For me stories come quick ideas that pop in my head or even dreams. They usually start out as short stories. However some prove to be too big to be a short story. I have a number of them that I will expand into full novels later.
When I was a teenager I started writing short stories and sharing them with friends and family members. My brother Bobby told me on one of them that it should be published. Well I figured he was just being nice. Later down the road as I got older friends would tell me the same thing. Again I had no idea how to publish something and felt my stuff was not valuable enough to sell, just entertain lightly.
It wasn't till I entered a story into a writer's website contest did I start to believe I might could do this for a living. It was a fairly popular site and there was nothing to win but notoriety. My writing skills were not good but to my surprise I won forth place out of thousands of entries. Still I went on not doing anything about it. It simply was an escape for me.
Then a character popped in my head called Vickie. I got the idea that this character likes to revenge herself on people in a comical way. So I wrote her in a short story called Vic/Tim. The title played on the two characters Vickie and Tim. Tim being the one she was torturing at the time. However the story turned serious and had a plot. Astonished I realized it needed to be bigger. Eight years later I started to work on it as a full novel. Two years later and working with my close friend Nicole I had a story. A real story this time. Over 80 thousand words. Now what do I do?
Nicole encouraged me to get a literary agent and get it published by one of the big "six" publishers. Well getting an agent is harder than finding bigfoot. I was rejected by over 500 of them. One even berated me over my submission email and its style. I looked at self publishing which is a good option if you just want to get something out there and have no money. You are not likely to sell hardly any books but at least you are published. After test trying it I realized I am not going anywhere with this. So I submitted to lesser publishing houses that did not require an agent. Again no luck.
Then one day I got an email from Tate Publishing that my manuscript had been accepted. Before I knew it was I was signing contracts and the way we go. They had people contacting me almost everyday wanting to know about this and that in the book. They were working teasers, book cover art, on and on. It was surreal having all these people work and spend time and money on something I just made up. Months later I had a book. A real published book. Fully edited by professionals and novelized. I was in shock just staring at it.
As a skeptic by nature I felt it might sell a few copies and that is it. I know it takes years to develop a following of readers and get known. That is if you are lucky. But I started to finally believe I can do this for a living. What I know and feel wrote down has value to someone. An actual career of doing this is possible.
So now I wait and see what the results are. Will my books fail? Will they just be a drop in an ocean of other books? Or will I have an empire King, Rowling and others? The future is hopeful. We will see.
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