My Brief* History as a Writer--So Far.

I have always been a writer.

When I was nine our teacher asked us to write a story "about anything we wanted" with just one caveat: it had to be at least 500 words. I handed in a twenty page action/adventure future dystopia about a couple trying to escape across the border into Canada because the wife was pregnant and wasn't licensed for children. I got an A+ on the homework, and from then on the teacher included a maximum word count on all of our assignments. And no, I have no idea where I came up with that idea at nine years old. (The counsellors they made me see asked the same question.)

My dad bought me one of those portable suitcase typewriters after that (although it wasn't until high school that I learned how to type—probably the most useful thing I ever learned in school) which made the teacher happy because from then on I turned in all my assignments type-written. I still had a problem with word count, however.

I wrote a lot of (relatively) short stories, most of which my mom wouldn't read because they were too violent and graphic. And this was before movies and video games had desensitized me to violence. (Mom finally read my DARKSIDE novels a couple of months ago. She liked them—and not just in a mom way, either.)

I started but never got past the first few chapters of several novels back then, but it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I began what would be my first completed novel. I started NAEJIN while I was a student in the military, learning basic electronics in Kingston, Ontario. I worked on it off and on over the years, but I didn't complete it until I was about 35. It probably still wouldn't be finished if it weren't for the Del Rey Online Writing Workshop and the people I met there. (Well, that and the invention of the home computer and Word Perfect.) NAEJIN won the Editor's Choice award there a couple of times, which seemed like a big deal to me then as it convinced me that I at least had some raw talent. I think it tricked some other folks into believing that, too.

Luckily I didn't know anything about the publishing business then. I didn't even try to find an agent, and only subbed it to a couple of publishers before giving up on it. (It took almost a year and a half just to hear back from those two publishers!) And I say luckily because while there's a lot of good stuff in NAEJIN, when I read it now parts of it make me cringe. Nothing a good rewrite wouldn't fix though.

It was those same folks I met at the OWW that tricked me into writing DARKSIDE. I'd joined a crit group with C.C. Finlay, Karin Lowachee, Jason Venter, Marsha Sisolak, Keri Arthur, Caroline Norrington (nee Heske), Steve Nagy and Lisa Deguchi called The Sock Monkey Parade. (James Allison and Cecilia Dart-Thornton—known as Lint—would drop in occasionally, too.)

In the meantime, DARKSIDE won another Editor's Choice, although the term "won" is relative—Terry Brooks (the guest editor) trashed it. Oh, and I got to swap crits with Jim Butcher before he became--you know--Jim Butcher.

Warner Aspect was running their First Novel Contest, and we all decided to goad each other on to finish our current WIPs and submit them. DARKSIDE made to the semi-finals, and Karin Lowachee won for WARCHILD. (Go Karin!)

I guess I kind of peaked there. I spent the next couple of years working on DARKSIDE: WAKING THE DEAD, only to find I couldn't sell the first book. Oddly enough, no one was interested in the sequel after that.

I decided to put it up on the web for free, and low and behold it developed somewhat of a fan base, mostly through word of mouth. Sure it was more of an underground fan base, but still.

Then came Amazon and the Kindle, which sort of, kind of, almost, in a way made self-publishing legitimate. Darkside was at least legitimate enough for someone to steal it, and the books developed enough of a following that it made the writing of the next novel in the series (hopefully) lucrative, or at least worthwhile from the POV that I know people want to read it.

In the meantime I wrote THE MOONLIGHT WAR. Odds are I'm going to self-publish it, too. As a matter of fact, the plan is that by this time next year I'll have published the third DARKSIDE NOVEL, THE MOONLIGHT WAR, a rewritten NAEJIN, and will be hard at work working on a sequel or sequels to all three.

In fact, I have decided to become my own publishing empire! Okay, publishing village. Would you believe publishing corner store?

Anyway, that's the plan.

*still has a problem with word count