Spirituality, Mothers, DNA: Three New Arlington Authors Make a Literary Buzz

Literary critics say that somewhere in everyone’s heart, there is a book waiting to be published.

In that spirit, consider three new Arlington authors who published their first books in the past 12 months.

Author alphabetical trio: Larry Jordan (author of The Way: Meaningful Spirituality for a Modern World), Leslie Liljenberg (If You Only Knew: Navigating DNA Surprises and the NPE (Not-Parent Expected) World), and Amy Schultz (Mumentous)

In addition to their Arlington ties, the three have other things in common: In addition to being well-known locally, all of the authors have written nonfiction books, all are self-published (meaning they funded it themselves), all of their books are available on Amazon, none of them have made it onto a bestseller list—or even close—and none of their books have yet sold 5,000 copies, which is considered a milestone in literary book circles and likely to attract the interest of agents and mainstream publishers, or both.

Nonetheless, the work of these three men has created something of a literary buzz, at least in this part of Texas.

“I would love to be a rich and famous author, but that’s not why I wrote the book,” said Jordan, a retired financial consultant and bond expert. Over the years, he’s read nearly 1,000 books on religion and spirituality. All the ideas he gleaned from those works have been condensed into “The Way,” which has now sold about 2,000 copies and won a silver medal at the 2024 Nautilus Book Awards.

Jordan’s Amazon blurb reads: “This book recognizes the timeless philosophies that underlie many spiritual traditions. Reading The Way is like having coffee with Bart Ehrman, Eckhart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Albert Einstein. The book has a Theory of Everything feel to it; like a TED Talk, it’s deeply personal yet addresses broad, universal themes.”

This is quite different from Lilienberg’s “If You Only Knew.”

The Amazon blurb reads: “DNA tests can help you find long-lost relatives and build your family tree, but they can also reveal family secrets that can no longer be hidden. What if you found out your father wasn’t your biological father? Or your mother wasn’t the woman who gave birth to you? That’s what happened to author Lezlee Liljenberg.”

Lilienberg ran an insurance agency in Arlington for many years and now works in court as a professional insurance witness.

“I’ve pretty much gotten over it now, but I still feel a little resentful that I was deceived for so many years,” Lilienberg said. “With DNA testing the way it is now, I think my book will be really helpful to people who might discover some surprises on their genealogy journey.”

A less serious but entertaining piece of literature for me is “Mumentous” by Amy Schultz, a hardcover book about the venerable Homecoming Mom and its special place in Texas lore. The cover of the book says that the contents include “original photos and mostly true stories about footballs, glue guns, moms, and a super-sized high school tradition born in the Texas backwoods.”

To quote Schultz’s Amazon blurb, “They’re called Homecoming Mums: bold as a football, intriguing as a rumor, and deep as a mother’s love. When the custom began over 100 years ago, mum was short for chrysanthemum, the typical corsage a boy gives to a girl before taking her to a football game. But over the decades, mum has evolved from a simple abbreviation into a complex one describing a dazzling tradition that is both deeply rooted in the culture and baffling to outsiders.”

Schultz is a former University of Texas at Arlington administrator and now a professional photographer (and former resident artist at the Arlington Museum of Art), but he is not from Texas.

“I happened upon a Homecoming Moms event and started photographing them, which eventually led to an exhibit at the Arlington Museum of Art,” Schultz recalls, “and then several other area museums contacted me asking if I could bring the exhibit to them.”

The exhibit has since become a staple in the Texas Lakes Trail area and travels from museum to museum across Texas, currently running through July 27 at Cedar Hill Historical Museum in Cedar Hill.

And not surprisingly, Schulz’s photo show became a book. The museum exhibition and the publicity that came with it gave her a slight marketing advantage that Lilienberg and Jordan didn’t have, but all three otherwise learned the ropes of self-publishing, which requires a great deal of self-promotion: talks at libraries and book clubs, the requisite website and social media promotion, civic club talks, podcasts, and, when possible, media interviews.

Amazon offers a free DIY publishing program through Kindle Direct Publishing, including cover design, but it has a steep learning curve. Schulz, Lilienberg and Jordan all use paid publishing services, and all three have websites that aren’t free. The costs add up.

While some self-published authors have sold millions of copies, this is rare.

Of course, that doesn’t mean one or more of this literary trio won’t do the same thing – or something close to it.

OK Carter is a columnist for the Arlington Report and can be reached at okcarter@arlingtonreport.org.

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