Removing the Dust Jacket

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me get to this point of my writing career, but I can’t. I did it all myself.

Just joking as I try to pick up my spirits following my first two e-mail rejections from New York literary agents. It took me two years to write a book and only two days for agents to snub me, but at least one of them e-mailed a nice letter of doom:

“Because this business is so subjective and opinions vary widely, we recommend that you pursue other agents. After all, it just takes one “yes” to find the right match. Good luck. Nelson Literary Agency. New York, NY.”

Yes, people have told me that with newspapers shutting down left and right, many of those laid-off people are writing books – and the chances of a rookie punk author like me getting published today is like riding a bicycle in a NASCAR race. That’s why I was appreciative when a friend of mine sent me the line, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” And Natasha, my boss at Journal Communications in Nashville where my writing actually gets me paid, mentioned positively to me, “Hard fall, high bounce” as I was forlornly picking myself up after my initial agent rejection.

Anyway, on this first of my Saturday Morning/Wednesday Morning blogs, I indeed want to quickly thank a few people:

1)      I like to write but don’t like all the other stuff connected with this publishing endeavor, so thank you to my wife, Jenny, who pushed me to get this whole venture rolling. I would have left my manuscript on a shelf and just proceeded to my next book if it wasn’t for her.

2)      Thank you to my Dad who passed away less than a year ago and who was a better writer than I will ever be. He was a technical writer and speech writer for all the bigwigs at General Motors during the automaker’s heyday, and really had a flair for the written word. And thank you to Mom who has always been a stickler for English, and would correct my grammar whenever I misspoke while growing up.

3)      Thanks to my niece, Andrea, who is marketing this project. She is handling my Facebook page (what’s a Facebook, I ask?) and Twitter account. She’s just starting out with her own marketing company at age 26 and I really like her professionalism and energy.

4)      And thanks in advance to Jon Brooks, my upcoming web page designer who really does nice work. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Bill and Colleen Barstow, own a movie theater in Omaha – Aksarben Cinema – and Jon did their website. Impressive stuff.

Done. My first-ever blog. It was probably too long, but for future posts I’ll try to tighten it up. It won’t ever be tighter than my old high school gym shorts, but as Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” If that’s good enough for Bill Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.