How it started
The path I took to writing this bestseller was all beautifully accidental. When working on my second novel, The Lights of Tenth Street, I discovered that I had no idea what kinds of thoughts to put in the head of one of my main characters – a devoted Christian husband and father. So I began asking men in my personal and professional lives what they would be thinking if they were this man in such-and-such a scene.
You could say it was “point-of-view” material long before “POV” was trending on memes and hashtags. Their answers shocked me!
As I connected their answers, I found men were expressing truly foundational needs, fears, desires, struggles, and doubts that sure seemed to be common. Soon, I found myself sharing these findings with friends. We’d be talking intently in a coffee shop, only to discover that two or three women at nearby tables were listening in. Jaws on the floor. Looking like I had a secret key that unlocked a mystery in their marriage.
I knew my informal findings begged for a professional survey to see if most men statistically shared those same perspectives and vulnerabilities.
Most men did. And a bestseller was born.
For Women Only opened the door for my husband Jeff and I to write For Men Only. Together, the two books have sold 2.6 million copies around the world.
Even today, twenty years after For Women Only came out, we still get requests for new foreign language editions. (A few years ago, we got a request for Tigrinya. I had to look that up!)
All of these languages represent new access points for new perspectives that will hopefully change lives. (And new perspectives appear to be sorely needed in some cases. Each foreign language edition creates its own cover of a book—and one foreign publisher printed For Women Only and For Men Only with male and female scorpions on the covers!)
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