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Writers hear all the time to never n-e-v-e-r write to catch an emerging wave. Why? By the time you do, it’s gone. But what if you have material that fits well with a trend you see emerging?

Take multi-published novelist Hugh Howey, an author whose  big break came riding the first waves of the self publishing movement. How did he do that? By being ready.  Howey had stories. He had rejections. He kept at it, writing, rewriting, posting excerpts on his site where he also kept watch on his first publisher, the world-wide web. Why Howey and not the many other writers publishing back in Indie’s early days? Hugh Howey is a storyteller and even though traditional publishing didn’t think much of his skill set back then, his readers did. Readers brought NY publishing to Hugh Howey’s e-doorstep.

Marijuana is a movement literally growing as I type. For at least three years, I’ve been faithfully tracking and looking for opportunities of all kinds within the emerging marijuana market. In 2014, I added a channel at MarlaMiller.com devoted to the medical marijuana movement. In 2013, I met former Washington Post journalist Tom Huth at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference; from the first reading of his memoir (intimately tying marijuana into a story about caregiving) I knew he had a shot at publication. He was working on a few projects back then. I encouraged him to focus on the marijuana infused piece. After SBWC’s 2014 conference, Tom hired me as editor/social media advisor and we’ve been working on Forty Years Stoned: A Romance ever since.

Here’s how you catch a wave, writers, have a story ready to pitch when that wave begins to crest. Veteran NY MJmemoir-CatherineHillerwriter Catherine Hiller also caught the MJ wave. Her memoir ‘Just Say Yes‘ was published by Heliotrope Books in New York on 4/20/2015 but of course! Here’s her piece  published in the New York Times that introduced her memoir. Sweetly timed, it ran about ten days before publication of Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir