Or... "What On Earth Have I Done To My Family?"
June 10th of 2010 began like any normal Thursday, or at least like any "new normal" to which I had grown accustomed over the sixty days prior. Wake up (too early to mention), get dressed in the dark so as not to wake my wife (hope that I manage to somehow color-coordinate by touch alone), drive in to work (marvel at the lack of traffic), stay there until it is dark again (past my children's bedtime), go home (work some more), then go to sleep (wash, rinse, repeat).
However, there was something different about that Thursday. Something in the air, something in the water, who knows? Whatever it was, it made me want to get a head start on the "go home" portion of the day's activities... permanently speaking. The word "quit" had been loitering in our house for nearly a month so this wasn't exactly news to my wife. We were a single income family at the time, but whenever the Q word came up, her advice was to do whatever would make me a happy and healthy husband and father. I called her in the afternoon and informed her of my impending resignation, to which she simply replied: "We'll see you at the house." Four months later and I still cannot thank her enough.
To summarize what followed, I can only say that it is amazing how many doors open when you pursue your dreams. We had always wanted to live in Colorado and moved one month later. My wife had always wanted to start her own business and now gets paid to sing and dance with children. And finally, my dream... to write and publish a novel.
I chipped away at short stories throughout my childhood and young adult life, but never thought I had the ideas (or attention span) for something of novel-length. Three and a half years ago I had an idea that brought along some friends and thanks to my wife's encouragement, I stuck with it. Eighty-thousand words later I quit my job and my wife made me promise to finish my novel before following through on my knee jerk reaction to race back into a corporate nine-to-five (or five-to-nine as it had become in my case).
So here we are, a new state and a chance to reinvent ourselves. I suspect this blog will be mostly cathartic, but I hope it will help others on similar roads. The publishing industry has changed so rapidly in the past decade, it's simply not enough to have a good story. It's all about marketing, marketing, marketing (specifically, what YOU have already done or are willing to do), and a majority of that is now online. As I struggle with finishing my first novel and wading through the complexities of marketing and publishing, I plan to post my thoughts and findings here as a resource and discussion forum for anyone else that may be exploring these charted (though often murky) waters for the first time.
