If you haven’t ready it already, I highly suggest you pick up a copy of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

If the story doesn’t inspire you, then the author’s rise to writer fame definitely will.  I won’t go into much details about the book itself.  Just click on the link above and you can read over 1,000 reviews about the NY Times bestseller.

And speaking of the NY Times, read this story about Sara’s book deal.  If you are a writer, it will definitely motivate you. Mrs. Gruen’s original publisher turned down Water for Elephants, so she sold it to Algonquin Books for $55,000 back in 2004.  After coming out in paperback and beating two Oprah books in the NYT bestseller list, Spiegel and Grau swooped in and paid Mrs. Gruen $5 million dollars for her next two books.  Add another $1 million to that for the movie deal.

So yeah, that’s a lot of money, a dream come true for many writers.  I know it would be for me, but another reason Mrs. Gruen inspires me is because she is a huge animal rights activist.  She donated some of her money to the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee.  Check out her web page for  other organizations she supports!

I’ll post my thoughts on the book itself once I’m done reading it.