Being a published author has been a dream of mine since I was in my early teens. I started writing my first book when I was thirteen--never finished it. I finished my first book when I was nineteen--never tried to sell it because it was a huge piece of wannabe philosophical crap that no one on the face of God's green Earth would be interested in. After that, I cranked out eight screenplays in six years (one huge pile of crap that resulted in a two year sabbatical to hone my craft; one good idea written only so/so; one comedy done in poor taste; one original vampire action movie that my then-agent turned into a typical "just another vampire movie" piece of garbage; two fantastic pieces of drama; one clean comedy; and a horror piece that I am quite proud of--props to co-author Ken Kambara on the two dramas, clean comedy and horror piece. Somewhere in the midst of that, I wanted to try my hand again at the great American novel. I finally finished my first saleable piece of fantasy fiction about a year and a half before this blog was written.
THE JOURNEY OF THOMAS CLAY was a work in progress that lasted two years. Ironically, I probably only spent a solid month's worth of time actually writing, but that's what being a full time banker, full time father, a full time husband, and a part time writer get you. Especially if you define full time as eight hours per day, I'm already bending the structure of space-time to get in that extra few hours to write. Don't ask me how, it's much too complicated and requires the use of special crystals that act as a remote control to the fourth dimension. As this is being written, the book is in the hands of about three legitimate publishers, all of whom I have virtually no chance of hearing back from before 3-6 months from now. But I'm a patient man, and I've done enough research on the industry to know that this is pretty standard. So naturally, when I got an acceptance response from a publisher one week after I e-mailed them my manuscript, my ten seconds of heart pounding elation quickly turned to red flags and questions.
I quickly got on the phone with my wife and asked her to do all the research she could on a company called PublishAmerica (anyone reading this in the biz already knows where this story is going). I had read their web site before submitting to them...I'm not stupid. But I've been in business long enough to know that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Needless to say, between my wife and I, we dug up tons of dirt on these chumps at PublishAmerica. The fact of the matter is, they're a POD (Print On Demand) publisher posing as the real deal. If you're unfamiliar with POD publishing, avoid it like the plague, and if you want more information, Suspense/Mystery author J. A. Konrath (Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary) has great information on his blog at
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ . Then, buy one of his books-- great stuff.
Now the POD realization wasn't the only bloated body to surface in the lake of my hopes and dreams. The dirt kept coming. Apparently, the WGA won't even recognize authors who publish solely through PublishAmerica, and a group of Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers submitted a hoax novel (they argue that it is one of the worst books ever written) to PA, and it was accepted! And there's much, much more. In fact, if you Google PA, you'll get more links to bad press than to their web site. Still, this has been my dream since late childhood, so I could hear a little voice in that bastard illogical subconscious of mine whispering, "Screw what everyone else says. Their website is probably telling the truth. You want to be published, don't you?" But I try not to listen to that guy - he's an idiot - and he's the one who keeps telling me to wolf down fast food that results in ever-shrinking pants.
Today was the day that I realized that I was an actual writer, not just a man with a dream. I take my writing seriously. Not because it's my profession (yet), and not because I think that I'm any good (I'm fantastic. Don't judge me by my blogging), but because I put a lot of time and effort into it. I'm not about to throw that away so I can be the only person who ever sees my book in print. Persistence--it pays off eventually.
