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Mark interviews author and entrepreneur Avery Crumrine about her business helping authors get their books into the world and her book INTENTION INTO ACTION.
Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word from this episode’s sponsors.
This episode is sponsored in part by…
Mark’s forthcoming book A BOOK IN HAND. Click here to get to the Kickstarter listing and be notified when the Kickstarter for the book goes live in mid September 2026.
In the interview Mark and Avery talk about:
- Growing up around entrepreneurs and how that’s long been a big part of Avery’s life
- The award Avery got at the age of 11 for hosting her own entrepreneur fair
- Avery’s first business called Crafty Girls, started at the age of 10
- Getting into writing around fifth grade
- The origin of this book derived from a road trip and a stage talk Avery had done
- The importance of looking at AFTER the first step, and after the initial motivation fades
- The logistics of how Avery mapped out an outline and wrote the book
- The formats that the book INTENTION INTO ACTION is available in
- Three things that result in people getting stuck
- Where Avery actually got a little bit slowed down in her own experience publishing her book
- The company that Avery now runs to help people write and publish their book in 45 days
- How unnecessary it is for most non-fiction books to be extra long, filled with fluff, and bloated
- What parts of the process of publishing Avery hadn’t been expecting
- Avery’s decision to go with a basic and stark cover without any distracting elements to it
- The concept that momentum is built through participation
- The benefit of simplifying in order to get a project complete
- How folks are always placing other people in a box based on factors like their age
- And more…
After the interview Mark reflects on a few discussion points from the conversation.
Links of Interest:
- Avery’s Website
- Avery’s Become An Author Site
- Avery’s Business: Asterah
- Episode 489 – The Balanced Approach to the Writer’s Life with Ann Charles
- Substack Article: Word by Word, Pound by Pound: Measuring success in the long-run rather than in your “lesser” moments
- Manuscript Report (Mark’s affiliate link – use MARK10 to save 10%)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark’s YouTube channel
- ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation – Affiliate link)
- Stark Reflections articles on Substack
- An Author’s Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Stark Realities Book
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
- I Think It’s A Sign That The Pun Also Rises
Avery Brenna Crumrine is a writer, speaker, and student based in San Diego, California. She is currently studying finance and has been involved in entrepreneurship and nonprofit work from a young age.
Avery grew up around people who build things, which shaped how she thinks about responsibility, follow-through, and action. Her work has included organizing entrepreneur fairs, contributing to charity auctions that raised over six figures, editing and producing media, and speaking at events on rejection, confidence, and showing up before you feel ready.
Intention Into Action is her first book. It reflects how she approaches life and work: learning by doing, staying engaged when momentum fades, and choosing movement over waiting. She wrote this book in the middle of it. While still learning, building, and choosing to move.
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
I am behind on my listening, just now getting to this episode. But even while I haven’t finished listening, something struck me enough to get me to put down my phone, go to the laptop, find the episode on your site, and comment. (I say this just in case you later comment on the very thing, in which case I apologize for the repetition.) Almost as a throwaway line, Avery said, “Why wouldn’t I write a book?”
That is so different from what most people (in my experience) do. Most ask, “Why would I write a book?” I can almost hear it in the way Zig Ziglar used to emphasize certain words to indicate different shades of meaning in the same sentence.
“*Why* would I write a book?”
“Why would *I* write a book?”
“Why would I write a *book*?”
Or even: “Why would I *write* a book?” (I’ll just talk about it on YouTube.)
Of course, a lot of us bitten by the writing book ask, “Why would I write *a* book?” I contain multitudes.
But it is so much more empowering in a way that seems natural to Avery to ask, “Why *wouldn’t* I write a book.” Indeed, why not? I’m glad she didn’t try to answer that one, and I hope your listeners switch questions as well.