Success Stories: Congratulations to Michael McLaughlin on Publishing His Book!
- Michelle Hazen
- 21 hours ago
- 6 min read
1. Can you tell us a little about No Harm Intended? What's the premise and what inspired you to write it?
No Harm Intended is a thriller about resilience, revenge, and the choices that define who we become under pressure. The story starts when tourists on a small boat in the Amazon are taken hostage by local villagers protesting an oil spill on their land. The villagers have no intent to harm anyone (see how the title came about?), but they completely lose control of the situation. The fate of the captives falls into the hands of a city doctor barely out of med school, a terrified, first-time tour guide, and an unarmed Chicago cop desperate to save her kids.
In 2022, my wife and I took a guided tour of Peru that included a five-day cruise along the Amazon and its main tributaries, the Marañon and Ucayali Rivers. Our small boat was straight out of Death on the Nile. The amazing trip left us with a deep respect for the rainforest, the local communities, and our guides.
A week after we returned home, Amazon villagers sieged the tour boats where we’d been to protest an oil spill, temporarily taking passengers hostage.
Everyone was released unharmed. The tourists even publicly supported their captors’ cause on social media afterwards.
The Amazon rainforest and the catastrophe of the many oil spills there served as the perfect setting for a thriller. What if a similar hostage situation there went terribly wrong? That’s where the seed of this novel began.
2. I love the inspiration story behind that book--perfect example of art imitating life. But so glad you made it back from your vacation okay! I have to admit one of my favorite parts of working on this book was fine-tuning all the DIFFERENT types of suspense we had going at once, through all the different POV characters.
How has your experience with indie publishing been? What do you enjoy about it?
I see my writing career as having two main pathways. There’s the obvious “writing” part, which is mainly about spending time getting words onto the page but also involves learning the craft from others. Then there’s the business end, which intimidates a lot of people. As a former surgeon and owner of a medical writing company, I’ve built businesses for most of my career. I never realized how much this would help as an author.
Being in indie publishing gives me full control of my writing and my business.
I make all the decisions, take full credit for the successes, and live with the consequences. The learning curve in indie publishing has been steep and probably slower than it might have been in traditional publishing, but I now have an in depth understanding of all aspects of my own business.
3. For this particular book, we did book coaching all the way through--brainstormed various ideas, did troubleshooting on the book plan, I gave feedback on pages as you wrote and then we revised the finished version together. Since you've written books both on your own and with a coach, how would you compare/contrast the experiences?
Writers often divide themselves into pantsers (who write by the seat of their pants, figuring out the story as they go) and plotters (who outline/plan first). I wrote my first four thrillers as a pantser, coming up with a hook and then figuring out how to write myself out of it. I enjoyed this approach, and there’s nothing better than the a-ha moment when you figure out a great twist or the perfect ending to a story. However, there’s also nothing worse than reaching the so-called muddle-in-the-middle and wondering where the hell the mess you’re writing is headed. Whenever I got stuck, I found myself escaping with a light outline, which was telling. My rough first drafts went quickly, but I paid a fair amount of that time back on heavy revisions and chapter deletions/additions.
Coaching was instrumental in all phases of the creation of this book.
Having a mentor to brainstorm through the planning of the novel was extremely helpful. Also, I had never formally outlined a manuscript before we started working together. The biggest benefit of preparing a chapter-by-chapter outline was that I never started a day wondering what I was going to write.
Having weekly deadlines allowed a little wiggle room but kept me on track to deliver a set number of pages. I didn’t want to waste the time you’d budgeted for me. With a predictable number of new pages each week, as well as revising the chapters from the previous week based on your in-line comments, I stayed on course and was even able to pinpoint when the full manuscript would be ready for your review months in advance. By the time I started revising that full manuscript, there were no major unsuspected issues, and the quality of the writing had benefitted from our prior chapter-by-chapter edit/revision.
4. I know marketing is often a topic on indie authors' minds. What types of things have you tried for marketing? How do you balance your time spent marketing with your time spent writing the next thing?
My daily approach is probably upside-down from what a lot of other authors do. I’m not a morning person, so I don’t wake up at 5am to write. Instead, I focus on the administrative aspects of the job and my marketing efforts in the morning while the caffeine is kicking in. I try to set a limit of 11am for shifting over to writing, a little later during the weeks immediately before and after the book release date.
Now that I’m in my seventh year of writing full-time, I’ve had an opportunity to explore a wide variety of marketing efforts: Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) campaigns (NetGalley, Hidden Gems), online ads (Facebook, Amazon), Goodreads Giveaways, podcast appearances, news coverage, panel participation and speaker events (ThrillerFest, Creatures Crime & Creativity, others), Zoom book club appearances, and signings at festivals, bookstores, and libraries. I’m active on several social media platforms (@mclaughlinbooks) but primarily focus on Facebook and Instagram. My Twists & Turns newsletter provides a light-hearted chronicle of my author journey. I also maintain my website (mclaughlinbooks.com) and author pages on multiple platforms (Amazon, Goodreads, others).
All of these serve different purposes, some have proven more helpful than others, and some haven’t provided enough return on investment. My priorities are learning the craft and business of writing, networking with the writing community, and engaging with readers.
5. Is there anything you've learned along the way that you'd like to pass on to other writers?
I’m careful to separate my writer brain from my editor brain.
When I’m drafting a manuscript, I lock the editor out of the room and try my best not to fret over a word choice, name selection, or even the ideal phrasing for a sentence, anything that will hold up the writing. I get the words down on the page, because I know once I have the text in front of me, I can fix anything by editing. When it’s time, I put on my editor hat and brutalize what the writer in me drafted, because it usually stinks. The writer and editor in me have developed a mutual respect and an effective working process, but I rarely allow them to talk to each other.
I also think it’s important to find an activity that helps clear your mind. For me,
that’s running. Sometimes, as I’m lacing up my running shoes, I even tell
myself a plot or character challenge I need to sort out. When the run is over,
I’m ready for a fresh start, and my subconscious has often found the solution. How about one more idea?
I recently started a “win jar.”
As authors, we tend to be too hard on ourselves, glossing over our successes and focusing on our shortcomings. Anyone who sulks over mixed Amazon reviews knows what I’m
talking about. The win jar collects our successes, small and large, as we write
them down and toss them inside. I decided to be optimistic, using a one-gallon
copper Moscow Mule mug for mine.
MICHAEL J. MCLAUGHLIN, MD, is the award-winning author of several thrillers, including Extinction, Fugue, and Woods. Following earlier careers as a surgeon and the owner of a medical writing business, he now writes novels in New Jersey, where he lives with his family. Learn more at mclaughlinbooks.com. Follow on social media @mclaughlinbooks.
Nobody was supposed to die.
In this psychological thriller from the author of Extinction, a routine journey through the Peruvian Amazon turns into a nightmare of malicious deception and twisted morality.
When villagers protesting a nearby oil spill seize a small tour boat, the passengers cling to hope that reason will prevail. But hostage negotiations stall, and a new arrival concealing a disturbing agenda takes control, turning the protest into a ticking execution clock.
After escaping into the rainforest, a suspended Chicago cop must navigate hostile surroundings without weapons and evade the armed captors to reach her children before it’s too late.
As the hostage crisis intensifies, secrets emerge and loyalties fracture. Pushed to the edge, ordinary people are forced to decide what they’re willing to do to survive.
No Harm Intended is a tense and unrelenting psychological thriller about resilience, revenge, and the choices that define who we become under pressure.