The covers of four of Patricia Haley’s paperback novels adorn the side of her homepage, and a click on any one of them sends Haley’s voice through the computer speakers, describing her work. “Even to this day, when I read parts of No Regrets, it just, it blows me away because I can’t believe I wrote it,” she says in the recorded announcement. “The book blesses me when I read parts of it. It’s just such an inspirational, uplifting story.”
Haley’s novels, each with a “spiritual message, but not preaching,” as she describes them, tap into a genre she didn’t specifically set out to find: faith-based fiction. Her characters, often middle-class African-Americans, find themselves in dilemmas revolving around family, faith, love and dreams. “She gets you in a story and it’s these people you can identify with, with everyday life challenges,” says Kym Collier, a devoted reader from Illinois who regularly corresponds with the author.
Haley’s goal is to inject each novel with hope. Sometimes, as in the case of her latest, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie (BET), which explores deceit and forgiveness, a character with faith in God helps guide the way to a hopeful message. Other times, churchgoers with strong faith but deep conflicts are at the center of the story.
Perhaps as impressive as Haley’s ability to trailblaze this genre is her skill in promoting it. Haley sold nearly 20,000 copies of her self-published debut novel.
An industrial engineer with an MBA from the University of Chicago who now lives near Philadelphia with her husband, Jeffrey Glass, Haley originally worked in strategic planning and mergers. She started writing in 1996 as a way to relax at the end of long days of consulting. At first, she wrote only a paragraph or two at a time. After four months, a friend read her work and demanded to see more.
In 1997, she sent Nobody’s Perfect—about a 30-year-old woman in search of Mr. Right—to about a dozen agents. Although some scribbled nice notes on their rejection letters, they all were, nonetheless, rejection letters. Haley mapped out a self-publishing business plan and a budget. She spoke at conventions and lingered at mall-bookstore signings until she had sold every copy in stock. An initial printing of 3,700 sold out quickly as word spread about the type of Christian fiction Haley was writing. She printed another 7,000 copies right away, and soon her days of self-publishing were through.
—BRIAN EULE, ’01
