Newly published author Emily Scheer was keeping plenty busy even before she started filling most of her spare moments with writing. The Shellsburg 32-year-old is a wife and mother of three, and she works from home as a medical biller.
But as she started to get “back into reading” over the past few years, she realized that she had some of her own ideas for creating books.
“I have always kind of liked writing on my own, just short little things here and there,” Scheer said. “But once I started getting back into reading again, I’m like, I have some great ideas, and I think I should just write it down and do it.”
So she got to work, turning her idea for a dark, thriller-style romance into her first book, “Hacked by You.”
“I would spend all of my nights and hours on the weekends writing,” Scheer said. “I mean, I would write from morning until nighttime on the weekends.”
“Hacked by You” centers on a woman, Natasha, who is newly released from prison for hacking-related offenses. But she quickly learns that her freedom has strings attached, as she was released only because a wealthy tech tycoon, Zade Pierson, wants to use her hacking expertise for a dangerous assignment.
Independent author Emily Scheer, of Shellsburg, wrote “Hacked By You.”
While the book falls into the romance genre, it also incorporates thriller-style action scenes and suspense. There are guns, kidnappings and even an explosion.
As described on the book’s Amazon page, “The deeper Natasha falls into Zade’s world of encrypted files, hidden enemies, and blood-soaked truths, the harder it becomes to tell where the danger ends and obsession begins.”
The crafting of this dark cybercrime underworld was intentional on Scheer’s part.
“I didn’t want the romance to be the main focus,” she said. “I wanted (an) actual plot storyline.”
Though the plot is filled with computer-based crimes, none of those are based on Scheer’s own experiences.
The hacking theme, she said, “was just an idea that kind of stuck.”
So she had to “do a lot of research” on the cybercrime tactics and terminology that are used throughout the book.
Likewise, Natasha’s situation of being newly released from prison wasn’t based on the experience of anyone Scheer knows in real life, but rather on a desire to take an idea she’d seen before in movies and books and put her own spin on it.
“I wanted something completely different than what I was used to reading with the romance and the dark romance and everything,” Scheer said.
Meeting readers
Readers have taken notice, with “Hacked By You” averaging four stars (out of five) on community book review website Goodreads. One reviewer noted “it felt fresh and different.”
Scheer will be on hand to greet readers personally and sign books at two events coming up this weekend. She’ll be at Market on Pearl in Shellsburg from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Aug. 29, and at HEA Book Boutique in Cedar Rapids from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 30.
She’s hard at work on another book set in the “Hacked By You” universe. The second book in the series, “Rescued By You,” is already available to purchase. The book she’s working on now will be the third and final installment in the “Pierson Estate” series.
The first two books, she said, “were kind of a work in progress at the same time.”
“As I was writing the first one, I would make notes for the second as well, so they were both kind of done together,” Scheer said.
What’s next
After closing out the Pierson Estate series, she has some ideas for standalone books. She has written children’s books under a pen name.
Scheer said the thing that surprised her most in writing “Hacked By You” was just the fact that she was able to do it at all.
“I never really thought I could,” she said. “You know, I’ve had ideas in the past, but nothing really stuck, or it wasn’t good enough, or it’s all been done before. So I think it was the originality of it that kind of stuck out, and the fact that, you know, oh, this is mine. This is me. My words that I’m actually writing on paper.”
Now, with that first book officially a success, Scheer is just getting started.
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