Meet Cori Wamsley

We were lucky to catch up with Cori Wamsley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cori, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I think that our purpose is always there, quietly waiting for us to notice it, like a shy friend in the corner. It hopes for years that we will spot it, seek it out, but instead, we chase all the shiny things, the supposed to dos. For me, I knew in my heart that writing was my purpose, but I was led on a wild goose chase by well-intending adults who suggested I go into science because I was good at it.

I majored in biology and picked up a second major in English because, let’s be honest, getting college credit for reading books seemed like the hack of a lifetime! I stayed on to do a master’s in English because the economy in the early 2000s wasn’t that great. It still wasn’t great when I left, so it took a while to find a writing job. Once I did, I ended up working for the US federal government for ten years as a scientific and technical writer and editor before leaving to start my freelance business when my kids were young.

Having that flexibility was great, but it was certainly hard. I discovered several different ways I could use my writing skills, but my first love was and always will be writing novels.

Though I run Aurora Corialis Publishing, where I coach speakers and coaches to write their books and then handle book development and publishing for them, I also write my own novels. I began writing books when I was just thirteen, believing that I had read enough books that I could certainly write them. (That’s like believing that you have eaten enough meals that you could certainly be a chef. So not true!) Then, in 2004, at the end of grad school, I wrote my first actual, full-length novel.

From there, I found several different topics that lit me up when I wrote, but it wasn’t until I started the Soul Sisterhood series that I really found my wheelhouse. Telling stories about brave women taking on life’s challenges while being supported by their best friends allows me an outlet for my creativity that I never imagined existed. It lets me combine my dry humor with my desire to tell big complicated stories, to surprise people with their tenderness or their plot twists, and to explore how I think a real life story would have ended if it were in a book. In fact, that’s one of my favorite questions to explore!

What I discovered on my search for my purpose over the past several decades is that it really was there all along, quietly waiting, whispering “pick me.” And when I finally did pick her, I realized that I was choosing myself, that I was choosing to allow my heart to appear on the page, that I was choosing to make people feel something in all the best ways by the way I told a story. I discovered that my talent for making people laugh when we were talking transferred so nicely to my writing that it almost became an addiction. I think that’s a hallmark of our purpose: we can’t let it go, no matter how hard we try.

Thankfully, my purpose was patient, and it has buoyed me through the challenges of the last several years, even winning me some awards, which led to some beautiful dopamine hits! I know that my purpose is my light, and I hope that others find theirs and embrace it just as hard as I’ve held mine.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I have a double career, which means that my workdays are a little extra fun.

As an author, I often have to wait till my client work is done before I can dive into my own work, which is complicated a bit by the fact that I’m also a mother to two type A tweens. Every single aspect of my writing work is exciting from creating my initial outline, to researching what I need to make the scene more real, to writing the actual book. I love getting in the zone and writing until I run out of steam because I know that leads to some of my best work. I also sometimes end up just jotting down a piece of the story because my day is interrupted with calls or client work or school pickup. It is what it is, and I know that this busy season will lead to more quiet, eventually. Creating stories about women in challenging situations, woven with history, adventure, and a little sweet romance (i.e. no spice) is about discovering who the person is that I’m writing about, slipping on her skin, and telling her story through her eyes. My latest book, Good in Theory, was released in March of 2025 and features a woman, Lacey, who loses her home, job, and boyfriend all in one day and is forced to reconnect with a cousin she hasn’t seen in ten years. Together, they unravel the strange happenings surrounding the lab where Lacey works while discovering who the mysterious man is who haunts her dreams. That was an incredibly fun story to assemble and write, and the resulting book won a prize for excellence in fiction from The BookFest.

The other half of my double career is my publishing house, Aurora Corialis, where I have the privilege of working with coaches and speakers who want to write a book for their brand. I love seeing someone get halfway through the journey of writing and discover that they have like 15 or 20 thousand words written. That’s insane to most people (who don’t normally write books). They also usually discover that as I’ve been working with them on how to write their chapters, they are learning what sort of things I expect and start incorporating them as they write. It’s so beautiful to see someone grow by writing their own story. And I love that I get to help many men and women each year become authors!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

So many skills are essential for becoming an author or an entrepreneur. In particular, I found that my flexibility, organization, and curiosity.

Flexibility is number one because nothing goes as expected. I joke that there is some new glitch with every single book we launch, and it seems to be true. We are constantly learning and dealing with crazy tech issues! I have come up with so many Band-Aids and workarounds that I never dreamed I would need to, and I’ve laughed the whole way. You have to be willing to try new things and bend a little because the path to your goal is always dangerous curves!

Organization is key to being an adult in general, but especially as someone writing a novel or running a business. I keep so many spreadsheets to keep everything straight from lists of authors to lists of books in development to lists of payment plans to lists of awards I’ve pitched. I have so many lists to keep myself organized. And everything is planned to the minute, even knowing that I will need to make changes, because I like to prepare in case we happen to get everything we want.

Finally, could we get anywhere without curiosity? I have always been a “questions person,” and I know that not everyone is. I was the one in class asking extra questions to dig into what else I could learn and to clarify exactly what a teacher was looking for on an assignment. That ability has served me well as an author and entrepreneur because I find that there is no end to the questions I ask about my characters and how to market my books or how I can help others craft a story that heals rather than triggers.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

My number one challenge is the same as most people’s: time.

I find that there are so many things to do that I often end up adding them in when I have some down time to make sure that they get done. I try to keep my evenings and weekends just for family (and being “mom’s taxi” several nights a week, amiright?!), but I do end up taking care of client work when the day ends up full of fires to put out or thinking about my social media posts on the weekend when I don’t have anyone’s expectations except my own … and my kids. Or, I end up writing my novels after the standard workday, which honestly doesn’t feel like work!

I think the important thing to remember when time is crunched and squashed and taken up with all-the-things is that you have to prioritize and delegate. My kids make dinner sometimes. I have an automated tool to post on some of my social media platforms (using posts I wrote and created myself). And I usually end up doubling my monthly author newsletter as a blog on my website … and a post on social media … and probably other things.

We have to be creative in how we use our time, and that’s something that I’ve leaned heavily into, especially when dealing with some health issues this year, on top of launching a novel of my own and several clients’ books. And that creativity might mean that something has to give. Honestly, some of what gave for me this year has been the constant flow of new posts for my publishing house, along with networking. Neither of those actions net me clients, so I recycle old posts and just reach out strategically to friends I’ve met through networking. I’d rather grab lunch with one person I like than listen to a speaker talk about a topic I’m not interested in and eat an overpriced meal that doesn’t even fill me up (welcome to life with food allergies) in a room full of strangers. Saying no to these things has been priceless.

Of course, as a woman with a biology degree, I do have to keep the idea of cloning myself in my back pocket. The time may come …

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All images of Cori in the purple dress are by Danielle Cubarney.

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