*Note:* The draft for this blog posting has been sitting in my Goodreads draft pile for over a year. I admit it, I've been gone for a while, but if you've been following me and heard the news, you know why. Because this is a blog driven by writing, I won't go into that here. But, it is the one year anniversary of my first novel, Do I Bother You At Night? So, with the upcoming blog tour and the anniversary celebration (and the other news), here is the post that I had ready for last October and just never released...don't ask me why. Obviously, I've tweaked it for the sake of being updated to 2014. Hope you enjoy!


Many of you reading this post have experienced the incredible feeling that overcame me last October, and this past year. Generally, Octobers bring a building urgency in my creative spheres of thought and focus with the Nanowrimo competition just around the corner in November, fulfilling writing ambitions and challenging not only writing skill, as well as typing speed, but imagination and organization skills that would make Phil Hartman's Anal Retentive Chef blush. Last October was a little more special for me…

Okay, wrong. It was a LOT more special for me. On October 4th, 2013, I self-published my first novel of literary horror, Do I Bother You at Night?

So, yeah. There’s THAT.

Plus, these past few years have already been big for me. I’m not going to beat around the bush, I had a big birthday back in June of 2012. Thirty. With any age that ends with a zero comes reflection of the most brutal and personal kind. I like to think that most people take pause to look back at the previous decade or even the sum of their lives when the big X-0 milestone shows up. In her book, My Life So Far, Jane Fonda wrote that she looks at her life in three acts: birth to thirty as Act I, thirty to sixty as Act II, and - if she’s lucky to get to the end of her final Act - sixty to ninety. I suppose anything beyond is considered the after party. Being an actress, that example makes perfect sense for her. But I believe us writers can identify with such an outlook too with the structured - or not so structured (guilty as charged) - way we tell our stories. But, there’s always the beginning, the middle, and the end. Just like with life.

I reflected on my first act when I arrived at the big 3-0 two years ago and the two aspects that have been a constant in my life personally were writing and art. Both of those creative outlets of self-expression have been seesawing their focus in my life for as along as I can remember, handing down comfort, or distracting me from pain, or even telling me who I am as an adult, as a man. Art came naturally to me, but writing I had to develop. Art is a free, youthful, invigorating exercise, while writing is a focused and thoughtful creative process. Art is organic for me, while my writing is planned. Writing fulfilled that hankering Long-Term Project satisfaction in me that waited for so long to get out and couldn’t through my art. Art can be long-term too, sure, but what I draw compared to what I write are vastly different in size and time. A longish piece of art for me would be a month long project. A book…well, as many of you are very well aware, it takes a little longer than a month.

What so many non-writers (who I secretly call Muggles, to borrow from Ms. Rowling, but don't tell anyone) don’t understand is how much work goes into writing and creating a novel that lifts your pride into the stratosphere, lights your soul on fire, and in the end, speaks to you like your own personal Morgan Freeman.

Okay, absolutely, great. Here's the thing: that subject of how much work goes into publishing a novel has been talked about to death on every blog under the sun. What I want to touch upon is the therapeutic, wonderful, and exhilarating sensation writers gain during and after such work, even if it is thoughtful and focused. Writers? Scribblers? Back me up here. You know what I’m talking about, right? Don't leave me hangin'.

Because, while it is work, there’s that familiar enjoyment and pleasure in writing - like coming back to a favorite lover, or slipping into an old pair of shoes. The pleasure can stretch over weeks, months, years, and a lifetime afterward if you have sustainable fans and readers who crave your work and, of course, implement your active, well-used, and well-loved imagination. Then again, even if you don't and it's one and done for you, you've still earned an Achievement Badge on your Merit Badge Sash of Life: Novel Writing.

What made me want to be a writer? Honestly, since I’ve been doing this for over twenty years now, I’ve long since forgotten what exactly drove me down the path of a struggling scribbler. I’ve always blamed King and Crichton for lighting the canon, but that’s a cheap copout and not very sexy considering the years I’ve put into it, and now - be still my beating heart - how long I’ve been a self-published author to the public.

But isn't that the answer? That building culmination of feelings and emotions and expressions trying to get out? Or, better yet, after it’s out, falling in love with it? Think about that for a second. Falling in love your own writing. Being proud of it, flaunting it, and blowing your own damn mind that you created this. So, there's really no pinpoint moment. It was always in there. It just…leaked out…a little bit at a time.

But what kept that leak going, or better yet, what possessed me to never plug it? What was it that drew me back to the keyboard year after year, decade after decade with rejection letters and stories forming digital dust mite villages on the hard drive? I’ll tell you. It was that exhilaration when I saw the story coming together after pages upon pages of weaving and sewing together plot and themes and ideas and moods. Or when I gave a quirky, but endearing trait to a character with which you, and hopefully every one of my readers, can identify. It’s the goosebumps I got the first time I saw my book cover. It’s in my smile when I see the reviews my work is earning after years upon years of quietly scribbling away and never knowing what people would think of it. It’s the thrill in reading an amazing, life-shifting piece of a fiction that gets in my face, pokes me in the chest, and barks, “Hey! Think you can beat me? Are you up for the challenge? Try it.”

And I did. I took the challenge. And I’ll keep taking it, each time a little wiser in the execution and publication to make my stories better, to reach more people, and to grow to become a 21st Century writer. I want to fight for that satisfaction, that achievement, that hallowed merit badge.

That's why Do I Bother You At Night? is my first effort, but it won’t be my last.

Why do you keep coming back?