Huntington Thriller Author Offers Advice for Writers

Best-selling author Sheila Redling, from Huntington, West Virginia, has written nine books under the pen name SG Redling. After losing her will to write, she is back on track and more books are on the way. In this interview she talks about the importance of protecting your ability to write and gives advice to writers.

Redling explained that after a fast start, writing several books, she burned out. 

“I had taken a few years off writing; I’d gotten really burned out,” she said. “I had been writing when my mother was dying, and I wasn’t taking care of my writing process, which I think is something I wish somebody had warned me about that earlier.”

For Redling, the key was to find other ways to recharge her creativity. She branched out into art and even acting to find new inspiration. 

“It’s just a lovely homecoming coming back to writing,” she said. “It is still my favorite thing to do in the world, which is both an important lesson for you to learn for yourself, but also for other writers to learn is don’t squander it. Don’t waste it.”

Redling’s first book, Flower Town is about a small mid-western town that is contaminated with a chemical spill. The residents are quarantined. Her other books include: The Dani Britton Series (“The Widow File” and “Redemption Key”) the Nahan series (“Ourselves” and “The Reaches”) along with stand-alone books like “Baggage,” “At Risk” and “Damocles.”

Asked to describe her favorite moment as a writer, she decided it was seeing her book in a library.

“My book was in a public library. I didn’t put it there. Anybody could come across it. Think about how many writers you came across as a kid just because you were at the library,” she said.

She explained that was the moment she felt like she had arrived as an author.