Celebrating Dan Ames
Dan Ames has built a successful career writing high-stakes stories. Best known for series including The Jack Reacher Cases and The Joe Reacher Thrillers, Ames found his path to publishing after years spent balancing writing, family life, and a career in advertising.
In today’s guest post, Dan reflects on the journey from corporate life to full-time author. He touches on the discipline that shaped his writing career, and the persistence it took to build an audience as an independent author.
From Advertising to Authoring: My Writing Journey
A Guest Post by Dan Ames
Elmore Leonard said that writing advertising was not for him. That it was superficial. In fact, he worked at the same agency in Detroit that I did, albeit about forty years or so before I did.
What advertising did provide was the concept of deadlines. Come up with a dozen ideas for a client by tomorrow or you’re fired. Plain and simple. No time to wait for inspiration. Get the work done, or you’re out on the street.
It comes in handy.
My father had an impressive library, and I read everything when I was a kid, from Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson to Louis L’Amour and Joseph Wambaugh. Eventually, I gravitated to crime fiction, especially Thomas Perry and his creation, the Butcher’s Boy.
When I decided it was time not only to write fiction, but to try to make a living at it, I was already thirty years old. Sure, I’d messed around with literary short stories, etc., but they didn’t really rev my engine.
So I started working on stories, usually early in the morning before I went off to the day job. It was grueling, especially with a young family, the pressures of a mortgage, and the naturally stressful environment of an ad agency, where a client can fire the company at will and a hundred people are suddenly out of a job.
The Slow Exit and the Ramp-Up
Leaving corporate America wasn’t a dramatic moment. No single morning where I quit and drove off into the sunset. It was a slow extrication. Years of writing books on the side while keeping quiet about it, because no employer wants to know one of their workers’ true passion is elsewhere.
After several literary agents and close calls with publishers, I published my first eBook. I figured I would earn enough every month to buy a slice of pizza now and then.
That was true, until one of my books was featured by an online book reviewer/promoter. Everything changed after that, and I never looked back.
Where Barnes & Noble Fits
Reaching readers as an independent author isn’t a solved problem. You build the work, but the work still needs to find people. Barnes & Noble has been one of the places where that actually happens, where a reader browsing for their next thriller finds a cover, reads the first page, and takes a chance.
There’s something that matters about being in that space. Readers trust Barnes & Noble. That trust transfers. And for an author who spent decades writing things designed to disappear after thirty seconds, having a book sit on a shelf, physical or digital, and wait for exactly the right reader still feels like a minor miracle.
I’m still the guy in the back of the agency library reading on his lunch break. I’ve just found a better use for the stories piling up in my head.
A Good Series
I happen to be an author who loves writing in a series. To date, I have quite a few: the John Rockne Mysteries, The Jack Reacher Cases, The Neagley Thrillers, The Wallace Mack Thrillers, the Angel Pike Thrillers, plus many more.
Each time I write in one of those worlds, I feel truly immersed. It’s like going back to a hometown. Yes, everything feels a little different, but you remember what you most love about the place and the people.
I hope my readers feel the same way.
About Dan Ames
Dan Ames is the USA TODAY bestselling author of series including The Jack Reacher Cases, The Joe Reacher Thrillers, and Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators. Ames writes fast-paced, action-packed mysteries and thrillers focusing on what matters most: relentless pacing, sharp characters, and plots that move.
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