The House the Troll Built
How Writing ‘Recess for Adults’ Grew Martha Carr’s Fan Base and Career
Artistic paintings and art prints from Martha Carr’s well-known series decorate her office and walls within the House the Troll Built. The house, located in a quiet Austin, Texas, suburb, earned its name thanks to the sidekick from her first Urban Fantasy series. That character, a comically vulgar troll, became such a fan-favorite character that book sales allowed her to purchase and build her dream house.
“That swearing troll paid for my house without ever knowing he did it,” says Martha.
The magical garden in the backyard of The House the Troll Built.
Having worked as Martha’s assistant for seven years, it’s hard for me to imagine the beginning of the author empire she manages today. But at sixty-six years old, she looks back fondly on how she started a giant Urban Fantasy universe, The Oriceran Universe, with Michael Anderle eight years ago. The co-authors have hilariously different versions of how it happened.
“Michael hosted a meetup in Austin in 2017 where he was talking about how he had made six figures writing and publishing books as a fiction author,” Martha says. “Many indie authors at that time thought it would be impossible as fiction writers. But I figured I could attend and maybe get some marketing tips out of it.”
She came out of it with more than that. She stayed after the event with her then-teenage son, Louie, to talk with Anderle. She wanted to learn more about what he did and how he did it, and she asked for his number to continue the discussion.
“After a few calls, Michael had an idea. And this is where our stories differ,” she says. “He claims that he asked me if I would like to write an Urban Fantasy series. I swear he asked me if I wanted to create a universe to write in, so I said, ‘Sure.’” Martha laughs. “When I started creating a universe, he didn’t stop me.”
Finding Her Voice
Martha, like many authors, has always had a story to tell.
Growing up in an “interesting” household in Virginia, in an era where women weren’t supposed to have strong opinions, she found that keeping quiet was not for her. When she moved out on her own and began working in Washington, DC, she wrote a long-form article on finding her voice and submitted it to The Washington Post. They printed it.
“I grew up with The Washington Post, so I just submitted it to them. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a local paper but rather a national paper,” Martha says. “That started my writing career. I would pitch articles to them again and again. Eventually, I became a stringer, and then they started giving me assignments. I learned a lot about writing from that job.”
Readers would leave comments on articles and write in to her; she, in turn, responded. She finally had a voice, and she could say in writing what she couldn’t find the right words to say out loud. And she was hooked.
She went on to write a national column on politics and, through syndication, was published in four hundred newspapers throughout the United States.
“At one time, I had around four million readers a month,” Martha says. “And I kept writing.”
Stepping into Publishing
Following the advice of family members who wanted her to find a respectable job and settle down, Martha eventually became a stockbroker, where she met her future husband. They got married, but it soon became clear that their relationship would not work. Against advice from her family, she parted ways with her ex-husband, and at thirty-one, Martha was a newly divorced, single mother with an infant son. But at night, she found she still had to write.
“I started writing a Thriller called Wired, which is about a woman who was a victim who survived a serial killer,” Martha says. “I submitted the manuscript to many publishers, received many rejections, but then it was accepted and published, and it blew up.”
It became a bestseller, and she went on to traditionally publish another fiction novel and a nonfiction book while continuing to work her day job.
Martha, however, was unhappy with how things happen in the traditionally published world. The publishing house gave Martha three months—ninety days—to prove her books would be successful. Most of the advertising had to be done before each book was released, and if the cover or the blurb was wrong, she didn’t have a chance to change it and try again.
She didn’t like the lack of control over her cover design and blurbs, nor the pressure placed on her in a short time frame. She also didn’t like that she got paid only twice a year. “You get paid, and then it’s six months before you get another check, and then it’s 15 percent of sales if you’re lucky,” she says. She adds that’s not true for famous, best-selling authors because they get a bigger slice of the pie. However, she says, “with self-publishing, you can be paid monthly.”
When she finally made the switch to independent publishing, there was a learning curve to understand how it worked, but she says the ability to control everything made it worth the time spent. Now, if she finds a cover isn’t working or a blurb needs to be tweaked, it can be done in short order.
Her first self-published books were a Thriller series based on real-life events in Richmond, Virginia; then she turned her sights to Urban Fantasy and began publishing with Michael Anderle and LMBPN Publishing. The first book in The Leira Chronicles, Waking Magic, was released in July 2017 and marked the beginning of the much larger Oriceran Universe. Soon, she and Michael brought on authors A.L. Knorr, Sarah Noffke, and Flint Maxwell to write series in the universe. Today, it includes more than 250 novels, written by Martha, Anderle, and other collaborators, including TR Cameron and Charles Tillman.
Those first books also marked a change in her career. Late in 2019, two years after launching her indie author career, Martha left her day job. Although she initially worried—“I wanted to know the books wouldn’t dry up and I’d have nothing,” she says—today, she doesn’t regret the decision. Martha has a good idea of what works and what doesn’t in her genres and keeps an eye on what is changing in the industry so she can make business decisions based on those changes. She also believes her concept of “writing recess for adults,” or writing books that balance humor, action-adventure, and philosophy on life, drives her success.
