Isabella Maldonado’s Freakish Success

No agent, no publisher, no problem. Need a lottery number?

Isabella Maldonado says every aspiring author she meets wants to throw rocks at her. Not once, but thrice. First, for stumbling upon and signing with an acquiring editor at her first writer’s conference. Second, for signing with the first agent she ever pitched. And finally––the karma just keeps getting better––for her agent landing her with one of the most prestigious publishers in crime fiction when her first publisher went belly up.

The stars and planets aligned, the cosmos hailed in rose-tinted wonder, and fate was speaking (loudly) everywhere. Yes, Isabella Maldonado is the go-to person for your lottery number.

Maldonado, the daughter of a Puerto Rican immigrant, aspired to become a police officer. She joined the Fairfax County, Virginia police and was later tapped to become a hostage negotiator. “I learned my words were going to be a tool. Some of the best cops I ever knew were the best talkers.”

During her more than twenty-year career, she rose to the rank of captain, commander of special investigations and forensics, precinct commander, and finally department spokeswoman just as the world’s attention suddenly focused on the Beltway Sniper terrorizing the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. back in 2002. You may have recognized her as the woman often standing before the television cameras.

She retired early in 2010 and moved to Arizona where she began a five-year Odyssey to learn novel writing––something she’d always wanted to do.

She wrote a police procedural called Blood’s Echo with a Latina Detective Veranda Cruz as her protagonist. Isabella likened her character as a sort of female Harry Bosch, Michael Connelly’s famous fictional detective. “I admired the way Connelly described how it was to walk through the halls of the LAPD. It has that ethos about it.”

Terri Bischoff, acquiring editor for Midnight Ink, attended a local Sisters in Crime writers conference and Maldonado was the last in line to pitch her. Bischoff asked for her manuscript.

“I did not expect that,” Maldonado says. In fact, she hadn’t completed editing it, so she asked for two weeks grace. A month later Bischoff offered her a three-book deal.

Her novel was published in March 2017 but did not sell well.

“I still didn’t have an agent. I was so stunned. I wasn’t expecting to get a contract so fast.”

The best piece of advice she ever received, she says, was to attend writers conferences. So, she ventured to New York City for the International Thriller Writers annual conference.

At PitchFest, she zeroed in on eight agents. After telling them she already had a publisher, half the agents asked, “What do you need me for?”

“I thought, if that’s all the imagination you have, then I don’t need you.”

Liza Fleissig, of Liza Royce Associates, showed the most interest and they quickly bonded. “I just could not resist her enthusiasm,” Maldonado says. “Enthusiasm counts for so much. You want someone who is just on fire for you and that was Liza.”

It soon became clear just how important their relationship was. Maldonado’s third book was two months from publication when Midnight Ink folded.

Liza moved quickly and landed Isabella with Thomas & Mercer Editor Megha Parekh. “I think they knew I had something they could work with, but I didn’t know that. They gave me the exposure I needed.”

Her first novel with Thomas & Mercer became a bestseller, was optioned at auction for film, and is published in 25 languages. And all those aspiring novelists out there can only look on with envy.

“Now, I know they’re going to want to throw rocks at me,” she says.

I’m novelist Rick Pullen, former investigative reporter, magazine editor, and author of the best selling thriller Naked Ambition, its sequel Naked Truth, and a stand-alone thriller The Apprentice. I’m also a magazine columnist and feature writer.