Author Spotlight: Welcome, Author Tara Ryan!

I’m excited to welcome fellow Tule author Tara Ryan to the Spotlight. Today, we’re all about her writing journey and her indie books.

Tara grew up with her nose buried in a book, and not much has changed. She’s a serial entrepreneur—doggie daycare owner, quilt shop owner, maker, and of course, author. She lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her #1 love, a shichon named Agador Spartacus. Her whole family lives nearby, including her two grown sons, who are inspirations for the “cool” things young people say. She currently has two standalone women’s fiction novels available, Above Average Girl and The Things I Do For Her. They are both humorous with sweet romantic subplots. Welcome to Heron House is the first book in small-town romance series with a lot of humor and a bit of spice. You can find Tara at Goodreads.

My Long and Winding Road to Becoming an Author

Step One: Read Everything

I started reading when I was four. In kindergarten, I met my bestie, Amy, and we spent the next decade reading together. In school, we had contests where the most pages read won prizes like free pizza and balloons. We were always #1 and #2 in the entire school.

I read everything the library had, but my favorite was Nancy Drew.

As I aged, I moved on to more grown-up mysteries. Mary Higgins Clark, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich. After I finished all of those, I found the romance novels that Janet had published before the Stephanie Plum books. I branched out to Jennifer Crusie, Heather Webber and then I discovered chick-lit. My sarcastic heart had found its tribe.

Step Two: Reality

In high school, a dolphin and I had a magical moment in the rain at Sea World, so I decided to pursue marine biology at UNCW. Writing was not on my radar.

Turns out majoring in science doesn’t save you from writing. I wrote so many papers. The library was once again my haunt, only I wasn’t reading about magical wardrobes or haunted dollhouses. After I got my BS in Marine Biology, I went back to school to get my teaching certificate.  I taught high school biology, and my students would whine when I made them write papers. “This isn’t English!” I calmly explained that it doesn’t do any good to know something if you can’t communicate that knowledge to other people. And then assaulted their poor grammar with my red pen (honing my editorial skills).

Family drew me back to the mountains and I got the harebrained idea that I should open my own business. In July of 2003, I opened a doggie daycare. (We will celebrate our 22nd anniversary this summer!) Within a few years, the business was doing well and pretty much running itself and silly me, I got bored. I took a personality test around this time and found out I am an ENFP. (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: ENFP stands for Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceiving.) One of the descriptors was that we like new challenges every three to five years, and we do better as our own bosses. It basically made my life make sense.

Step Three: Write

During the following years, I took up sewing (dog beds to start), candle-making, and other crafts not worth mentioning. Finally, I landed on the idea of writing a book. The first novel I completed was sort of a romance, but it was more about a mother-daughter relationship and a faith journey. That novel taught me a lot, and it’s safely locked up in a drawer. One thing it taught me was that I wanted to make people laugh. So, I strapped on my sarcasm belt and wrote a funny, heart-warming chick-lit novel. Only to find out that chick-lit was dead. Who knew?

During this time, my mom was my first editor, so I kept the language clean, and the bedroom doors closed. I mean, moms can’t read about S-E-X, right?

I had a fantastic critique group that met weekly during this time (pre-pandemic, obviously), so I was cranking out content. I queried books two and three, but my chick-lit voice wasn’t getting any love. So, I decided to write a romance. My books had always had romance in them, but they weren’t romances in the classical sense. And where there’s romance, there’s (gasp!) S-E-X.

Turns out, my mom likes sexy books. Who knew? She still isn’t a fan of foul language, but I just tell her to skip those words.

I attended writer’s conferences, I met other authors, I learned all the things. But I’m a realist. I gave myself a five-year goal. If I didn’t have an agent by that time, I would pack up my (metaphorical) typewriter.

At the end of the five years, I had five complete manuscripts and lots of other little bits. I didn’t have an agent or a book deal.

Step Four: Detour

If that wasn’t enough of a sign, that’s when I met my future ex-husband and his two boys. I closed the door on my author dreams and opened the door to motherhood. When you have two teenage boys in sports, I assure you, there is zero time for anything else.

In 2020, my kids moved out and I got a little bored (seeing the pattern here?). I had been sewing and selling handmade items on Etsy as a side thing, but I decided to start ordering fabric wholesale for my business and sell whatever I didn’t use. The pandemic hit and I couldn’t sell fabric fast enough. It quickly took over my house and all the hours in my days. In 2021, as things calmed down and I got a better handle on my newest venture, two things happened. I “accidentally” decided to open a fabric shop, and I discovered Kindle Unlimited.

Step Five: Read More

Getting the business out of my house gave me a little work/life balance and I filled those newly acquired hours with my first love—reading. I got my money out of that monthly subscription! Soon, I realized that several of the authors I had discovered were self-published. Back in 2011 when I stopped writing, self-publishing was complicated and rarely successful (this was before the whole 50 Shades insanity).

As I found out more about the industry, I realized it was pretty simple to get your book up on Amazon. I had several well-edited manuscripts. So why shouldn’t I publish them myself? (So many reasons, but I didn’t know that yet.)

In the spring of 2022, I published my first two books. I held them in my hands. My dad bought copies for anyone he’d ever met. And two people on the Internet read a few pages on KU.

So, it turns out that while pushing “Publish” on Amazon is easy, everything else about self-publishing is hard.

Step Six: Figure It Out

I’ve never been one to shy away from learning new things. I’ve built two successful businesses with pure grit and determination. And lots of research (something I learned to do in college). So, I dug in, listening to podcasts, reading craft books, watching how other indie authors were doing it. I made a plan.

I would write a romance series, gain a readership over time, and eventually they would find those two little neglected books on Amazon and love them too.

Now, my series is launching. The first book came out May 19, the second launches on September 15 2025. I designed the covers myself, formatted the books, and am doing all the promotion. My background may seem a little disjointed, but everything I’ve done up to this point has contributed to the indie author I am today. And I’m damn proud.

I hope you grow to love Eastport Beach, and its cast of characters as much as I have. I’m excited to spend many future books getting to know the residents and visitors. Book #2, A Heron House Affair, is releasing in September 2025!

Welcome to Heron House

The Art of Starting Over…

Newly divorced Riley is a little cynical about love since her marriage imploded. She’s turning 30, hates her new job, and her ex brought a date to the divorce hearing.

Widower Ben has made peace with being alone. He’s got a solid law practice, loves the small town he’s made a home in, and can still kick his younger assistant’s ass on the tennis court. But when his favorite client passes away, alone isn’t as easy to bear.

When Ben shows up on Riley’s doorstep to tell her she’s inherited a house from an uncle she’s never met, it sets them on a path neither of them expected.

Amazon | B&N Nook | Walmart (print) | Autographed print copy