This month I celebrate ten years of serious writing.

But…

I’ve been writing my entire life. Or for most of it.

My first trip on my journey to write happened forty years ago. When I was six years old, I went to kindergarten bent on learning how to read and write. Day one, they said we weren’t going to start that yet. They wanted me to color. Well, skanks, I can color at home. I walked home. My first trip.

My mom wasn’t happy. She sent me back and eventually, I learned how to read and write.

In the third grade, I took another trip, this time to Barsoom. I read A PRINCESS OF MARS. I got in trouble because the teacher thought the Michael Whelan covers were too racy. They were. Ah, Dejah Thoris. Your red skin was lustrous.

In fourth grade, I wrote my first real story, about Little Bo Peep hiring a bounty hunter with a double-barrelled shotgun to find her lost shot. Wolves were involved. The wolves didn’t make it. Bo Peep was hot. Epic.

ERB rip-offs and Conan imitations followed. A lot. In high school I started an ElfQuest fan-fic novel, though I didn’t see it as fan-fic. Mine was original, with cave elves, and darklings, and epic romance! It was fan-fic. I didn’t finish it.

I’ve spent my entire life writing. But it was always a hidden thing, always something I did on the sly, never taking it seriously because I couldn’t handle the rejection and the ridicule. I was too fragile.

Ten years ago, I got serious. I was thirty-six years old. The year was 2006, and I took my first real writer trip, to the Big Sur Writing Workshop put on by the Henry Miller library and the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. By that time, I’d written seven full-length novels. A little under nine hundred thousand words. Henry Miller said you have to write a million words before you can sign your own name. True enough, I reckon.

The Dream of the Archer
The Gospel of the Severed Earth Trilogy – Everywhere, Everything, Everyone
The Storybook, the Turner Brothers, and Eli Kane
Summer’s Exile
Broken Dreams and Wicked Things

I wrote nearly a million words, went to Big Sur, California to pitch The Storybook, the Turner Brothers, and Eli Kane. It didn’t go well. And was reduced to ashes.

But ten years ago, March of 2006, is when I started my writing journey.

Six years later, March of 2012, Crescent Moon Press published The Never Prayer, my first published book.

Four years later, March of 2016, I’m in Provo, Utah, in the house of a fellow writer, on a sort of writing retreat. I want to take a minute to look back at the last ten years. While I wrote a ton since Little Bo Peep went looking for her sheep, it wasn’t until my wife focused me. My youngest wasn’t even a year old, and she wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t sleeping, and I was losing it.

My wife knew I needed to get serious, and so she researched Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Pikes Peak Writers, and the Big Sur Writing Workshop. She read David Morrell’s wonderful Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing. She found me a critique group in Evergreen, Colorado.

And I took another trip.

I went back to Big Sur, year after year in March. I learned how to write a good first chapter. I read Henry Miller, who used the f-word a lot. And who didn’t play by the rules. I ate ambrosia burgers at Nepenthe, year after year. And if you haven’t been to Big Sur or Nepenthe, and if you aren’t dead, get on it, son.

I went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Gold Conference. Year after year.

I went to the Pikes Peak Writing Conference in Colorado Springs. Year after year.

I hooked up with Andrea K. Stein, and we room together. I’d come in, flailing my arms and gnashing my teeth. When will it be my turn to be rich and famous? When will I get published? When? When? When?

Andrea would roll her eyes and talk me off the ledge. One more time. We’d curse the industry together. She was my road dog. We were bound together, trip after trip, year after year.

I partied all night long at the RMFW conference and walked the hallways of the Renaissance Hotel in Denver and sat alone at three in the morning in the Colorado Springs Marriott, praying, thinking, longing, so full of desire and fear.

At Big Sur, I met David Spieselman and Linda Houser (then Rohrbough, but Houser fits her better). They pulled me into Act IV, which met yearly in the fall in Santa Barbara. We would divide ourselves into groups, read each other’s complete novels, and then meet to go over our notes. Santa Barbara is gorgeous, and my wife joined me, and we hung out, ate the very best sushi of our lives! Every bite brought out a different flavor. You could live a lifetime in one piece of raw fish goodness.

Then?

As Linda Houser says, the game changes at every turn.

RMFW posted that Crescent Moon Press was looking for young adult books. I sent in The Never Prayer (which I wrote based on a conversation I had at Act IV). They offered me a deal. And I took it.

Which took me to the Romantic Times Reader Convention in the spring of 2012. This was the big leagues. I flew off to Chicago, going there to sell books and make connections. Which I did. And it was so awesome. RT is an experience. I stayed up all night, sold books, rubbed shoulders with giants, fell in love, which I am wont to do, and the world exploded.

