Today we’d like to introduce you to Alix Sloan.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My first grown-up job was at an art gallery. Film production and copywriting came after. I didn’t have a planned route. I was following the opportunities that interested me, figuring out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.
From the outside, it probably looked scattered, and sometimes it felt that way. I was deeply involved in the arts, including opening and running Sloan Fine Art, a gallery in New York City that later went nomadic. But I also kept freelance marketing work going on and off. Eventually I realized the unifying thread was helping other people, particularly creatives and small businesses, share their work, whether that meant a gallery wall or a marketing campaign. And the whole time I was trying to write fiction on the side, until my brilliant friend Amy Eyrie and I started a co-authored mystery series that became a crash course in craft.
Then two things happened at once: I got serious about my own writing, and I stumbled into a class on book marketing. Turning years of marketing instinct on my own work was thrilling, and it landed me in a whole community of generous authors.
Today I split my time between fiction, marketing gigs, book marketing for myself and other authors, and occasionally curating a show I’m excited about. In hindsight, none of it was scattered. I was gathering tools.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, and I’ve had to make some nerve-wracking decisions. But all any of us can do is make the best decision we can at the time. You can always make a new decision later. And another one after that.
Most of my struggles with the gallery were financial. Running a gallery is incredibly expensive. A rent hike was the only thing that could have made me consider closing the physical space, and eventually it did. It broke my heart at the time, but it turned out to be the right call.
My struggles with writing all trace back to insecurity and a fear of putting myself out there. But when you’re surrounded by fine artists who do exactly that every day, and more recently by authors doing the same, you have no shortage of role models for getting over yourself and pushing forward.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m incredibly proud of Sloan Fine Art. It was one of the craziest and hardest things I’ve done, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I have enormous love and respect for fine artists, and I still enjoy curating occasionally.
These days my focus is fiction. I’ve co-authored four books: the Jenna Stack Mysteries with Amy Eyrie, under our shared pen name Hanna Wren, and an inclusive middle-grade novel with Jennie Willink called The Peonies: Summer in the City. Collaborating with smart, creative people is inspiring and genuinely fun. But I wanted to challenge myself to work alone.
That’s how Cook Off Killer happened, and it’s what I’m most excited about right now. It’s a mystery set in the cutthroat world of a cooking competition show, the first in a series, and I’m well into book two.
What you’ll find in all of my work is strong female characters and some element of found family. I want to read about women who are capable and complicated, don’t take themselves too seriously, and are surrounded by people who choose each other. So that’s what I write, whether the reader is eight or ninety-eight.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I’ve been incredibly lucky in my support system. Family, friends, colleagues who show up. I don’t think I’d have gotten anywhere without them, and I don’t take a single one of them for granted.
Beyond that, I’m not sure how much I believe in luck. Good things happen. Bad things happen. The rent hike that closed my gallery felt like terrible luck at the time, but it turned out to be the thing that pushed me forward. I’ve stopped trying to sort events into good and bad, lucky and unlucky, while they’re still happening. I try to navigate whatever comes along as well as I can.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.alixsloanauthor.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alixsloanauthor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlixSloan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alix-sloan-01b43240/