Of course, building her fan base has been instrumental as well.
“When I started, I didn’t have a lot of readers or fans. However, I was running a lot at that time, and people were always giving me weird runner socks with things like hamburgers or dogs on them,” Martha says. “So I started posting pictures of my feet with the crazy socks on, and people responded to it.”
The experience taught her she just had to talk, be authentic, and not be afraid to talk about herself online. She hosted fan meetups in whatever city she was visiting, buying lunch or dinner for anyone who showed. And when COVID meant in-person meetups were no longer possible, she took them online.
“I decided to do a Zoom lunch every Friday and order a pizza for five fans that was delivered to their house before the meeting. Fans would get together and socialize. Other authors would join us and sometimes guest-host when I can’t be there,” Martha says. “It was only supposed to be two weeks. Then a month. But COVID kept going, and the fans loved it so much, it now happens the first Friday of every month.”
The fans love the interaction with Martha, other authors, and fellow fans. They talk about what’s going on in their lives, share books they’ve read, and talk about anything else that comes up. And she makes sure to return the favor. Martha considers her fans “frands”—fans who became friends. She engages with them every chance she gets and responds to every message she receives from them, whether via email, Discord, or Facebook.
Building a Team, Expanding Her Business
Martha speaking on a YA panel at DragonCon in 2024.
In 2018, realizing she couldn’t do it all and didn’t have to, she hired her first assistant, who helped manage newsletters, market books, handle administration tasks, and more, so she could spend more time writing. Then, in 2019, she hired me as her current assistant. In addition, her son, Louie, and Jynafer Yanez handle marketing.
In 2023, she created Martha Roo as a pen name for books she was self-publishing. It marked a change in her business strategy. Despite having a massive backlist as Martha Carr, she hoped her new pen name would attract readers who wouldn’t get lost in her backlist and forget about her new series—though she knows there will be plenty of whale readers who will read those books, too, and that’s okay, she says.
She kicked off the new pen name with two Kickstarter campaigns to promote her Queen of the Flightless Dragons series, as well as launched a Shopify store, where she sells mugs, shirts, and high-quality print versions of her books, including a signed, special edition hardcover. It also allows her, when she wants, to sell ebooks direct.
“Kindle Unlimited is great, and most of my books are part of it,” she says. “But it’s a good idea to spread things out if you can; that way if something happens to Amazon or Kindle Unlimited, you have a backup plan that you can continue to expand upon.”
Roo is not her only pen name; there’s also Harry Parker, her pen name for her Thriller books, which she created after learning that Thrillers do better with a male name attached to them. “The pen name also helps the Amazon and Facebook algorithms to target the right audiences,” she says.
In conjunction with the new series, she’s creating a subscription letter service she will launch with Kickstarter a month after the first book in her next Crime Thriller series releases. Every month, backers will receive a letter from the killer and from the detective, along with evidence and clues that will help them identify the murderer over the course of a year.
Advice for Authors
Martha is no stranger to giving nor receiving advice. She believes finding a group of like-minded authors whom you can bounce ideas off and share successes with is important. When she finds something that works for her, she shares it with fellow authors, and vice versa.
“Sign up for other authors' newsletters,” she suggests. “See what they are doing and what works for them. Learn from what they are doing, and emulate it.”
Martha speaking on the high-powered female authors at the 20Books Vegas conference in 2022.
She’s also no stranger to the challenges life throws at you. Martha has faced cancer five times in her life, and though she is now in remission, she’s also found that anytime something dire has come along, like a new cancer diagnosis, writing has helped her relieve the stress and work through it.
“I got into writing not for the money but because I really, really, really had something to say, and that just hasn't stopped yet,” she says. “No matter what comes up, if you're in this because you want to be a writer, and you hope you make money at it, because that would be awfully nice, you're not going to stop because something dark has happened. You're going to write more, and you're going to work out whatever darkness comes your way in that story.”
Martha admits that when she was in chemo with the fifth round of cancer, she got angry, but she realized she had to work through the anger too.
“I learned to roll with it, but I also learned my limits and to ask for help. I learned to accept help,” Martha says. “For others facing life’s challenges, it’s important to remember writing a few pages each day still adds up to a book. There’s no contest where it has to be a certain amount written or that a small amount doesn’t add up. As long as you are doing what you love, it will go somewhere.”
Martha has no plans to retire anytime soon—slowing down, maybe, but she still has writing to do.
Her final piece of advice for all authors? “If you're in the middle of your career thinking, ‘I wish it was this,’ try not to miss what it actually is. You're gonna look back later and be grateful for all the experiences you've had. It all adds up. I can say I've tried a little bit of everything, and I'm really grateful for it and wondering what comes next.”
