A Writing Journey
A traditionally published novel has been an aspiration of mine since I was about eight-years old. That was about the time I began writing down stories. I initially focused on murder mysteries with locales such as hotels, cruise ships and ski resorts. Then I got into ghost stories around the time I was in fifth grade. In high school, I wrote mostly stories centered on breakups and unrequited love. I experimented more so in college with some science fiction, some fantasy, and a whole lot of “what the heck is this?” mumbo-jumbo.
I knew getting a book published wasn’t going to be easy, but never would I have guessed that the long, lonely and twistingly ugly road I took to get there is how I would have gone. John Irving published his first novel at 26 years old. At 21 years old, I wrote a short story called “Dios Justicia” that was literally laughed at and ridiculed in my English 327 Creative Writing course by my classmates and Earl Lovelace, the famous Trinidad & Tobago novelist who was the adjunct professor at the time for the course. Embarrassed completely, I dropped the course. My confidence certainly was at an all-time low.
I don’t hold any resentment; that story was terrible. I was a terrible writer at the time. One of my favorite professors told me once that I had grand ideas. I was an idea man. But my writing of those ideas hadn’t been honed quite yet. Once I graduated - I know, strange they actually gave me a degree - I wrote a few stories that were rejected by a few magazines and journals, but mostly I worked at the Seattle DJC and dreamed of writing more so than doing it. I thought I wanted to be like Ernest Hemingway and drink while writing, but I found I drank a lot and would only be looking at a blank computer screen. I switched to caffeine and got a little more done.
It was in 2009 when I moved to South Korea to teach English that I truly decided to write. It was there I wrote my first novel, The LIfe of Failure McFadden. I think after editing it, I submitted it to a couple of agents who I either didn’t hear back from or I received a rejection email. So, I shelved it until deciding to self-publish it via Amazon in late 2012. Mostly I didn’t want to deal with getting an agent because I had a grander idea: I wanted to write my next novel while working in the restaurant business. And what was that novel? Why it was a much more flesh out and in depth version of “Dios Justicia”.
And I worked on that novel from 2013 to 2023 - ten years. After numerous rejections, I finally found someone who wanted to read it while I was at a writer’s conference in September of 2023. That person, Morena Stamm, an editor at The Wild Rose Press out of New York, read the novel, loved the novel, and rejected the novel…on the basis that The Wild Ross Press didn’t publish that kind of work.
Feeling defeated, but with a glimmer of hope, I set about writing my next project, a project I set out to send to Miss Stamm at The Wild Ross Press. After almost ten months later, I can finally say that I am incredibly excited to share that The Wild Ross Press has accepted my novel, Occhi Belli and I have signed the contract. Lo and behold, the publishing process has begun.
The journey has been filled with a lot of heartache, a lot of frustration, and a lot of low moments with my own confidence, but finally, after years of working towards that goal with many years in between of abandoning my writing career (that was naught) and working in the restaurant business, I can finally say that there has been a major breakthrough. Now, I think the hardest part (at least for me) will begin: trying to market a book oversaturated with books.
A new path has opened. I’ve taken a first step towards it.