Childhood memories, one or two, can remain vivid for a lifetime.
Shawn Warner has some.
One is that writing came easily to him, and he was good at it. His elementary school teachers told him so.
Another memory is different. He was dyslexic. In his childhood, the condition was not so well understood as it is today. Struggling to learn, he said he was even hospitalized for a time at age 6.
“I remember so distinctly hearing the doctors tell my parents that I wasn’t very bright and I was lazy,” he said.
The Arlington author laughs thinking about it.
“That was my diagnosis at the time. Hearing it now, no, you would never say that. You would couch it in at least some sort of jargon. But that was the era. And here I am today, published two books, went to college, was a paratrooper – none of that fits lazy.”
Nope, none of it at all.
Warner, 60, is a popular author of young adult books, notably Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, who has lived near Lake Arlington since he was 12, in the same house his parents bought in 1977. If the title of his book sounds familiar – perhaps to your teenage son or daughter – it’s because two years ago, it was the subject of a TikTok video that spread worldwide.
A Fort Worth man put up the video after noticing Warner selling and signing copies of the mystery at a grocery store. Well, to be exact, not selling and signing copies of the mystery. He was sitting alone with them, without a customer.
“This new author seemed super defeated when I first walked past him. So before I left the store, I decided to go back,” the caption read in Jerrad “Red” Swearengin’s video, detailing how he returned to purchase a copy. The tag #BookTok gave it reach to the social media platform’s vast book-lover following.
Nearly instant recognition followed for Warner, who within months found himself on NBC’s Today to talk about the book and its buzz.
“If I sit back and think about it, it still blows my mind,” he said of the sudden notoriety.
In his weekly TikTok streams, people sign in from all points.
“I always ask for people to drop in the chat window where they’re joining from. The Netherlands, Dubai, Italy, Poland, Mexico, Spain,” he says, and again laughs. “I sit back and think. How do these people even know I’m on the planet?”
It’s the power of going viral, sure. But it’s also the result of a good product.
Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, which tells the story of a girl who teams with a ghost that has multiple personalities to investigate her parents’ murder, has 4.6 stars out of five on Amazon. It is 4.01 stars on Goodreads. Barnes & Noble users give it 5.0.
Word of social media mouth spread: You’ve gotta read Leigh Howard.
“The character Leigh jumped into my brain like a toddler in a puddle splashing around,” he said, remembering how he interrupted the writing on his first book, Homeland Insecurity, for this work. Because he was also homeschooling his children, the writing took years. But the character never left him.
“She demanded I write her story,” she said. “I could not concentrate because she was talking so loudly to me.”
He listened and let the words flow. If writing comes naturally to Warner, mystery writing does perhaps even more so. He gets the genre. When he read whodunits growing up, he knew whodunit.
“Most of the time, I do solve them,” he said. “My wife Liz and I will be watching something on TV, and I’ll say so-and-so did it.”
The success of his books is just another part of life Warner can be proud of. As the bio on his website, shawnwarner.com, details – in a few paragraphs that show off the crispness of his writing – he has been an Army paratrooper, studied martial arts, taught himself the guitar, earned a psychology degree, worked as a child counselor, and returned to college for a computer science and software engineering degree.
He and his wife, also an author, raised two children. His son, Raph, followed in his footsteps as a paratrooper. His daughter, Gloria, graduated from Texas A&M in May.
Meanwhile, he continues to live in his childhood home, where he has fond memories of exploring the neighborhood on his bike and parents who supported him and his youthful talent for writing. When he travels – such as to that Today interview – he gives Arlington as his hometown. He and his brother worked at Six Flags as teenagers. What’s more Arlington than that?
“This is home,” he said. “I’ve been here long enough. I know my way around. It’s been an amazing life. I’ve had a lot of different and varied experiences, which I’m very thankful for.
New memories are being made all the time.
