A Happy Book Birthday

Seven years ago (at age 27) I wrote a story based upon a thought of a boy running a race at a school event. The spectators in the bleachers watched, cheering, as the only other person in the race was falling behind, tiring, as the boy in the lead further distanced himself through great strides and impeccable control. But it wasn't the finish line ahead this boy I imagined had his eyes set on. There, beyond the end of the track, was something, perhaps even someone, that no one else could see.

At the time of the thought I didn't know who or what the boy was seeing. But I wanted to find out.

I worked backwards from that climactic race, figuring out the characters, the plot, and hand wrote much of the first draft of that story in a green notebook given to me by my girlfriend, who is now my wife. She had given me the notebook not just as a gift, but as a way to get started. Because she knew I had always wanted to be an author. And there was no other way to do it than to get writing.

There had been four previous (failed) attempts over the course of three years - four completed manuscripts that ranged from a massive 109,000 word sci-fi/horror Invasion of the Body Snatchers/Zombie Apocalypse/Stephen King mashup, to a modest, quiet novel about a girl suffering from terrible anxiety, to two young adult stories (one about a girl seeing ghosts and the other about an adopted child who begins to believe his life is tied to the story of a book). None of these manuscripts got beyond the initial query stage. I still have them though - copies of the manuscripts. They sit in boxes. I keep them for their nostalgic value, and as reminders that every writer starts somewhere. They are how I learned.

The fifth story - this story of the boy running the race - was The One. I knew it. I felt it. This book was strong enough, was funny, touching, heartbreaking, inspirational - it was everything I wanted my first published book to be. It would set the tone for everything else I would write. I promised myself I would never give up on the story, wouldn't go on to write something else, I would just keep editing it and editing it and making it perfect because I knew - just knew - this book, originally titled Run to Me when I started hand writing it in the pages of the green notebook, was going to be my first published novel.

And it was.

It took four years of writing, and editing, and editing some more, and querying both agents and publishers, and more editing, and adding and subtracting, and more querying, but eventually I got a Yes! from a publisher - you only need one Yes!

Winter Goose Publishing released my debut novel, Seeing, on June 30, 2014.

I have received many beautiful comments and reviews regarding the book, but perhaps my favorite came from Erik Weibel of thiskidreviewsbooks.com, who said, "Even though this isn’t the typical action/adventure book I usually go crazy over, the book really left an impression on me. The story kept me reading. I finished it in one day. The story, even though is one of loss, is also one of hope. It is motivating, in a way. The book is appropriate for all ages, but I think kids 12+ and adults will truly enjoy the message of the story. For anyone who says small press publishers don’t produce good books – check out Seeing. It will change your mind in many ways."

What's more, at the end of the year, Erik named Seeing one of his Top Books of 2014.

I couldn't have asked for a better start.

Seeing is available at Amazon, B&N, and anywhere else books are sold. It is available in both paperback and e-book formats. If you haven't read it yet, please consider checking it out - download the free sample for your Nooks or Kindles, then go from there. If you have read Seeing and haven't left a review on either Amazon or Goodreads, please consider dropping a few honest words. Every little bit helps.

Coming Around to the Idea of a Series (aka The Long Journey)

I've dabbled in this subject before.

Months before Maddie was born, I devoured the first Harry Potter novel - yes, it took me about sixteen years to get around to beginning what will be considered J.K. Rowling's magnum opus. Don't judge me. Truth be told, I was spoiled on the movies, and read in a lot of other genres and authors while the Potter books were being published. And while the books are always better (far better), the endings and main themes were explored and displayed in great depth in the films. So I knew the ultimate fate of Harry Potter and the enormity of his battles with He Who Must Not Be Named long before I read the first page of The Sorcerer's Stone. But I enjoyed the book immensely.

Unfortunately, I have yet to read the second book, Chamber of Secrets, even years later. I do plan to read them, but again, life and other reading, and writing, and many other things has gotten in the way.

While in high school, I read Lord of the Rings, a fascinating, if not bloated book (mine was the single volume of the three main books). There's not much I can tell you from memory that you haven't seen in those films, save for a few nonessential side characters and treks that didn't make it to the big screen.

A few years ago I read the Hunger Games' three books (Catching Fire the best of the three, in my opinion).

Currently, I have just finished the third novel in the Dark Tower series, and am reading through Still Alice in my attempt to get a wider understanding of Alzheimer's Disease before picking up the fourth DT novel, Wizard and Glass.

I'm afraid to admit there are many other truly wonderful sets of books that constitute a series that I have not yet read. The Chronicles of Narnia, Chaos Walking, His Dark Materials, Discworld, The Dark is Rising to name a few.

In my own writing, all of my stories have been developed in such a way that they're wrapped up in a single volume. It's just how I operate.

Until last spring.

During a "break" (because when do writers ever truly stop working?) after finishing a first draft of a YA novel, I got an idea for a story that could possibly be the first steps of a much longer journey. I had been reading one of the Walking Dead novels by Jay Bonansinga, which center around the town of Woodbury and how it became a fix-up town in the wake of the apocalypse, along with its own justice system, and the thought occurred to me to use a similar setup. Minus the zombies.

I wrote a first draft, titled The Long Road Home, and left it to simmer for a while. I did a second draft over the summer and expanded on some of the themes. There were times I was really into it, and other times where I thought it made for a very interesting "trunk novel" if nothing else, and provided me the place to further exercise my craft.

Over the course of about eleven months away from the project, my mind has started to wander back...wander with a fevered curiosity to those typed pages, to my hero, Jace Maddox, his mantle as the peacekeeper of a waystation thoroughfare called Lin-Maycomb in the generations following a catastrophic event that has wiped the world clean, forcing people to start over, and wrapping his mind around the truth of his existence as provided by the arrival of a stranger who has given no name, who has come to the town confessing of murder with a book in his hand that holds the most simple explanation of all as to the truth of his origin and Jace's destiny.

Thing is...while that all may sound intriguing...this book is unlike anything I've previously scribed. It's very much centered on the protagonist, with few side characters (that's my norm), but the dystopian setting, the fantasy elements, the fact that it is only the first steps of a long journey, are new to me.

I can't say I'm totally comfortable yet making this manuscript a promised future novel - and mostly because beyond Volume One, I don't know where the story goes - but if I do, you'll see it here first.

I mention all of this because, well, where I was once against ever doing a series before, I've started to give it serious consideration. To see if I can do it.

To date, my longest piece of writing is the first novel I ever wrote - a massive mashup of sci-fi/horror/zombie apocalypse/Invasion of the Body Snatchers POS called Signal, which I wrongfully self-pubbed ten years ago (don't bother looking for it if you don't have one, it's out of print). I would love nothing more than to have my longest piece of writing be something that means more to me, something to be proud of, that embodies all of the themes of life I tend to explore, and that is just all around better.

The Long Road Home may turn out to be just that.