My writing journey

This blog is now ten years old. Many people have tapped into its pages, some I don't know from across the world but most likely the majority are people I have come to know over the years either personally or from my association with writers. One thing I don't know that I've ever really addressed is how my writing journey came to be. Well...

I come from a family of voracious readers, siblings, cousins etcetera. (I don't think I've ever typed the full word etcetera before). I was one of the few who spurned the written word. Oh, I read on occasion. I remember my first book, Peter and the Rocket Ship. As a little boy I read a few in this series which led to other books my Sainted Mother put around the house for me. Many had to do with the burgeoning United States space program in its formative years. That lasted for a small time before I rode off down the road on my bicycle.

North of 50, Beloved Brother and senior voice of this blog dove headlong into the Hardy Boys series. I'm sure my other brothers Anonymous and Graybeard had similar series or books they ravaged but I'm not sure what they may be. Both of them and Baby Sis (who may possibly be able to quote most passages of Lord of the Rings) to this day are constant readers and I know there are a few cousins that can't be found without a book in their hands or at least within reach. But for me, it was different.
I grew up as an activity kid, always running around the neighborhood, playing ball, riding bikes and mostly the classic things one thinks a kid does. Reading was only something done in school.

As I grew older the closest I ever got to books were comics and the new books put out by Gary Trudeau in the Doonsbury comic series. Real books weren't for me. Then as college hit there was little time for even that and by the time I was ready to start adult life, books nearly vanished from my life.

Then a curious thing happened, a fellow name Tom Clancy published a cold war novel titled Hunt for Red October. I'm not sure why I bought it, but it immediately had me hooked. The detail of his writing and the times in which I lived, the USSR vs US, drew me to his every word. I think to this day my favorite book is one of his, Red Storm Rising. I read the next, then the next before cracking the spine of something my siblings knew so well; Lord of the Rings.

I struggled with the first few chapters; how did they think this was riveting? I almost closed the book by the time Bilbo's birthday party even ended. I think if that had happened my writing and this blog may never have happened, but I persevered. Then to my delight, I found myself still up at two in the morning reading. Yes, it's a long read but between Tom Clancy and JRR Tolkien, my interest was peaked in the printed world.

By the time computers actually became somewhat affordable, around the late eighties, I toyed with the idea of writing a book so I purchased a Radio Shack computer and figured out how to write with it. The memory was so small it wouldn't hold a single chapter. The final installment of my first book, The Crystal Point was held on about fifteen 3.5 inch floppies. Now, you younger kids probably don't know what that means but trust me, your phone is infinitely more powerful that my old TRS computer.

Now most people in the publishing world will tell you, you shouldn't start out with writing an epic fantasy of 500 pages, but that didn't stop me. That's what I wanted to do, because, what the heck did I know? There were some things you learn the hard way, grammar issues, punctuation, how to develop a writing style etcetera. (There, I wrote that word out again). Being blessed with someone as well-read as North of 50 to become my editor was a godsend. He genuinely liked the story and critiqued my work as I went along. He left most of the story telling to me and was a great editor.

To keep my hand in other things we began to collaborate on this Rambling50 blog. I think it was a way to write in a different way, a different style and let us both let the world in on our life events as well as hopefully begin to give me some exposure on the exploding world wide web. A funny thing about writing, the more you write, the more you come up with ideas to fill pages, the more ideas you have. To date, this blog has over 650 posts from the two of us. It was a brutal slap in the face at my brother's passing. He was the one I bounced ideas off and the person who sharpened by words. To this day I keep this alive as much for him as for me. His voice was unique.

Anyway, after many rejection letters from publishers and agents along came this thing called Amazon.com. Can you imagine? A place that let you put your book up on their site and they would let people buy it. That's when ebooks exploded. All those people like me who couldn't get through the wall built by publishing companies now had a way to sell directly to the populace. It opened up a world to many that was locked away.

With the first book now available, my appetite for writing grew. The Crystal Point literally enveloped me in a new world, one I never thought I could ever enter. But more than that, it unleashed a hunger in me I never knew existed. From that point on I was a writer. It was a creative outlet that differed from anything I had known before. With the second book, another epic fantasy titled White Staff writing became a passion. I knew from that point on I would write for the rest of my life.

What has come of that has been ten novels in fantasy, action-adventure and science fiction as well as several short stories. I have partnered with other authors on several anthologies, two of those to benefit writers I know who were afflicted with cancer. Unfortunately one has passed and the other still struggles with the ravages of his disease.

So, that's where this journey has led me. That's where I am this day. I have been told my writing is powerful. I have been told I'm a world-class writer. I'm also sure there are plenty of readers out there who shrug their shoulders and say, he's okay. It is a fantasy nearly by itself to write the great novel and be discovered and suddenly become rich and famous. I know someone that happened to, but it's a one in a million shot. Am I jealous of that? No, I'm quite happy for her. Writing isn't a competition between authors, or it shouldn't be. It's a collaboration. There are many authors I have come to know over the years that have helped me along and I would hope there are others I have helped. We are stronger together in this Indie thing we call self-publishing.

Many readers think if you aren't published by a big publishing house you aren't very good at your craft. I can tell you some of the best authors I have read are Indie authors. The publishing business is so closed off from outsiders if your name isn't 'Clinton' or you're already famous you don't stand a chance of entering the gatehouse. I may never make much money from this, perhaps supplement my Social Security in my old age so I can take My Beloved out for a nice dinner once a month, but that isn't why I do this and hasn't been for many years. It's because I'm a writer...it's what I do.

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