Sirens | A Southern True Crime Podcast · The Sirens Network

Southern Noir Book Club | Shawn Warner, Author & TikTok Sensation

·51 min·3 clips

Warner says authors are expected to market themselves, edit their own work, and act like small businesses.

1. Sirens uses this special Raven's Reviews episode to talk with Sean M. Warner about his debut novel, Lee Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons Pierce Manor, and his upcoming book, Homeland Insecurity. 2. Raven hosts Warner as a guest because his TikTok breakout and young adult writing connect to the show’s usual crime, horror, and suspense interests. 3. The episode asks what it takes to become a published author after years of false starts, day jobs, and public book tables. 4. Warner says a Kroger grocery-store signing led to a stranger named Jared filming him and posting a TikTok that went viral in about 24 hours. 5. He describes sitting at a book-signing table for four to six hours while the store was slow and says the viral moment came from being out in public rather than online. 6. Raven compares the viral video to what many listeners saw on TikTok, while Warner says he was not a big social media person and was still learning. 7. Warner says he started writing at six years old after his mother read Billy and Blaze books to him. 8. He remembers writing on a Big Chief pad with cursive guide lines and says the first childhood story he kept involved the line 'I was sitting in a bar.' 9. Warner says he wrote on and off for years before homeschooling his two children pushed him to take writing seriously about 15 years ago. 10. He says his first published novel arrived after a long process of study, submission, and revision rather than a sudden breakthrough. 11. Warner says he was invited the same day to speak at the women’s prison in Fort Worth, giving one talk to minimum security and one to maximum security women. 12. He frames that as proof that physical presence and public events matter for writers who want to be noticed. 13. Warner says he joined the Army after high school and worked as a paratrooper in the infantry. 14. He says he later earned a degree in psychology, a bachelor’s and master’s in social work, and then an engineering degree. 15. He says those career changes gave him fallback skills, which mattered because rent and food are real expenses. 16. Warner says he became a self-described small business once he understood that publishing is an industry and rejection letters are often business decisions. 17. He describes his process as imagination-driven, with recurring scenes and characters that he follows only when they keep returning. 18. He says Lee Howard pushed him to pause Homeland Insecurity, write her story first, and treat character arc as the A story. 19. The conversation stays conversational and practical, with Raven asking direct questions and Warner answering with examples, titles, and personal stories. 20. Listeners who want author craft advice, TikTok origin stories, and indie publishing realities will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting only crime analysis may skip it.

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