My first sale!!!

I sold the first copy of my book! What an amazing feeling.
But wait, there's more. They left a great review.

Okay, it's only one review, but I'm doing the happy dance. People enjoying my stories is the best feeling  ever.

I'd write more but I can't keep my fingers on the keyboard.

Gandalf had it right

Having just published a book, which is by no means the same as crossing a finish line, gave me a breather and think about what's happened in my life as I wrote it.

There's been some pretty rough times and I wonder how I got to this far in mostly one piece. What's funny is how I can look at those moments with a different attitude, now, than was I was feeling at the moment it was happening. 

Charles R. Swindoll said, "I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it."

At Long Last

Today marks a huge event for me and I hope you'll celebrate it with me. I have published my first book.

I've always loved writing and how my imagination and creativity comes to life when I work on a story. Yet, writing a book with subplots, back story, meaningful characters that people would care about while being entertaining is no small task. The journey of writing it all the way to 'The End' seemed a long way off. 

What saw this story though the months of work to completion is entirely due to the honest feedback of those people who were kind enough to read through the rough drafts. Threaded between their comments, questions and constructive critiques was always the same energizing enthusiasm of how much they enjoyed the story.

Lastly, I want to thank all of those people I've met through Twitter, Facebook and other places. You have been a constant source of support, motivation, and education, even though you may not have known it at the time.

It has been a thrilling, frustrating and enlightening journey and through it all my goal has been to create something people will enjoy. I hope you do.

My feet will forgive me, in time

Walking down the hall this morning my legs cut through the cushy haze of lingering sleep to remind me how much I've abused them over the weekend.
I took my wife to Disneyland Saturday and because I booked a hotel room for Saturday night we could stay at the park until closing and be fresh as daises for the drive home the following morning. Or, that was the plan.

We had a great time, all 15 hours of it. My legs and feet may have a different opinion but I'm not letting them near the keyboard, so we'll be sticking with my version.

Adventures in Publishing

I finished reviewing my editors marks over the weekend and had come to the moment where I yell 'Geronimo!" and send my fledgling book off into the big world. Yeah. That didn't happen.

My writing software of choice is Scrivener. It can be as simple or as powerful as you want it to be when writing. The same is true when it comes to 'compiling' your written word into an ebook... mostly.

When it comes to filling in a form I'm the kind of person that will take three. Two to mess up because I didn't read the instructions and one to get right... again, mostly.

I feel like Harold Camping

Last week I prophesied that on the coming Saturday, 12-3-11, I'd be published.
You'll never guess what happened. Maybe you did.

If you've been a reader of this blog it'll come as no surprise that, once again, I didn't publish. Holy flying @#$@$% Batman! This makes the third, no fourth time I had a date set to publish and missed it.

I have to cut myself a little slack, I suppose. After all it's the first time I've gone through this process and the time I estimate for things to be done are nothing more than WAGs.

Alright, so admitting my inability to judge how long this writing stuff takes and before I'm labeled the Harold Camping of the writing world, I will refrain from any further predictions of when this will be wrapped up and published.

... the 10th. Definitely the 10th.

Do Not Pass Go

I used to work with a very interesting guy. He was a computer program and very clever. We were working on a project and had hit some major set backs which kept pushing back the delivery for the finished program. 

I remember our manager coming into our office and asking, for the millionth time when the project would be done. Our manager wasn't a computer person. He had no concept of what was involved in programming, or just about anything computer related. Because of this he'd ask questions that no self respecting 'computer' manager should ask the end result was he didn't get much regard among his department. 

So, he comes in and asks about the delay of the project, and it was clear he'd rehearsed this because he was very specific about programming terms all of us knew he didn't understand. 

The programmer admitted the manager was right except he hadn't taken into account the Constant Date Retreating Factor. 

The CDRF states that the distance to the project goal date will increase in direct relation to the amount of effort you expend on reaching that goal by a factor of 1.5 to 1. The manager wasn't sure if the programmer was serious or not, but to not lose face he went along with it. I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen until I discovered that it really exists. 

Working on this book has confirmed the Constant Date Retreating Factor it real. As of the date of this post there has been three times when I was certain I was just days of publishing my book. Certain! 

This time I know the book will be published and it's just days from happening. Not weeks, mind you. Days. 

For those of you aspiring writers beware of the CDRF. For those published writers you know what I'm talking about. If not, then thank your lucky stars and throw a dash of salt over your shoulder that it doesn't happen to you.