A Makansi Family | Layla Dog Press Milestone
I had a dream…
Way back in the olden days, when our daughters, Amira & Elena, were in high school, I had a dream in which one scene really stuck with me. At breakfast, I told the crew about it, and then we started speculating about who the people were in the scene (hint, it was Remy Alexander and Vale Orlean) and what led them to that particular place … and what happened after.
Since I’d started and not finished half a dozen novels by that time, I decided to try to write the story of these two characters, and Amira and Elena joined in. Even as Amira graduated and went off to University of Chicago and then Elena graduated and went off to Oberlin College, we kept writing. Eventually, we had a trilogy and a novella (written by Amira) to show for our efforts.
All based on one scene from one dream.
Being entreprenurial at heart, we decided to start a family business and publish the stories ourselves. At first we tried to serialize THE SOWING, but the feedback we got was: WE WANT THIS STORY NOW!
The fact that we got feedback at all was … wow. People we don’t know are reading this??? How is this even a thing?
And now, we’re blown away by the fact that people we don’t know are still reading our stories. So…
We’re thrilled and thankful to our readers for getting us over 2 Million Kindle page reads.
We’ve continued to publish our books through our company imprint, Layla Dog Press, named after the beaten and bedraggled girl we adopted to keep our old dog, Daisy, company. After beginning her life on the streets, she died surrounded by those who loved her at the age of 18. She was … well, she was loved. A LOT.
Layla Sahara Makansi, the Queen of Layla Dog Press.
And speaking of Sweet old Daisy Lou, here she is at around 17 years old. A Norweigan Elkhound mix, epic 6-foot fence jumper, chaser of elusive reindeer, she was Queen of Flora Place.
Anyway, enough about old dogs (lest I weep).
Suffice it to say, since we first published THE SOWING, we’ve all continued writing and publishing and doggedly (see what I did there?) moving forward with our creative pursuits. Now, Amira has a stand alone novel and a non-fiction book out. Elena is an artist and is working in her spare time (as if she has any) on an idea for her own novel full of magic and mystery. Jason has polished his second novel and has written several non-fiction books and had a dozen or so short stories published. And I have worked as an editor, designer and publisher ever since then. Now, I have three stand-alone books to my name and am working on a 4-book near-future dystopian romantic suspense series. All while we’re working full time.
So, yes, surpassing the TWO MILLION PAGES READ milestone on Kindle means a lot to us.
I think back to those first days when we were flabbergasted that people we didn’t know-—people as far away as AUSTRALIA!—were reading our books and reaching out to tell us how much they loved them, and I’m still amazed.
So, thank you to everyone who has picked up one of our titles. We all write what we we want to read, and we’re so glad you are right there with us, reading along.