So What Have You Written For Us Lately?

Now that I've introduced myself to you gentlefolk, the next question one might reasonably pose is:

"Who the heck is this guy?"

"What has he written?"

"And what about Naomi?" (Okay, that reference is a bit dated.)

In the beginning (because where else would we start?), I was a young fellow with a fascination for literally everything. During a early period in my life wherein I ranked among the unemployed, I took an aptitude test with my state's Employment Security Commission, the purpose of which was to assist in placing me amongst the gainfully employed. After taking said test, I sat down with my counselor who, after rattling the paperwork in front of him, looked me dead in the eye and (with the sorrowful compassion normally reserved for telling a child his puppy has gone to Heaven) told me what the examination revealed I did best.

"Learn."

We took stock of the varied and sundry employment opportunities such an aptitude offered me. Then, four seconds later, he gave me contact info for a local company that made aluminum storm doors and wished me luck.

Since the list of employment opportunities for professional students was a tad limited even then, if I were to become the kind of overnight success it took Eddie Cantor twenty years to become, it soon became obvious I would have to reconsider my future career options.

So I decided to become a writer.

(Hilarity ensues.)

Okay, thirty years then.

While I had made several attempts at playing around at writing after graduating from high school(including, but not limited to, attempts to write spec television screenplays for series like Charlie's Angels and The Incredible Hulk), I had not yet made any attempts at conventional fiction like short stories and novels.

Then I received an invitation to join an outfit called The Unknown Writer's Group.

There will be opportunities galore later on to chat about my experiences with that august assembly, so for now I will simply say that I had discovered true nirvana, folks like myself who were intelligent, literate, and who took the act of committing literature seriously. I jumped into the pool, and after promptly sinking, some kind soul dragged me to safe ground, after which I jumped in again.

This went on for a while. Eventually I learned how to dog paddle and we went from there.

At first I stuck to short fiction, and even made a couple of sales to various periodicals, the happy circumstances of which were quickly followed by the untimely cancellation of said magazines. Ultimately I took pity on a steadily-shrinking industry and decided to try my hand at novel-length fiction instead.

During this time Holly Lisle, our most successful author and the primary reason we ended up changing the name of our little gang from the Unknown Writer's Group to Schrodinger Petshop (We're Strange, but Cats Like Us), had received an offer from her publisher, Baen Books, to do a series of collaborations on a series called The Devil's Point novels. After everything had been sledge-hammered out, she offered me the opportunity to do one of them, a novel titled The Devil & Dan Cooley. It was that sale, and subsequent contract, which qualified me to join SFWA (Science fiction and Fantasy Writers of America).

Then life happened and turned into a roller coaster which I rode for the next fifteen or so years. During that time I started and worked on a novel I had titled The Caballa.

The writing of that piece of work was one of the most arduous events of my life. And when I was done, I took at long, cold look at it and thought, "It's not bad. But I can do better."

I consider myself a writer, and I cannot tell you how hard it was to admit that. I had put an enormous amount of time and effort into that novel. But my craft had improved to such a degree during the process of writing it that I felt unsatisfied with the final product. And by that point I was so burned out that even the thought of starting over on it made my eyeballs ache.

So I decided instead that I would put The Caballa to the side and write something just for me. I would tell the kind of story I had always searched for, but which no one else seemed to be writing, and I wouldn't give a single, solitary damn about its saleability or its marketability. And when I was done, I wouldn't even try to submit it to any agents or to the traditional publishing industry. More and more folks were self-publishing their work, so that was what I would do. I would assume the financial burdens of its production and its marketing, and whatever happened, would happen.

That novel became House of Shadows. It was first published as a trade paperback on June 14, 2012, then followed by a Kindle version two weeks later.

Being such a recent project, I'll share its story here as time goes on. Perhaps said tale will amuse some and educate others. But regardless of what ultimately happens to and with it, all I can say is that I told the story I wanted to tell. And that, as someone once said, makes all the difference.