First Post

Okay this is my first try a blogging. As I sit here in my home office, I'm supposed to be working on my second mystery novel.  Instead I'm actually hiding out from the plumbers who are replacing two of our toilets.  Now that's information you really wanted to know.

It only took me six months to write each of my first novels.  This one has taken over a year and I'm still only half way through it.  When I first started writing, I knew nothing of the process. I just sat down and took the challenge to write a novel. Since I knew I couldn't write graphic sex scenes or ones dripping with blood and gore, yet I wanted something that would appeal to today's audiences, I decided to write a young adult sci-fi novel. It was only after I completed it that I read several books on writing and joined a couple of writer's groups. The original manuscript has now gone through several revisions and a title change to become The Crystal's Curse, available online at both Amazon.com and Smashwords.com.

The books and writer's groups convinced me that I should write from only one point of view instead of the multiple points of view in The Crystal's Curse, so for my next project I wrote a murder mystery, currently entitled Double Down.   My protagonist is a human resources director for a hotel and casino on the strip in Las Vegas, NV.  They always tell you to write something you know.  I was able to work in many of the funny and unique situations that happened to me while working in a similar job.  Of course, I needed a romance angle so I added a love triangle with two handsome men.  Again I finished in a little over six months.  One publisher and an agent expressed interest so that's where it sits at the moment. 

I now know how difficult it is to get a book published.  Most new authors simply pay to self-publish and hope they will sell enough books to cover the cost.  I also learned so many confusing and contradictory dos and don'ts that writing became much more difficult.  It was only recently that I decided to ignore everything I learned and go back to simply enjoying the process of creating.  My books have no socially redeeming value. They contain no message to the world.  My only hope was that someone would have a much fun reading them as I did writing them.