One Year to Write the First Marcus Dresden Thriller
The last few words of Book One (Waves of Deception: A Marcus Dresden Thriller) made their way onto paper this week! A huge first step for me. How huge… here’s a little perspective. One year ago today I hung up the phone after a sixty-minute conversation with Andrew Watts (andrewwattsauthor.com). We talked mostly about our time in the Navy, kind of getting to know each other. But in that hour Andrew asked me one very important question, “do you want to be a writer or an author?”, “Hmmm… uh what’s the difference?” I asked. “An author gets paid to write!”, “Uh… oh. Oh! Ok!” I said. That was Friday.
By Monday of the following week I had an answer, yes! I also had a concept, a main character and a plan, sort of. Andrew came back into the picture and shored up my plan, “give me an outline and some sample writing and I will give you a no-shit assessment of your work… or potential,” he said. Dude! How lucky could one be?
I went and asked Ms. Google what it meant to write an outline for a novel. She pointed me in the direction of KM Weiland and her small but powerful book; Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. Now I’m going full disclosure here, I was not the best student in school and the thought of an outline, ala; big A, parenthesis, indent, little a, coma, etc. was not my idea of fun. Not really the most positive way to stimulate the creative juices. Turn’s out Ms. Weiland had found the secret sauce. She had found a way for me to join my two worlds of thought, daydreaming and list making.
Seven months later I slapped down (a metaphorical slap of course – I really just pushed the send button) a one-hundred twenty-eight-page outline and sample writing package. Thirty days later I got my rejection-not rejection letter from Andrew. The best day of my short writing life! Done. Kaput. Finite. Well, not exactly it really was a great day. I had, in the previous eight months realized I really liked doing what I was doing. I had spent ten years writing with no real direction. Now I was really writing! But I realized I wasn’t ready for prime time. I didn’t want to be under contract. I wanted to have several mostly finished manuscripts, a half dozen well thought out concepts… stuff like that, before I had the first book on the proverbial bookshelf.
So, like any honorable brother-in-arms Andrew and his snake eating partner Jason Kasper (jason-kasper.com) said to me, “how can we help!” I thought this was kind of unique. I had tried the publishing thing before. You know, “I have a friend, who’s got a friend, that is friends with the third nice of an agent that…” you get the picture. I wanted to write and figured getting published was the end all. And of course, every other SEAL was doing it, why not me? Right? Well, not me! Why? Because I don’t think my story is really any different than two or three thousand other SEALs out there. I never killed a high-profile terrorist and I’m not willing to stoo… You know what, I’m not going to go there. I just wanted to be a storyteller not just tell a story!
Here I am with a story I’m proud of! A handful great self-publishing mentors… and friends! I have a ton more to do before I hit the publish button. Get a cover designed, work with a developmental and copy editor, figure out how to format my book properly, determine when to release the book and how to price it and so much more. It’s been an awesome year and I look forward the next year seeing this all come to fruition!
Thanks for reading!
I hope you enjoy the blog, facebook posts and come September (maybe a little earlier) the first in a series, of the MARCUS DRESDEN thrillers – WAVES OF DECEPTION.
Check out the BOOKS page at bgroganbooks.com for a more detailed description of the upcoming books in the series. Also sign up for my newsletter under the subscription tab and stay abreast of all the news, release dates and promo’s!