Local StoriesDecember 9, 2024

Life & Work with Cody Engdahl

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cody Engdahl

Cody, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’m a historical novelist with five novels and two nonfiction works published.

I suppose I was always supposed to be a writer.

I’ve always lived deep inside my mind. I was a quiet kid. I had friends but mostly played by myself. I wasn’t into sports or toys much unless I could fashion them into swords or guns. I acted out grand adventures where playgrounds were obstacle courses set on lava fields, the woods were the jungles of Vietnam, our house was a giant star cruiser and my bicycle was my personal starfighter that launched from the portal of our electric garage door. Even when I went to sleep, I would imagine an ongoing adventure where I was a sword-wielding warrior or space pilot.

I started writing stories in junior high school and did so off and on through college. The early stories were fantasy adventures. Later, I wrote Horror as I was going through the gothic punk phase of my late teens/early adulthood.

I started my first novel in the nineties. It was sort of a religious satire based on a real story I heard about a guy who escaped from an insane asylum and tried to bring on the apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. I got about five or six chapters into it before my hard disc crashed, and I lost everything.

After that, I was done writing for a while. I worked in television as a commercial producer in Detroit for about five years. I took a break to teach English in Japan and Portugal for a few years. Then I came back to the US and got into TV news. I worked in Detroit, Toledo, Southwest Florida, and finally, Nashville where I ended up as a morning reporter covering breaking stories.

In 2017, new management came and got rid of everybody whose contract was up that year. I was one of them. Honestly, I was ready to go. TV news is an easy place to get burned out, and after ten years, I was done.

I struggled to find work. Then, after nine months of interviews but no jobs, I decided to give myself a job. I realized that I had always planned to write novels one day. I decided that if I didn’t start then, I would never. So I sat down and wrote my first novel, Rampage on the River: The Battle for Island No. 10. Today, I am working on my sixth novel, The French Fiasco, and have many more planned. I’m basically going to write and publish novels until I die or become incapacitated.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s certainly been a road: smooth at times with plenty of rough spots along the way. The important thing is to plot the road out as much as you can and be flexible as you traverse the potholes, construction, and accidents along the way.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I write historical novels. My series is called The Long Century. The first three books take place in the American Civil War, where friends are separated at the beginning and end up on opposite sides. The trilogy follows them through their adventures, where their paths cross several times.

My fourth book, Mexico, My Love, is a prequel to the trilogy. It’s a swashbuckling adventure and a tragic love story. It’s about the parents of one of the characters from the trilogy. The story tells how they meet in France, fall in love, and run away together. They go on a grand adventure across the deserts of Africa, the pirate-infested seas, and ultimately into the heart of the Mexican-American War.

Book Five picks up my main character after the American Civil War. He has to go to Germany to be reunited with his wife and ends up in the Austro-Prussian War.

The book I’m writing now, The French Fiasco, takes my character on an adventure in the Franco-Prussian War.

After that, I’m writing a free novella for my email list and then a pirate novel. There’s much more planned after that, too!

My books follow real history very closely. My characters interact with real events and historical figures. I plan on carrying the series into World War I. I have several projects planned after that. My goal is to satisfy a yearning I had as a twelve-year-old boy for romantic adventure in a world ruled by honor culture. I find in doing so, I have gained loyal readers of all ages, men and women alike. It’s all about writing to passion with deep emotional context.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Sometimes avoiding risks can be a risk itself. We see this in investing where you could have made more money if you had put it in a higher returning but riskier investment instead of a “sure bet.” The money you could have made but didn’t is actually a loss.

So, I think you should always look at the risk/return ratio of any endeavor. Typically, higher risk brings higher rewards. You have to find the “Goldie Locks” risk/reward ratio you are comfortable with.

In the beginning, I had to decide whether I would pursue an agent who would then find me a publisher, or go independent. I weighed the pros and cons. The traditional route, once achieved, offered the backing, distribution, and hopefully, marketing of a publisher at the cost of lower royalties per unit sold and creative freedom. I decided to go independent, where the effort to get my books off the ground would be on me alone, but I wouldn’t have to share my royalties with anyone, and I would have absolute creative freedom.

The risks were there. I’ve had to do all my own marketing and make my own business decisions as a newbie to the publishing business. In essence, I had to become my own publishing company. But I gambled on my ability to learn and work ethic. I’m happy to say after a little more than six years, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Pricing:

Price to market. For me, that is looking at what historical military and action & adventure novels are selling for on Amazon and making sure that my books fit within the range.
Take advantage of independently published pricing. Traditionally published novels similar to mine usually go for twice as much or even more. Why? Because the big publishing companies have a lot more overhead to pay. Sadly, the authors still make less than I do per unit sold. The ability to charge less is a great advantage when competing with publishers and authors who have bigger name recognition and marketing budgets than I do.
Keep your series starter at an attractive price. My first book is $2.99. It’s a risk worth taking for a new reader who doesn’t know me yet. The books go up in price through the series. Book 5 is currently $4.99. By the time readers get to it, they know the quality of my work and are willing to pay more to continue. Eventually, that price will come down after the latest book comes out.
Discounting interior books can lead to sales of previous books in the series. Amazon allows me to run 99¢/99p specials on each of my books every ninety days. I find that, sometimes, when I advertise that Books 2, 3, or 4 are on sale, new readers opt to buy the preceding books as well at full price.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
These are all mine. I own the rights to them.

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