Today we’d like to introduce you to Laurelin (Laura) Paige (Rahimi Barnes).
Hi Laurelin (Laura), thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Laura Rahimi Barnes, the daughter of a first-generation immigrant from Iran and a Utah native. Though born and raised in Logan, Utah, I found myself living outside of Denver, Colorado after graduating from college in Musical Theater at University of Northern Colorado. I had made it the New School in New York City and had planned to get a master’s degree in acting there, but I was thrown off course when I fell in love, and I ended up getting married and staying in Denver instead.
The creative bug never left, however, and while holding down a full-time job working as a billing specialist at an ophthalmology practice, I kept looking for outlets for my ideas and creative energy. I tried getting a master’s in secondary education, hoping to teach theater, then switched to marketing when I realized that teenagers weren’t my strong suit. Eventually, I graduated with a load of student debt and an MBA with a marketing emphasis, which I hoped I could use to get a job in a high-level marketing position.
Finding a new job that paid enough and accommodated our lives was tricky, though. By this time, I’d been married for ten years and had three children. I was balancing four jobs and juggling the kids with my husband, who also worked full time, and it was difficult to find something new that would provide enough to drop some of the odd jobs or could work around them. Meanwhile, my youngest daughter was starting to show some developmental delays and difficulty sleeping and was soon diagnosed as autistic. We were fortunate enough to qualify for therapy from the state, but that was another component that had to be worked into our busy schedules. Plus, her behavioral issues made it difficult for us to find a place qualified to care for her so our jobs had to be able to coordinate so that one of us was always home.
It was a tough time, but we were making it work, and I’d even found a way to exercise my creativity. While I stayed up late with my sleepless child, I started writing books. Middle grade stories at first, stories meant to entertain my oldest daughter, and then romance books. It was a form of escape from the daily stresses and obligations, and I found it both exciting and soothing.
Then my husband lost his job. He’d been a store manager for Blockbuster, and in 2012, the company was going under. He qualified for unemployment, but that wouldn’t last, and finding a new job that allowed him the freedom to work around my jobs—well, it was the same frustration we’d faced with my hopes for another job. We were forced to file for bankruptcy, and as the date of his unemployment expiration approaching, I took advantage of Amazon’s fairly new platform to self-publish, hoping that I could sell enough copies of my romance book to make up for the loss we’d face when the unemployment ended. Seven thousand dollars. That was my goal. I pushed publish and prayed.
Within a month, under the pen name Laurelin Paige, my little book had earned five times that. The two sequels earned me enough to quit all my jobs. A year later, I’d hit the New York Times nine times and my trilogy became one of the top ten most downloaded books of 2014. I became a full-time writer and have never looked back. Forty books later, I have been published in eighteen languages and run a small but thriving publishing company that consists of more than just my own titles.
After living briefly in Kansas, we ended up moving to the Austin area in 2018, again to accommodate my autistic daughter. She’d struggled in public school, and our search for a private school that fit her needs led us here. I’m very fortunate to be able to perform my job anywhere otherwise a move like that would not have been possible. I employ a staff of ten and most of my brilliant and amazing team lives around the country. Last year, Paige Press (my business) expanded to include a focus on developing diverse story projects (stories with characters who are POC, neurodivergent, or have other atypical characteristics) across a variety of genres. We’ve scouted for undiscovered talent and have been able to mentor and give jobs to several authors (many diverse) who wouldn’t have the luxury of taking time to write without someone providing a stipend. It’s been an insane nine years from publishing that first story to today, and I couldn’t be more grateful that my business took off like it did. Not only have I been able to give back to others, something very important to me, I’ve also been able to work my schedule around my three daughters, all of who have ended up being diagnosed with special needs. Writing and publishing has been the hardest job I’ve undertaken (thank goodness for my theater degree to teach me story and my marketing degree to teach me business), but it’s been worth every second.
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?
Oh my goodness, it has not been a smooth road. It feels like it should have been. It probably looks to others like I published a book and boom, instant success. Sure, there was some of that. But there was also so many nights staying up late, tweaking my books. So many rejection letters from agents and publishers before I decided to self-publish. Then after I hit the NYT, everyone thinks it’s uphill from there. Actually, though, having my first book be such a huge success meant that everything afterward was sort of downhill. And I definitely made some mistakes. I wrote books that were off brand, and that lost me momentum. Self-publishing was a new market, and there weren’t rules so there was a lot of trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t without any guidance. I trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted. I had too little confidence at times and over-inflated ego at other times. It is a brutally competitive field and the strains the job puts on mental health have been enormous. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done (besides parenting), and so many people look at it as though writing is a “fun” leisure type job. It’s not at all.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Most of the books I write are sexy and dark—think Fifty Shades of Gray genre—and while I’ve written some light-hearted rom coms, my brand is really centered around the edgier stories. In general, my stories focus on broken people. I’m very intrigued with the psychology of people. What makes people who they are? Why do they hurt other people? What hurt them? I spend a lot of time investigating those questions in my stories. They aren’t for everyone, and I’m proud of that. I like to challenge readers. I want people to wonder why the things that turn them off do so and why the things that turn them on do so. I like to question norms and examine questions such as what’s the difference between (consensual) rape play and rape? Or is it okay to have lied to someone you love if it was before you really knew them? Or how far would you go for someone you believe you’re indebted to? A lot of romance is more fluffy (I love me some fluff so no shame), and I think my themes tend to set me apart.
With that said, I’m most proud of what we’re doing on the developmental side of Paige Press, which is very much a collaborative process. A team of us work together to create a story idea that we believe is both marketable and progressive. Then we audition writers for the project. Once we find a writer that we believe would be good, we hire them to write it and mentor them along the way with the intention of helping them get the finished project published with a traditional publisher with the author’s name attached. Hopefully, this helps launch careers for talented people who can’t get their foot in the door otherwise. While there are other companies that do this (Alloy, Glasstown, Cake, to name a few), I believe we are the only one that offers money upfront. I’m able to do this by drawing on money from my own books sales, and that definitely sets us apart.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I’m always looking for new writers, particularly those with diverse backgrounds. If you are a writer or know of a writer who is interested in the process, please reach out to us using this link: https://www.paige.press/submissions.
Also, if you’re a romance reader, check out my books under the name Laurelin Paige, available on most vendor platforms.
Contact Info:
- Email: laura@paige.press
- Website: paige.press
- Instagram: @thereallaurelinpaige
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurelinPaige
- Other: www.laurelinpaige.com
Image Credits
Annie Ray photography
