Goodreads asked Rick Boling:

How do you get inspired to write?

Rick Boling I wrote my first short story in fourth grade and got an A on it, but before long I got involved in music and for several years I did little or no writing. Then, in my late twenties I moved to a small cabin in the north Georgia woods, with the intention of using the isolation to write music and poetry. At the time I was also a luthier (builder of stringed instruments), but making a living at that was difficult because I was so isolated, so I eventually moved back to Florida, where I started a small business building instruments and furniture.

I was semi-successful at song writing, and came close to having a couple of my songs released nationally, but the woodworking business was doing poorly, so I had to think of some way to add to my income. I had always been interested in science, and it was actually my wife who suggested I try writing some articles for magazines. I sent out a few queries and within a month I had two assignments from national magazines (OMNI and Science Digest). From there things sort of snowballed, and for the next 30 years I worked as a freelance journalist, publishing some 2,000 articles in dozens of magazines, and also serving for a while as Editor in Chief of a leisure sports magazine. Then about eight years ago, I decided to quit all that and try my hand at writing fiction.

Years earlier I had sold a few stories to the SF pulp magazines, but this time I wanted to try writing novels. Over the next five years, I published three erotic novels under a pen name (to save my family the embarrassment), then decided to take a shot at writing an SF novel.

It took me nearly three years to finish “Then Again,” which is the first novel I have published under my real name.

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