Up Until Now...

First Blog. Feels kinda weird. Maybe like my first kiss, but without the anxiety of getting it right.

Anyway, Welcome. Like my first kiss, I'll keep it brief, and try not to slobber.

For those who know me, I've always been a "two-hemisphere" kind of person...balancing right-brain tendencies (engineering, logic) with left brain proclivities (fantasy fiction, D&D). In 2004 I collaborated with my friend Scotty on a screenplay. Life intruded, as it always does, and after a few months we abandoned the project. In 2006 we rekindled the affair, finished the damn thing, then released it into the abyss of Hollywood where it bounced off a few players before settling to the ground, unheralded and unnoticed and unappreciated.

Welcome to Tinseltown, now go home.

But the experience got the ole' creative juices flowing; Scotty went off to concentrate on a separate project, and I my own. I completed an original screenplay, where it then ended up in the hands of a well-respected literary agent out of Manhattan. He understood this to be my first screenplay, liked it (but didn't admit to loving it), and suggested that I fictionalize it.

And so I did. Nine months later I gave birth to a fully-mature 83,000-word novel. I dressed him up in a cute little number from FedEx and shipped him off to Manhattan. A few months later, I received an email informing me that, while the writing was solid, he didn't feel comfortable representing my particular genre, and suggested that I contact an AAR agent for representation.

Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.

So, I could have done many things at this point (cry, wail, lash out, sob uncontrollably, eat chocolate, hole up in my room and not shower for days, take to strong drink, etc.) But, I decided to lather the scraped knee of my ego with generous portions of Neosporin and come up with a game plan.

At the urging of my soulmate and in-house-editor (my wife and intended reader, or IR) I deconstructed the story, and we realized that while the plot and the story moved, the characters didn't. They didn't stagnate, but they didn't pop either. And so began the arduous journey of a page-one rewrite, and seven months later I'm done. Whoo-hoo!

This blog is my first venture back out into the world of the living. I am currently crafting my query, and will likely spend another few weeks polishing it. In the meantime, I will continue to blog my writing experiences, for anyone wondering or caring what one writer goes through on a daily or weekly basis to see his literary offspring grow up, graduate and get jobs.

There. I hope I didn't slobber too much...if I did, here's a tissue.