Guest Blog: The Accidental Writer

Today I am happy to welcome author David G. Hallman as a guest blogger. I met David on twitter earlier this summer and read his moving memoir August Farewell. David's debut novel Searching for Gilead is now also available. Take it away, David.
  
My current writing career is totally unexpected.
During my professional working life, I wrote five books mostof which were academic in nature and focused on my subject area ofenvironmental ethics. The one exception theme-wise was a book on AIDS that grewout of a 1989 international conference that I coordinated.
I took early retirement and looked forward to a more relaxedlifestyle from the previous thirty years much of which I had spent travelingaround the world involved in UN negotiations on climate change. I had nointention of doing further writing.
Then life, rather dramatically, intervened in my plans.
Bill, my partner, was suddenly diagnosed with stage fourpancreatic cancer. He died sixteen days after we received the diagnosis. We hadbeen together as a gay couple for thirty-three years.
About six weeks after Bill's death, I found myself becomingexceeding anxious that I would forget the details of those excruciating twoweeks while he laying dying in our home. That journey was intense, profound,and spiritual. I became convinced that I needed to record it for myself so thatI could revisit it in years ahead – something like how we treasure photoalbums. If I forgot the details it felt to me like I would be losing Bill asecond time.
So I began writing a chronology of those sixteen days. As Idid, I kept being reminded of experiences that we had had together over ourthirty-three years together. I started integrating vignettes from our past intothe record of those August days. The memoir, August Farewell, was the result.
After completing it, I decided to share it with a few closefriends. They circulated it to others. I kept getting the same feedback fromeveryone who read it – I was told that our story could be a help to others whohave experienced the loss of a loved one as well as for people who would liketo learn more about a long-term gay relationship. My friends encouraged me topublish it.
I resisted the idea of publishing it. It felt too personal.Eventually, after a year of cajoling, my friends prevailed and I agreed.However, then I encountered a new dilemma. I could not imaging myself going tocommercial publishers trying to convince them that this was something that theyshould take on. That prospect felt disrespectful to Bill's memory.
So I decided to go the self-publishing route with iUniverse– a very satisfying experience.
Though I now had the historical record of our life togetherand of Bill's dying, my head and my heart were still roiling with unresolvedissues. In the three years prior to Bill's death, four other immediate familymembers had died. Plus, I was now retired and looking back on a career much ofit spent engaged in international issues about which I had many questions.
I decided to continue writing as a way to think through themultitude of issues, personal and professional, that were consuming my head andmy heart. I plunged into the waters of fiction to see if through my imaginationI could write a story that would speak to my own preoccupations and perhapshave interest to others.
My experience with iUniverse and self-publishing had been sopositive, I decided to continue in that stream. After all, the novel Searching for Gilead was my firstattempt at fiction writing and I doubted any commercial publisher would haveinterest.
So this second career as a writer is indeed an accidental,unplanned one. Who knows where it will go. I certainly don't.
For information onDavid's books, consult his website or find him on twitter.