HESPERIA — Montague sixth-grade English teacher Heidi Meoak always tells her students to be brave and go outside their comfort zones. In completing her first novel - The Spirits at the Storyteller - this year, Meoak followed her own advice. The book, which came out in May, is available on Amazon, and Meoak had her first book signing event at her hometown library in Hesperia Tuesday afternoon, with somewhere between two and three dozen friends and readers turning out.
Meoak has always wanted to write, going back to reading the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder as a kid, but leery of trying to be a full-time author, sought a more stable career and became a teacher. The time demands of that career, as well as having a family - she and husband Thomas have two kids - put writing on the back burner for some time. She never forgot about writing, though - she said she has about a dozen story ideas that haven't been fully fleshed out - and after turning 40 in 2023, she was inspired to return to her first passion.
"Authors always talk about devoting at least an hour a day to writing," Meoak said. "When you work full-time and have kids, you can't always find an hour, so I just find time whenever I can. I wrote the whole story in four months, but with doing the editing process and rewrites, it took eight months for me (to finish in all). I self-published, and I don't know if I had a literary agent or publisher if it would go faster."
Mother Nature provided an assist to Meoak in the final stages of getting her book finished in mid-January, when the Montague district had three consecutive snow days.
"That helped me get the editing process done," Meoak said. "My husband was working from home, so he watched the kids while I got that done."
The book, which is the first of an intended series called The Women of Sullivan's Pointe, draws on several things Meoak loves - close sister relationships, lakeside cottages, bookstores and supernatural storytelling. The book follows two recently widowed sisters who open a bookshop in the fictional lakeside town of Sullivan's Pointe, Michigan, only to discover it is haunted by the ghost of both a woman and her murderer, launching both sisters into a mystery.
Meoak and her older sister Amber are "best friends," Meoak said, to the point where they would exasperate their husbands in earlier years by talking about how they would end up living together later on. The bookstore setting was inspired by a conversation with Amber a couple of months after Amber's husband unexpectedly passed away.
"(Our late-life plans to live together) got brought up again, and we talked about it and she said, 'We should open up a bookstore!'" Meoak said. "It opened up a story that I had had writer's block about."
Amber describes herself as "the caretaker" of Heidi's writing and read the book as it was being written as the two bounced ideas off each other. She also helped name one of the characters, Liesel, inspired by the same-named character in the well-known musical The Sound of Music.
"We just had fun thinking it up, and every once in a while I'd throw in a name or something and she'd take it," Amber said.
"I've not asked for any money or compensation at this time. I just say that when she gets like Danielle Steel (to not forget me)," she added with a chuckle.
Meoak's real-life inspirations go beyond the main story, too. She drew upon a trip she and her husband made to the Ramsdell theater in Manistee for her book, and she also hopes to drive autism acceptance through a character in her series that has autism. Her own son has also been diagnosed.
"Even as progressive as we are nowadays, some people don't fully understand it," Meoak said. "I'm hoping that this series might bring a little more understanding to that."
Meoak has a four-book outline for the series and is simultaneously working on the second and third books now, jumping from one to the other whenever she hits a slow point in one of them. She plans to have the sequels each focus on a different woman who works in the Sullivan's Pointe bookshop, with the final one potentially led by the second sister character.
The front cover of Heidi Meoak's first novel, The Spirits at the Storyteller.
Courtesy Heidi Meoak via Instagram
In the future, Meoak said she'd love to continue "the paranormal mystery vibe." She has a story idea similar to her Sullivan's Pointe series that could be set at a bed and breakfast, inspired by a family-owned spot in Bellaire that she follows on social media, and also has a book idea set on Mackinac Island. Historical fiction is a genre she'd love to explore.
Meaok would also love to have more book signing events and has been in touch with various libraries and bookshops around West Michigan. She's in talks to host one at the Grand Haven library in August or September.
In the long term, if her books do well enough, the possibility of being a full-time writer lingers, though Meoak also loves her teaching job. As with any good story, you never know what may come next.
"I belong to this online writer's group, and they say you have to figure out what your goal is," Meoak said. "I'd love to be a writer for whom that's their main source of income, but I don't know if that will happen. I'd love to be noticed by a publishing house."
For more information about Meoak's writing, visit her website, novelistheidijoy.com.
