I think I’m going to hold on to it, just in case. My next two sold for more, and just recently I sold my latest two installments for $3.2 million! I ended selling two of them for $75,000 each. I would always say ‘the law gives people a way to get a fresh start.’īut when my books went to auction, that’s when I started thinking. I felt like the fairy godmother who could help make the debt go away. I was a consumer bankruptcy attorney, dealing with people drowning in debt. You’re lucky if one person was interested. When did you decide to leave your position as an attorney?Īfter the manuscripts went to auction. This agent thought it would be a big book. One agency was particularly interested, and really liked the writing. I sent 10 queries, and got seven responses back expressing interest. So I started to send them to literary agents. I even entered a competition in Chicago, called “Fire and Ice,” and it won second prize. The girls would give me ideas, and I got to 100 pages. I thought ‘Let me try one of those teen drama stories.’ I enjoyed it. I decided I wanted to try something lighthearted. The online classes offered ideas about plotting. Most of us were just trying to get published, and some of them were African American groups. So, the books came out of their experiences.ĭid you always know you wanted to be a writer? How did that happen?Īfter my girls got out of school, I decided to join online writing groups. Ultimately, I took them out of public school, and I placed them in a Catholic School, and they got along fine. My kids would dress different and go against the grain. But after I got married and had two kids, there was a lot of drama, and my daughters were a little dorky. So, I put that idea on hold, and went to law school. I actually got one of my lowest grades in my college career because of him. I seriously considered being a children’s author when I was an undergrad at Northwestern, and I had a writing professor who did a picture book, and he said I wouldn’t have a good chance to make it. Even as a child, I would make storybooks, and give them to my brothers and sisters. She is now one of the highest grossing African American writers in the country, with three of her books spending a combined 108 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers List. In 2008, she traded in her position as a bankruptcy attorney to devote all her time to writing. The woman channeling the voice of an angst-ridden 8th grader is Rachel Renée Russell, an attractive, affable African American mother of two grown daughters. The “Dork Diaries” is a multi-million dollar children’s book franchise, based on a middle school girl trying to find her way in the world.
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