To Live...Perchance to Dream
Yes, I know the title of this blog entry is not how the line goes from Hamlet, but who wants to talk about dying? I choose to enjoy the life I have and dream about great things. The biggest joy in life is having a dream and realizing it, sometimes through skill, and sometimes through luck. Usually, though, it’s a marriage of those two that creates the realization of a dream.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eight-years-old. Yes. Eight. I recall watching an episode of the most popular show of that time, Bonanza, and in the opening credits, an artist’s painting of a white-haired man holding a book appears with the words “Written by” and the name of the author of that week’s episode. I was enthralled to realize that real people wrote the words spoken on that TV show. Before then, I hadn’t considered that those names of the authors on books represented real people who lived each day as a writer. It may seem silly that I didn’t realize that simple fact, but it was something I’d never thought of before. After all, I was only eight, and only newly so at that.
Then as I grew, I came to understand that not every writer made a living at it. In fact, most are people who find that while they write they should not “quit their day jobs.” Many people are published and disappear from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. The vast majority might publish something, but it never comes to anything other than a book they once wrote.
A few find they have somehow created an amazing book, one that is loved by the vast majority of readers that pick it up. I have become one of those, and I am the most surprised person on Earth that it happened to me.
Floating Twigs has become a huge success, at least in the world of Kindle. It is now regularly ranked in the top 20 of sales on Amazon in the Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense Literary Fiction category there. It has made it into the top 100 in the broader and more difficult to maintain Literary Fiction category, which includes all formats—hardback, paperback, audio book, and Kindle. This broader category is what makes maintaining a position on that list more difficult, but so far Floating Twigs has held its own, currently “floating” around between a high spot of 70 and somewhere in the 80’s. In the motif of that first novel I wrote, it has made it to the Gulf to float in the vastness there. It is also, as of this writing, ranked in the top 500 of all ebooks sold at Amazon.
This joy keeps me wondering if indeed I am still dreaming and I will wake up soon and realize it had no reality behind it, but I know it is real, and that amazes me further.
If for some reason you haven’t read Floating Twigs yet, please do. Nearly everyone who has read it loves it. There are a few negative reviews, but they can be counted on one hand. The positive reviews count into the hundreds. I keep telling myself that when the Beatles came out, not everyone my age loved them and their music. (Almost NONE of the adults did.) Books are like that. There will be a minority who don’t really like a book or see the beauty in it. That’s just the way it is.
Still, I am truly astonished and appreciative of those who express their love of my work. It makes all the hard work to create such a book well worth the effort.
If you have read Floating Twigs or the first book of my detective series, Hell is Empty, and enjoyed them, please share that with others. Neither you nor they will regret your decision to suggest either one to them.
My plan for this year is to finish book two of the Detective Tony Pantera series, The Purger, and write my next literary novel, as yet untitled. The Purger should be available early this summer. My hope is to work like crazy to finish the literary novel to have it ready for sale before Christmas. I will let people know through this website and my newsletter when they are available.
So if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter, which is brief and sent only once a month, do so today! You can sign up on the Home page of this website by clicking the button at the bottom of the Homepage and answering the two questions, specifically, your name and email address. That’s all I need. I do not sell email addresses and wouldn’t know how to do that if I wanted to. Thank you!