How a Kansas City pastor’s fantasy book became an overnight social media sensation
To the congregation at Peace Church in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District, Paula Lafferty is Rev. Lafferty, associate pastor. But in the literary world, she’s a wildly successful romance fantasy author — even though she has yet to publish a book.
Huh? Obviously, we’ve got some explaining to do.
Lafferty, who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and lives in Overland Park, earned a bachelor’s degree in film production and a master’s of divinity before co-founding Peace Church with senior pastor Holly McKissick in 2011.
All along the way, she wrote.
“I’d attempted a lot of books before,” she said. “I have kind of a graveyard of notebooks that have unfinished stories in them.
“Then I just had this moment in March 2022 when I reached the point where ‘I can’t not write a single second longer,’ and this story came back.”
The result was her debut novel, “La Vie de Guinevere,” which will be released Tuesday, Oct. 29. The book already has presales in 31 countries and all 50 states thanks to Lafferty’s unique and fortuitous approach to publishing.
Technically, she is self-publishing — typically an endeavor for authors unable to crack the big time that results in books sales in the hundreds or maybe a few thousand. Lafferty, on the other hand, has seven foreign publishing deals, is represented by one of the major players in the literary world and is working with a prestigious audiobook company.
“That was what all of us writers were just dreaming of,” Lafferty said. “Plucked from obscurity, and you’re a Cinderella story.”
In her case, Cinderella arrived on social media rather than in a pumpkin carriage.
As Lafferty wrote “La Vie de Guinevere” over nine months, she made videos of the process, hoping they would interest a few people. That’s when her story became a real-life fairytale.
She explains:
“By the time I finished the book in January, I had this really great video of me writing the whole thing. You can see the seasons changing. … You can see my hair getting longer. So you can really see the progression of time through it.
“I posted that one night, I think it was 11 p.m., and by the time I woke in the morning it had 100,000 views. And by noon that day it had a million. That was the video that changed things. So, to date on Instagram, it’s got like 2½ million views. And on TikTok it’s up to 13 million.”
With that immense online interest, she could have landed a literary agent and a traditional publishing deal. Instead, she set up a Kickstarter page — offering a deluxe edition of “La Vie de Guinevere” — to fund her self-publishing efforts. The goal was $10,000. It has now raised more than $65,000.
Lafferty has used the revenue to pay for top-quality printing and to hire a global literary consulting firm, Spin Literary.
Spin founder Jennifer Smith took a personal interest, adding Lafferty to a list of authors she’s worked with that includes former President Jimmy Carter, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Stephen King, Joan Rivers and Neil Patrick Harris.
“My bread and butter, so to speak, is in the nonfiction space, so I very rarely work on a fiction book,” Smith said. “But when this one came to me, because there’s so much going on, I was like, ‘I think we can launch this in the same way we would a nonfiction,’ because, yes, the book is amazing, the story is amazing, all these other components are amazing, but there’s a story within the story. Paula is a story.”
Lafferty doesn’t have a U.S. agent, but when foreign publishing companies reached out to her, she retained a foreign rights agent. Now she has deals with traditional publishers in Poland, Bulgaria, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Romania and England. Four are three-book contracts.
“I had not even thought about foreign markets,” Lafferty said.
Topping off her unlikely literary experience is a partnership with Julia Whelan to narrate and publish the audiobook of “La Vie de Guinevere.” Whelan is a huge name in audiobooks, having narrated more than 600 across all genres, including bestsellers by Kristin Hannah and Nora Roberts and “Gone Girl” by Kansas City native Gillian Flynn.
It’s safe to say that Lafferty’s self-publishing journey has been unprecedented.
“It’s all of these things that most traditionally published authors are getting that she’s managed to do as a self-published author,” Smith said.
“I think the thing that’s unique about Paula is she started out this experience and once she stayed the course, even being offered traditional publishing deals, particularly in the U.S., she said, ‘No. It’s important to me to serve as inspiration for other authors and creatives.’”
The book itself involves familiar characters from the legend of Camelot and King Arthur, but with a major twist. Living in modern-day Glastonbury in southwest England, the heroine Vera washes bed sheets and cleans toilets at a hotel until she is transported to the seventh century and discovers she is actually Queen Guinevere.
So far, the reviews have been positive.
“People are loving the writing and the content,” Smith said. “It has been great to see the reception from other authors, people within the industry.”
Smith insists that Lafferty has more going for her than a huge following on social media.
“Not everybody who’s got 5 million followers should be writing a book,” she said. “Because, maybe A, they don’t have a lot to offer other than makeup tips, or B, maybe they’re not a great writer.
“Paula, she’s got the writing chops to do it.”
Meanwhile, Lafferty has continued with her ministry at Peace Church. She said many church members have supported her literary efforts and, in fact, the congregation has allowed her to take a two-month sabbatical to coincide with the book’s release.
It almost seems predestined that “La Vie de Guinevere” will become a bestseller, considering her crazy ride to this point.
“This whole thing has been a matter of stumbling into luck and then trying to jump on top of that luck with my whole body and do everything that I can with it,” Lafferty said.
“It’s wild.”
“La Vie de Guinevere”
Price: $19.99. The paperback is available for preorder locally through the Under the Cover romance book shop as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Release date: Tuesday, Oct. 29. A launch party will be held 6-8 p.m. on Oct. 29, at The Homesteader, 100 E. 7th St., just south of the River Market. Invitations or tickets are required.
Book description from Kickstarter: “An Arthurian fantasy with romance and high-stakes adventure where present-day Vera finds out she is the seventh century Queen Guinevere.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
