Clarendon author finds her true calling

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

It’s been a whirlwind year for Clarendon’s Morgan Hysinger, going from a college student to a bestselling author in a short time.

Writing a Scottish time-traveling romance wasn’t where Hysinger thought her career path would lead when she graduated from Clarendon High School in 2009. The daughter of two educators, Hysinger first studied broadcast journalism before turning to corporate communications and later to education. She even took on an internship at Disney World, but nothing seemed to fit.

“Writing was always easy for me, and something always made me think I should be writing,” Hysinger said.

She had never tried her hand at creative writing until she was in college, and even then it was just on her own to see if she could. But things began to change in 2012.

Hysinger signed up for a writing class under the tutelage of Jodi Thomas, a very successful historical romance author and the writer-in-residence at West Texas A&M University. Hysinger wrote a 20-page story for Thomas’ class and was nervous as the well-known writer handed it back to her.

“She wrote: ‘This is ready. Send it in,’” Hysinger recalls. “I thought, if she thinks I can do this, maybe I can.”

Still, Hysinger continued on her traditional career route and was near graduating in the summer of 2013. She needed to do her student teaching and finish one class to graduate and then find a teaching job. But then a June writer’s academy under novelist Alexandra Sokoloff gave her fresh insight on plotting novels like movies and convinced her she needed to leave college and take a new path.

“I was driving home thinking, ‘I’m gonna have to tell my parents I want to do this and they are going to die,’” Hysinger said.

But the news went more smoothly at home. Her mother already knew she was interested in writing for a living, and her father backed her plan but gave her a year to make it work or go back to college. Hysinger then withdrew from West Texas A&M and went to an Atlanta writer’s conference where she learned about the business of writing, marketing, and independent publishing.

“I went to workshops on traditional and independent publishing,” she said. “The indy workshops had ladies who were excited and making a lot of money.”

The next week she pulled a pen name out of the air, “Bethany Claire,” and by November she was ready to go with her first novel in the Morna’s Legacy Series, Love Beyond Time.

As an independent publisher, there was not a big press run for the new book. Instead, the novel was and is printed as people order it off Amazon.com and other online sources. By the end of December, Bethany Claire had made more money than she would have in the two months of teaching public school.

And with that, her career took off with a series of novels set in Scotland and moving back and forth between the present time and the 17th century. The characters in the books are all connected, and the character of Morna is a common thread among them in something of a match-maker role.

The young author took over her parent’s garage for her personal office, and by May she hit USA Today’s Bestseller’s List.

Now her mother has quit her job at Clarendon ISD and works for Bethany Claire fulltime to help with marketing and formatting her books. An independent contractor in South Africa designs her book covers.

Less than a year after she started her career, Hysinger has now penned four full-length novels and two novellas, and the first book has sold more than 50,000 copies.

The young author says being her own boss is high pressure and scary but also very fun and rewarding.

“I can set my own hours, set my prices, and set sales and promotions,” she said.

She also now gets fan mail and has readers as far away as Australia, and readers who sent emails pointing out typos or historical errors are now part of a network of volunteer proofreaders for Bethany Claire.

Looking to the future, Hysinger embarked last week on a move to Florida and says there’s still more to come for Morna’s Legacy but she’s also plotting a new series that will be more of a contemporary romance genre.

Hysinger hopes her new career contines for a long time, and her advice to people is simply to follow your dreams.

“Doors open if you’re doing something you’re passionate about,” she says. “Just do it. Someone is going to make it happen, so why not you?”