How A Daughters TikTok Catapulted Her Father’s Book to the Amazon Best Sellers List
After fourteen years of writing in his attic and eleven years of almost no sales, seventy-four-year-old Lloyd Devereux Richards’s debut novel, Stone Maidens, went viral. Richards’s daughter, Marguerite, had created a TikTok page to promote the novel, and on February 7th, 2023, this video went viral. The account @stonemaidens now has more than 378.6K followers, and the aforementioned video has 48.9M views!
According to Marguerite, in a TikTok update posted on February 23rd, in the past month alone, there have been 65,000 copies of Stone Maidens sold, and Stone Maidens is currently #2 on Amazon’s “Top 20 Most Sold & Most Read Book of the Week”.
Stone Maidens
According to the CNN article, “What you learn when your dad’s decade-old thriller goes viral on TikTok” by AJ Willingham, Lloyd Devereux Richards first published Stone Maidens in 2012. It is a thriller about an FBI agent following a killer in Indiana. Marguerite shared her opinion of her father’s novel, saying, “it’s quite good,” considering the novel has 4.6 stars on amazon, readers agree. However, according to Willingham, “the publishing industry is a fickle mistress, and the original release failed to drum up excitement.”
According to the Stone Maidens listing on Amazon, the books blurb explains;
From TikTok sensation Lloyd Devereux Richards comes the heart-pounding story of FBI agent Christine Prusik as she attempts to unmask a serial killer who leaves a calling card with a terrifying connection to her own haunted past. As the chief forensic anthropologist for the FBI’s Chicago field office, Christine Prusik has worked her fair share of bizarre cases. Yet this one trumps them all: a serial killer is strangling young women and dumping their bodies in the steep, forested ravines of southern Indiana. With each victim, the killer leaves a calling card: a stone figurine carved like the spirit stones found among the native tribes of Papua New Guinea––the same tribes Prusik worked with a decade earlier while doing research. The personal nature of the similarity is eerie and, frankly, terrifying; Prusik still carries trauma from her time in the field. As the dark details continue to surface, Prusik has to wonder if the connection is real or if her nightmares have finally wormed their way into her waking life.
Newfound Fame
Richards’s daughter, Marguerite, told TODAY.com, “My original goal was hoping a few people would read my dad’s book and just appreciate his writing and what a beautiful writer he is.”
Lloyd Richards told TODAY.com, “All these people are reading the book and saying such nice things, it made me feel really good. That energized me to see that. It is still overwhelming.” Richards, a former Vermont Attorney and father of three worked full time and put his kids first while working on his novel, Stone Maidens.
CNN’s AJ Willingham explains that Marguerite Richards’s TikTok, as well as her sequential follow-ups, fall under a social media genre best described as “Young people giving their elders love and recognition on a platform the latter doesn’t understand.” Willingham continues, “It’s a fruitful one, full of parents just like Lloyd Devereux Richards who wake up one morning to find their talents, hobbies, or peculiar habits have been broadcasted to the world – and won them legions of admirers.”
Lloyd shared with TODAY.com three book recommendations on what to read after you read his novel, Stone Maidens:
“Cursed in New England” by Joseph A. Citro, a series of stories surrounding preternatural revenge, with each New England state providing its favorites. From curses, strange disappearances, and other eerie happenings, this collection strays away from your traditional hauntings and brings light to the curses roaming New England.
“What Remains of Her” by Eric Rickstad, a chilling thriller set in rural Vermont, follows Jonah Baum, a recluse who believes the young girl he’s found in the woods is the reincarnation of his missing daughter. Baum is convinced she has returned to help him solve her and his wife’s disappearance.
“State of Redemption” by Richard McKeown, ‘State of Redemption’ follows District Attorney Tommy Branscum, who is running for governor of Vermont, and Matt Matheny, who has returned to his childhood home seeking to start a new life away from his recent family and tragedies. Two lives headed in opposite directions but forever tied together after witnessing the murder of an innocent child thirty years ago. What happened on that summer night long ago has been forgotten by the community, except by a killer, grieving parents, and the eyes that lurked in dark alleyways. McKeown tells a story that sheds light on the innocent and the guilty, the good and the evil, and where justice falls in all of this.
Speaking on the power of social media, AJ Willingham explains that for Richards, the experience has breathed new life into a labor of love. It’s also driven home some lessons about inspiration and determination. Richards agreed to add, “A lot of people who are struggling with a project, who thought they were way off track, this has given them the inspiration to recharge. Everyone can relate to the feeling of being a late bloomer.”
To keep up with Lloyd Devereux Richards you can follow his page on TikTok @stonemaidens and Instagram @stone.maidens.