How I got started.
As my profile says, I’m an avid reader. I like lots of genres: historical fiction, mystery, spy thrillers, and my favorite, sci-fi. But when I’m daydreaming, I’m not thinking about being a spy, those guys get killed; or a detective, too many late nights on stakeouts plus they might get killed; and I don’t believe in time travel. When I daydream I think about what thing I might invent, I’m an engineer; or a superpower I might have and what I could do with it, still a little boy at heart; or why some alien would contact me to take him to my leader:).
I’ve always thought it would be cool to write a book, but a few attempts never really went anywhere. Then my first book, Matthew and the Stone, kind of wrote itself on a long flight to Singapore. I actually wrote it in two weeks after the trip; it was all mapped out in my head.
The Stone series was like my practice series. It never took off; I didn’t put much effort into advertising it. I made a few mistakes, wrote myself into corners I didn’t know how to write myself out of. But it was fun to write, so I started planning a new series, Delphi in Space. So far it’s doing great, not exceeding my expectations since when I dream, I dream big, but doing really well; not sure if it’s just my friends and family buying, but I think I’ve run out of them by now.
Now, for those of you not in the writing clique, there are two types of writers, pantsers and plotters. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants; my mom was a complete pantser. She always said the characters took over the story and wrote the book. I started out as a pantser but then figured out that I need to write down the plot to keep things straight. Now I take a starting point, daydream awhile, and when I think I can see an end point that makes sense, I put together a plot and start writing, still mostly in my head. When a plot materializes, I lay it out and then put in some critical details and really start writing. Once in awhile the plot changes on me. Once, I had to split a book into two books. But I was having fun.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to write a book, but a few attempts never really went anywhere. Then my first book, Matthew and the Stone, kind of wrote itself on a long flight to Singapore. I actually wrote it in two weeks after the trip; it was all mapped out in my head.
The Stone series was like my practice series. It never took off; I didn’t put much effort into advertising it. I made a few mistakes, wrote myself into corners I didn’t know how to write myself out of. But it was fun to write, so I started planning a new series, Delphi in Space. So far it’s doing great, not exceeding my expectations since when I dream, I dream big, but doing really well; not sure if it’s just my friends and family buying, but I think I’ve run out of them by now.
Now, for those of you not in the writing clique, there are two types of writers, pantsers and plotters. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants; my mom was a complete pantser. She always said the characters took over the story and wrote the book. I started out as a pantser but then figured out that I need to write down the plot to keep things straight. Now I take a starting point, daydream awhile, and when I think I can see an end point that makes sense, I put together a plot and start writing, still mostly in my head. When a plot materializes, I lay it out and then put in some critical details and really start writing. Once in awhile the plot changes on me. Once, I had to split a book into two books. But I was having fun.
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