Meet indie author Christopher Jansmann at next week's book fest

It was there, after all, that his journey as an author began.

In the audience. Watching Diana Gabaldon.

“I was playing with the idea of writing a book,” Jansmann recalled. “I’d always wanted to write one, but I kept making excuses. I kept putting it off. About then my wife and I happened to see Diana Gabaldon here at the book festival. She said she’d had the same doubts I was having. ‘Can I do it? Should I do it?’ The hardest thing about writing her first book was convincing herself to start.”

It was just the nudge Jansmann needed, and while he has not yet written an “Outlander,” he is one of 450 authors selected to take part in the 16th annual Tucson Festival of Books next Saturday and Sunday, March 15-16, at the University of Arizona.

The marquee will feature such names as Scott Turow, Sandra Brown, Hampton Sides and Billy Collins, but the cast also includes stars and rising stars across all genres of literature … one of them a self-described IT nerd from Green Valley named Chris Jansmann.

By day, he is the director of the Eller College Systems Group, managing the software programs used by the business school’s 6,500 faculty, students and staff.

By night — and early-morning before work — he breathes life into his two crime-solving cops, Sean Colbeth in Maine and Vasily Korsokovach in Los Angeles. Each stars in his own series of Jansmann novels, and both have become celebrities in the exploding ecosystem of self-published books.

It is a Colbeth story, “Vengeance,” that Jansmann will bring to the festival. The seemingly innocent death of hobby shop owner Walter Guernsey may not be so innocent, after all.

Colbeth also starred in Jansmann’s first book, the Gabaldon project, a mystery called “Blindsided” that was released in November of 2020.

“When I first got started on that first one, I just knew it needed to be a mystery,” Jansmann said, “I’d been reading people like P.D. James, Robert B. Parker and Sue Grafton my whole life, and it had be set it Maine. I grew up there. I figured I knew it better than most readers would. So I set the story in a small fishing town on the coast, put a body in the back of a pickup and went from there.”

Predictably, his manuscript was rejected by all 16 mainstream publishers who saw it.

Luckily, all those rejection letters led Jansmann into the world of self-publishing, where he and his books have been thriving ever since.

“One of my writer friends said I should just put my book on Kindle,” Jansmann recalled. “It was 2020. I had no idea you could even do that!”

He quickly learned that Amazon Kindle Direct gave authors a wide range of ways to publish their own work, from digital formats to print-on-demand hardbacks.

He enlisted a designer to fashion a cover. His wife and his mom signed on as editors. Finally, crucially, Jansmann himself began looking for ways to market the book online.

“My IT experience really helped me,” he said. “I do web stuff all the time. I knew how to target audiences with keywords, how to use tools that would help me get the word out. Not everybody is comfortable in the web space. Lucky for me, I am.”

Covid and the ensuing lockdown gave Jansmann time to plan his digital campaign for “Blindsided.” It also gave him more time to write, and quickly there was a backlog of new stories in the queue. He published three books in 2021, four in 2022 and four more in 2023.

“Writing just became part of my day,” Jansmann said. “It is so much different than my day job, and I get so much joy from it, I can’t wait to get back to my characters. They’re like part of my family now, and I need to start writing so I can find out what they’re up to. I’m as curious about the next chapter as my readers are.”

Jansmann said he is a morning writer who does his best work between 5:30 and 6:30, before heading to work. Three times a year, he will dedicate a month to writing at night and on weekends. He said having two different series, one on each coast, helps keep him fresh.

“It also gives me a chance to visit my dad in Maine and my friends in California and call it research,” he laughed.

Now published through IngramSpark, Jansmann sells almost all of his 16 books online. And while he would welcome an approach from a Big Five publisher, it isn’t something that keeps him awake at night.

“I feel pretty safe in my own space now, and I really enjoy what I do. A part of self-publishing that I didn’t expect was the interaction I can have with my readers. I get a lot of stuff from them through the website. Last year, a few even came looking for me at the book festival. It’s kinda cool.”

Jansmann will be in the book festival’s Indie Author Pavilion next Saturday morning. He will then join GK Jurrens and Nancy Sullivan for a session called “Meet Your Next Favorite Author” Saturday at 1 p.m. in the UA Student Union.

FOOTNOTES

• More than half of all new titles released in the United States are now independently published, and indie authors will be well-represented at the Tucson Festival of Books. More than 200 submissions were reviewed for originality, plot, character development and structure. Of those, 120 were invited to take part in the festival. To learn more, visit tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.
• Tucson’s most honored poet, Alison Deming, welcomed her seventh collection to the world this week. “Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower” was released Tuesday by Red Hen Press. Deming is one of 16 poets who will be onstage at the festival.
• Author Craig Johnson, known for his Longmire series of Wyoming whodunits, will receive the festival’s annual Founders Award. It honors Johnson’s achievements in literature and his commitment to literacy. He will receive the award at Friday night’s Authors Table Dinner.