. We have expert speakers, we have hot seats where one author gets on the hot seat and all the other authors, we all brainstorm together for them. And it's just amazing. It's a wonderful group in there. I call it my author think tank, because we're all in there supporting each other and it's a beautiful thing. So some of our books that we have coming out, we have a cookbook, called Dinner for One and Dinner for One by Christine to Cook. And it is not a, it is a cookbook without any recipes in it because she gives these, principles. And so she's got these categories. So you have your protein and you have your spices and you have your aromatics, she calls it, and so you can go in your own cabinet and pull out the spices you like and whatever protein you want, and then you make a meal out of it. And it's your meal, you made it because you chose the ingredients. So it's a beautiful, book. And it's also written with a very light hearted, funny kind of, vibe to it. It's a wonderful book. we have another one called Break Loose and Fly that was written by a woman who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany and how she was able to get out of, that sector of the country at the age of 16 before the wall came down. And then she came to Canada and then eventually to America. And she says that when she grew up she thought she was like a bird in a cage there because they had no freedoms whatsoever. And then she came to Canada and America and found out that people here also live in a cage. They just have a different cage. And so the title of her book is Break Loose and Fly. It's her memoir. But it has some beautiful principles in there about, self, self development, personal development, and finding your true essence and living your best life. So that's one. We have another one that is, it's called, the Syracuse Hitman versus the Shoe Repairman. It's a fiction book based on, actual hitman. The author met someone who was elderly. And the man, the old man, told him a story of how he was originally a hitman years ago. And it was a true, it was true. And so he took that story after the man died, he took that story and made it into a fiction story. But, it's called, the Hitman versus the Shoe Repairman, by Rand Timmerman, he's a retired attorney and we have one called Run Cindy, Run. Run Cindy, run by Lana McCarra. That's me. it is a story of a, high. It's a high speed chase thriller where this girl is the daughter of a, ah, computer genius who made, created missile systems for the government, for the Department of Defense. And he was a traitor and he sold all of those. He sold the software to all the major powers in the world. And then he was put in prison and he died and the missile systems failed. And now all the world powers are after Cindy because she's his daughter and they think she knows the answer to get everything back up and running. But she doesn't. So run Cindy, run. She's on the run and she's got to figure out this puzzle before they get her. So it's a fun, very, very fun story. people tell me it's a quick read. It doesn't look very thin, it looks pretty thick. But it's quick read. And then we have another one called Terrace Dilemma. Terrace Dilemma. Again Lana Micara. That is a story of a marriage of convenience. Set in the old West Frontier romance, clean, sweet romance. And it is about a girl who takes on the job of being a housekeeper for someone in Colorado during those days. And then she agrees to marry him to make it legal. But they're not really married. It's a marriage of convenience. So when someone gets killed and her husband is accused of being the murderer, you know, there's a mystery in that too. So I write, always write books with a mystery, and some romance. Romance and mystery. So that's what we have published now. Those are out. If you go to Vendella Publishing. Vendella is V as in Victoria. E N D E L A Vendela publishing dot com. You'll see that list and you can click the, the books and go into Amazon and find them. We have a book that is a memoir by a veteran of the, the global war on terrorism. He was in Ramadi in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. It's called One is a Warrior and it's his one year as a sniper team leader. And he puts you right in the, he puts you right there like you feel like you're there. you're a sniper on the team and you're going out on these missions and the various things that happened to them while they were, while they were there. It was a very harsh time in the Gulf War. One of the worst years of the Gulf War in one of the worst cities. So one is a warrior by Harry Martinez is that one. And then we have another one that is called Greta, Garbo the Rise of the Modern Woman by Scott, Raisedale. And Scott Raisedale is Greta Garbo's grand nephew. And he was able to write an insider biography using family photos and some of her papers and other things that he had. And showing that Greta Garbo, she was famous actress back in the 1920s and 30s. She changed the movie industry. And just to give you a little snippet of what this is, 21 years old, she was from Sweden, she wasn't from America. She had only been in the U.S. maybe two or three years at this point. 21 years old, she walked off the set and refused to come back until they made some adjustments because the way women were treated back then was not right. And she stood her ground. And mgm, caved in and gave her what she wanted and she changed what happened from then on. That was a shift in the industry and she did a lot of things that change the industry. So it's a great book to document if you're interested in Hollywood history or if you're interested in just women's history. Plus it's full of photographs that have never been seen before from the family album. So, really good book. Greta Garbo, the Rise of the, of the Modern Woman. That's not quite there yet, but it's almost. We're going to be out probably before this is released, because I think we only have maybe a week or two before that one is actually launched. So those are some. And we have more, you know, that we're putting through the pipelines, a couple of murder mysteries because we do fiction, nonfiction, children's books and poetry.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 29:23

We'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about, that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you may have for the listeners.

>> Lana Makera: 29:31

Well, I always like to tell people who are interested in writing, if you have something inside of you that wants to do this, that wants to write, and it doesn't go away, it sticks with you over time. And maybe you try and then you give it up and then you come back to it and you try and then you give it up. Or maybe you've got a book you've been working over for a long time like I did. I just want to say to you, and I hope you're listening carefully to me, you're not making it up. This is a real calling. It is a heart calling. If it keeps coming back, it doesn't go away. It's a heart calling. So pay attention to that. Honor yourself. Go ahead and write. Go get some training if you need it. find a writers group in the local area that can encourage you and help you. We need each other people. People often think that writing is a solitary thing, that we do it on our own in a dark room somewhere. But yes, we do write when we're alone. But writing is actually a team sport. We need other writers around us. We need our readers. We need people that can teach us and help us. So honor your calling. Don't sweep it under the rug. You're not making it up. This is real and it's for you.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 30:58

There, you go. Ladies and gentlemen, vendelapublishing.com go check out the books. Sounds like Lana and her team and the writers have a lot of good stuff coming up. So please go check it out and follow rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible, especially any authors who might want to use Vendela Publishing services. Visit also www.craveball337.com Leave us a review Leave us a voicemail if you want about any suggestions you might have, how you'd like the show, any guest suggestions. Sign up for the newsletter. If you haven't done so, never know. We might play your voicemail on the show and share the show on the website to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show and Lana, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me.

>> Lana Makera: 31:53

Thank you so much, Curtis.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 31:55

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.craveballuh337.com until next time, keep living the DRE.