There I met Kendall Grey, Heather Savage, Jenna Barton, and Rie Warren. We found kindred souls in each other, and we meet now, once a year, in South Carolina.

I love strong-willed women, warrior women, women who can create and destroy a universe in a single sitting. And so, it’s no surprise I careened into Kris Tualla, and she hooked me up into the thriving Arizona writing community. She helped me sell books at the Tucson Festival of Books and she invited me to Arizona Dreaming, where I won their Young Adult contest for Long Live the Suicide King.

In Denver, after joining the Pearl Street Group, or PSG, I started going to Sci-Fi/Fantasy conventions in Denver. To name a few…

Mile-Hi Con with Rose Beetem (powerful woman)

AnomalyCon  with Kronda Siebert (powerful woman)

MalCon with Nikki Ebright (powerful woman).

I sold books at the Colorado Teen Lit Conference in Denver, every spring. I foisted my first book on Maggie Stiefvater because I was so moved by her talk. I’m sure her first thought, “What on earth am I going to do with this book?”

I put thousands of miles on my car. When The Never Prayer came out, I did a Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Toledo book launch trip.

Libraries invited me to talk, thanks to Leah Parker and Kara Seal, those crazy librarians. I did library events at the Arapahoe Library, up in Erie, and in Firestone. Thanks to Genne Boggs, I was invited to be the Artist in Residence at the AnyThink Library in Northglenn.

It wasn’t the first time I ventured north of I-70. I drove up to Longmont to visit Bree Ervin, who helped me with every facet of my career.

I spent time in Village Inns across the Denver Metro area with Chris Devlin, Deb Courtney, Lexi Butler, Angie Hodapp, Jason Evans, Dean Wyant, Becky Clark, and Jennifer Rose, just to name a few.

Linda Houser invited me to Red River, New Mexico, to learn from Dusty Richards and Jodi Thomas. So I threw my gear into my Kia, sped down, and stopped in Walsenberg for fried pork skins.

Cody May and I came up with an idea to interview local authors, and so the Colorado Author Interview Circle was born, which took me to that far-off land, Aurora.

And then, at Mile-Hi Con in 2013, I pitched Peter J. Wacks my series about cowgirls with machine guns on a post-apocalyptic cattle drive. He told me to send it. June of 2014 I signed a contract with WordFire Press for a six-book series. Which meant I would hit the road with the WordFire Press booth.

My first trip was to Seattle, with the Quincy J. Allen, for the Emerald City Comic Con. It was a chance for me to get my feet wet. And spend time with Quincy J. Allen, who has become my best writer friend, my other road dog. Literally, on the road.

Once I had a book, I had a business, so I started taking my mileage as a tax write-off. Here’s my mileage for the past five years.

2011 – Total Miles Driven – 2642
2012– Total Miles Driven – 6604
2013– Total Miles Driven – 3548
2014– Total Miles Driven – 3824
2015– Total Miles Driven – 2883

Of course, with WordFire Press, I won’t be clocking in the miles, but I’ll be riding along in the van, hitting the cons, selling books.

Above are my driving miles.

Plane Travel?

Well, my day job involves a bit of travel. So when McKesson booked me on trips, I would set up book parties if I knew a bunch of people in the area. JC Jarrell helped me set up book parties in Durham, North Carolina. My sister-in-law, Julie Lewandowski, helped me set up a great party in Minneapolis, where I signed the contract for my third book, Elizabeth’s Midnight, with Staccato Press. I did book signings at Phil’s Studio-Bongiorno, 500 Lincoln St, Santa Clara, California 95050 and Hicklebee’s in San Jose, California.

And of course, the Hanson’s Bar and Grill book launch parties, every spring, in Denver.

I’ve been all over the country, selling books, meeting people, shaking hands, and kissing babies.

And now, I’m in Provo, Utah, looking at the east-side of the Rockies, and one thing strikes me.

I grew up, reading, in my basement, afraid of the world and its people. I couldn’t send query letters out because I was too afraid.

And here I am, working it, on fire, moving, crossing the lands.

I love to travel. I love new places, new people, and new food.

Without the gift of writing, I wouldn’t have ever stepped foot in South Carolina. I wouldn’t have appreciated all the tattoos I saw in Tucson. I’d have missed out on ambrosia burgers at Nepenthe in Big Sur. I wouldn’t be here in Provo. I wouldn’t have gotten to unload books in Seattle with Quincy. My world would be SOOOOO MUCH SMALLER!

So I’m grateful. And as long as I can, I will continue this journey, no matter where it takes me.

Then years of trips.

Ten years gone.