Author Interview: SALLY HANAN

Today I'm speaking to a fabulous author/life coach to find out more about her books and her writing life so far! 

Check it out... 

Sally Hanan is an Irish import to the US. She made the eight-hour crossing back in the '90s with a husband and two young children in tow. Since then she has managed to raise her above-average kids, develop a solid addiction to Facebook, and clean up when someone is about to visit.

On a more professional note, Sally has been counseling people for more than twenty years and is a certified life coach and a recent teacher at the Texas School of Supernatural Ministry. She also runs a writing and editing business on the side, because she gets bored easily, and she loves fixing words as well as people.

​Find out more about Sally here! 

Amazon
Life Coaching
Editing 

​With her heaven-sent wisdom and Irish wit, life coach and business owner Sally Hanan helps you stop feeling like you are lost and have no purpose and leads you into the life of clarity, purpose, and meaning you were designed to have. Also a lay counselor, Sally Hanan has helped hundreds of men and women heal their pasts and maximize their futures. This is her highly anticipated third workbook featuring her characteristic mix of weighty insight, wit, and thought-provoking questions written to help women find themselves and figure out what to do with their lives.

Each chapter of Coach Yourself opens with personal stories and insight Hanan has gained as a nurse, mother, business owner, and life coach. She has a simple yet profound style of writing that speaks straight to the heart and gets women thinking about their life purposes from a variety of perspectives. The assessments and interactive exercises help women to gain more confidence, find direction, navigate change, and pursue their dreams. Each chapter ends with a person’s encouraging life story or journey (including one by Shawn Bolz of Bolz Ministries). From her temporary stint driving for rideshare companies to writing a letter to her father before he died to figuring out how she would have designed her kids if she were God, Hanan weaves her own and others’ stories together beautifully. With her raw honesty and passion for fullness, she energizes women to see their worth, find their purpose, and pursue their goals so they can live life fully alive.

Grab your copy here!
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The Interview...

Who are you and what do you write?

I’m an Irish opinionated fixer of words and people. I write women’s fiction, flash fiction, and nonfiction, with a toe dipped into picture books.


Where and when and how did the writing life begin for you?

Ever since I learned to read, I’ve written. I still remember those first copybooks from school in which we wrote stories and drew a picture to go with them. My English teachers were great encouragers in secondary school.


How has the journey to this point been? Can you give us a basic rundown?

I wrote in my diary for many, many years and stopped when the kids were born. I did a writing course when they were very small but didn’t do anything with it after. The mentor was encouraging though. We won the Irish lottery visa, emigrated to Texas, and got busier. Once I had teenagers, it was easier to set time aside to learn more, and I joined a group called Faithwriters. The great thing about it was that they had a weekly challenge, and by studying winning entries each week and getting and giving peer reviews, I worked my way up to the master level. I then self-published my favorite entries into a small book of flash fiction called Joy in a Box.
 
Since then I’ve set up an editing business and have helped many authors self-publish their own books. I’ve also published three workbooks, which are all self-help focused—one is about healing the heart, the second is about letting the Holy Spirit move through your life freely in creative ways, and the third is about living life on purpose to maximize everything in you. I’ve been doing inner healing since the ‘90s and thought it would be great to write something people could do in the privacy of their own home. I’ve also taught many classes on working with the Holy Spirit and wanted to give a guidebook for others to take that journey. I became a certified life coach a few years into all this and wanted to encourage people to be all they could be, so the third book has a lot of questions helping people understand who they are and what they are in this world for.
 
I think my favorite writing is women’s fiction. You can create a lot more and pull people into beauty.
 

What's been the hardest part of your writing/publishing experience so far? And the most enjoyable?

My current book has been quite the journey. It’s women’s fiction set in my homeland of Ireland, and it’s set in the ‘80s. I’ve had a lot of great feedback on it and had a few requests for fulls, but it needed more work. I’m almost finished round 1 of a major rewrite and am working with a good developmental editor to help iron out all the kinks. I’ll query the next hundred agents then....
 
Any time I get to write creatively, it’s enjoyable, but I do love kudos. :D


Would you go back and change anything?

No. I am who I am. It is what it is.


Where would you like to be in 5 years’ time? And 10? Or, what are your plans for the future?

I’d like to have my first novel published by a recognized publisher within five years, and hopefully the second one would be out within ten. I’d also like to write many more self-help books and have accompanying video series and audio books. The more people I can help to live a full life, the better.


What's one piece of advice you'd give to new writers just starting out?

Just enjoy yourself. Words are like dough—you can shape them together in the most stunning, extraordinary, fun ways; and the greatest happiness is during the creation of something gorgeous, not the finished result. Write your lovely heart out.


And most importantly... 

Ketchup or Mayo? Mayo – olive oil mayo
Night or Day? Night – it’s so quiet and sacred.
Inside or Outside? Outside - without the snakes and wild beesties. I loved the woods in Ireland.
Dogs or Cats? Dogs
Twitter or Facebook? Facebook – I love making people laugh and post daily memes, and occasionally I open my mouth and Jesus falls out.
e-book or Paperback? Paperback unless I’m traveling
Sun or Rain? Sun – so much rain in Ireland. It’s nice to stay dry for days at a time.
Keyboard or Pencil & Notebook? Notebook but keyboard for writing novels – so slow otherwise.
Comedy or Drama? Comedy. Who wants to cry?
Chips or Chocolate? Cadbury’s chocolate, although sometimes I have a hankering for crisps and nothing else will suffice.