On Writing

I finished my first novel in July 2008. The Martyr Club is a 90,000 word dark satire about religion, sex and violence. The book needs a rewrite before it goes anywhere, and I don't know whether I'm up to it. I'm not a dark person.

I didn't have any credentials for writing a novel, really. Yes I'm college-educated and did take a fiction writing class many years ago, but my entire career has been that of a businessman persuing the American dream, and I've had no training to do anything else. When creating The Martyr Club, I knew nothing about hooks, point of view, sentence structure, GMC or the myriad of other tools a fiction writer needs to capture a reader's interest.

So after finishing that book, I crammed. Stephen King's On Writing served as my first instruction manual, followed by Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools, Renni Browne's and Dave King's Self-editing for Fiction Writers, Noah Lukeman's The Plot Thickens, and Debra Dixon's Goal, Motivation and Conflict.

I also joined Romance Writers of America so that I could hang around writers and pick up ideas. I think of myself as a writer now. That isn't to say I neglect the business career that has paid the bills for so many years. But a businessman isn't how I want to define myself.

Last month, I completed my second novel, The Story Queen. I love the characters who came to life in this story and hope readers will, too.

Why do I write? At first I wanted to be famous. And rich. I wanted to be in US Magazine eating a hamburger with a caption beneath saying "Celebrities -- they're just like us. "

But now I write, because I find fulfillment that way. I'm proud of my stories and love turning a good phrase. I hate most of the books out there that follow the formula but lack the snappy dialogue and vivid descriptions that readers want. My books won't be like that. No matter the plot or genre, my books will contain passages that a reader might remember.