FAIRHOPE, Ala. - There comes a time in the life of writers when they must decide whether to quit their day jobs and devote themselves full time to that work with its dim prospects of financial success.

“Do not quit your day job,” is the time-honored advice given to writers struggling with that question.

And it’s what best-selling local author Bill Butterworth, who writes as W.E.B.. Griffin, told Fairhope writer Sonny Brewer many times before he made that leap of faith.

“I quit my day job,” Brewer writes in the introduction of his new book, “Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.”

Brewer will be at Page and Palette tomorrow night for a book-signing event and reading starting at 6 p.m. on one of the first stops of his book tour for its release.

“I may bring along my guitar,” he said. “I will definitely be joined by local writer Suzanne Hudson.”

Hudson, along with 22 other writers, wrote about the day jobs they quit for the collection.

Included among those contributors are best-selling novelist John Grisham – whose chapter was excerpted last month in the New York Times – Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Bragg, Tom Franklin, William Gay, Brad Watson, Connie May Fowler, Winston Groom, Michelle Richmond and Pat Conroy.

“The book didn’t sell, and I stuck with my day job, defending criminals, preparing wills and deeds and contracts,” Grisham wrote of his first novel. “Still something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk. Eventually, I was able to leave the law and quit politics. Writing’s still the most difficult job I’ve ever had – but it’s worth it.”

Before quitting his day job, Brewer had been an electronics technician in the Navy, a singer in a honky tonk band, owned a tire store, sold cars, built houses, helped found a weekly newspaper, edited a magazine, sold real estate, published a magazine, managed a coffee house and owned a bookstore.

He’s currently the writer-in-residence at Faulkner State Community College.

Brewer says his book is “a big group hug with high five’s all around,” referring to all the writers who contributed on short notice in the span of one short year to a collection that addressed this fundamental question facing writers as they work in their day jobs.

Though the writers in the collection are from the South or call it their home, Brewer says the book will speak to readers no matter where in the country they live.

“For this reason: Work is universal. Sombody might’ve punched a time clock in Tennessee to dip new-made boat paddles into hot vats of laquer. There are mail carriers in every state in the union. There are waitresses, and schoolteachers, and dump truck drivers, and lawyers, and pizza deliverers and manure muckers from sea to shining sea.

“And right now some of them are thinking of picking up one last check.”

Brewer’s appearance at Page and Palette starts at 6 p.m. at the bookstore located at 32 S. Section St. For information, call 928-5295.