August 1, 2014, saw the release of my first novel, Prometheus Stumbles. It’s been a part of my life for many years, and it was a great feeling to finally have it available for readers and to be able to hold a copy in my hands. I came up with the concept way back in 1996, when I woke up from a vivid dream and headed straight for my typewriter. I banged away on those keys for two hours, trying to capture everything I could remember, and the story started taking shape. I was in the Army at the time, serving as a journalist for my post’s newspaper. So I was used to writing news and feature articles, not crazy dreams. Yet this dream gave me so much material I just couldn’t forget about it.
I’ve always been a reader, and I started writing fiction while in college, hoping to perhaps someday get a short story published. I continued to mess around with writing after graduation, but nothing I produced was good in my eyes, so I never submitted anything. But when I had the Dreamworld dream, I felt that for the first time, I really had the roots of an exciting story. So I got a word processor and did a little work on it every night that I could, and continued that when I left the Army in 1997. I was fortunate in my transition to civilian life to land a great job as a business proposal writer (which I still do today), and I wanted to continue working on my Dreamworld novel.
At this time, the wife and I had two children that could keep us busy, so it was easy to find excuses not to write. Then I sort of forced myself by enrolling in Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Course. I was thrilled to have John DeChancie as my instructor, and received great feedback from him as I progressed through the course. It took me a little longer to finish than I wanted to, and got permission to extend it. My wife had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, and our lives had been flipped upside-down. I saw bravery every day in my wife’s conduct and actions, and I know some of that carried over to some of my characters. She got through it, and life continued on.
A few years later, as I was still working bits and pieces at a time on my novel, I took a different proposal writing job and moved to Minneapolis. I lived there for two years and seven months without my family, and I worked on finishing up my novel and then getting an agent. I got what I thought was a pretty good bite, but couldn’t real it in. Meanwhile, I managed to get yet another job and moved back home.
In May of 2013, I decided to dive in headfirst and put a short story out on Amazon for Kindle readers. Then another, then another, and so on until I finally had five stories out there and I was pleased with the response I was getting. I did a lot of reading on self-publishing and indie publishing, and decided that if I was going to continue down this path, then I needed to give my Dreamworld book a really good edit and put it out there. Along the way, Nick Cole read my manuscript and gave me a fantastic blurb to use. And now it’s here at long last. Prometheus Stumbles lives!
But that’s not all, folks. This is just Dreamworld Book One. Next up will be a short story collection that contains a story and a novella from the Dreamworld universe. It should be available late spring or early summer of 2015. Following that will be Chronos Yields, Dreamworld Book Two, with a planned publication date in 2016. If you’ve read and finished Prometheus Stumbles, I hope you are hungry for more in the Dreamworld saga.
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