I've been writing since I could hold a pencil. My very first novel
was about a boy who was kidnapped by aliens living under the ocean. It
was never published and the manuscript has since mysteriously
disappeared.
I got my start in professional publication when I was fourteen years
old. My parents were big into the organic gardening scene (ask me to
tell the potato-bug-picking story some time) and they subscribed to The
Mother Earth News. I decided to submit something to one of their
columns,
I forget exactly what, and my mother suggested I put my age at the
bottom
of the submission.
"You never know," she said. "The editor might be impressed." So I did.
(Note to beginning writers: This only works with non-fiction. Do not do this with a fiction manuscript. The editor won't be impressed.)
Pat Stone, the editor, wrote me back. He rejected my submission, but said that he was indeed impressed. I could write clearly and I could type. (Apparently these are the two main qualities for professional writing.) If I was interested in writing an article for them, he would be interested in looking at it.
I was raising rabbits at the time, so I sat down at my typewriter, wrote an article about raising rabbits, and mailed it in. Pat bought it, and the article ran in the September, 1981 issue.
I kept writing on my own, mostly stories and adventures involving magic and folklore. It never occured to me to submit any of them to magazines. I think it was in the back of my mind that fiction writers are Other People and they lived in Other Places like New York or Los Angeles. They certainly weren't people like little ol' me from backwoods Michigan.
(Hint to beginning writers: You don't have to live anyplace big or interesting to write.)
In 1991, I married my wife Kalathena and moved to Ann Arbor. I was still writing bits and pieces of stories and novels, but not seriously. Then a friend of mine mentioned a role-playing game in which the local magical library was run by a dragon. It seemed to me there was a story in that somewhere, and the idea wouldn't let go. Eventually, I sat down one evening and wrote the entire story in one sitting.
After several edits and a major
rewrite, I sent it to Marion Zimmer Bradley, editor of Sword &
Sorceress. This was mostly a whim--S&S is a major
fantasy market, and I would be competing with Big Name Authors. But I
had heard that Marion Bradley would sometimes reject stories with
personal comments instead of a xeroxed rejection letter, and I wanted
to know how to improve my writing.
She bought the story. "Hoard" appeared in Sword & Sorceress IX.
Ecstatic, I realized I was two for two, unheard of in the writing community. I started writing more stories and sending them out. Every single one came back. I didn't sell another word, in fact, for two years.
(Hint to beginning writers: Don't ever, ever quit.)
Eventually, I did start selling again. Since "Hoard," I've made over a dozen short sales. So far, I've been in Dragon Magazine, Esther Friesner's Chicks in Chainmail series, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine.
My First Novel
I sold In the Company of Mind, my
first novel, to Baen
Books in June, 1996. It's a science fiction novel about a man with
multiple personality disorder. Nanotechnology is also part of the
mix. (The cover, incidentally, was painted by Charles Keegan of
Georgia.) The Company is
also available as an e-book from Embiid Books.
The Nanotech War, my first Star Trek: Voyager book came out in the fall of 2002. I like it quite a lot, and it was fun to write. I have other proposals with Pocket Books, so I'm hoping there'll be more of them.
Committing Novelization
About a week before winter break in the 2002/2003 school year, my
agent called. There's this movie thriller coming out, she said,
starring John Cusak and Ray Liotta. Pocket is handling the
novelization. The catch was the deadline -- January 17.
Once I received the screenplay, I'd have about twenty-eight days
to write the book. Would I be interested?
This, I decided, would be a challenge, so I took it. I
finished it, and I finished it on time. It was hard work and
great fun both. Identity the movie and Identity
the novel were released in April, 2003.
The Exorcist
A while ago,
my editor at Pocket asked if I wanted to write the novelization to The Exorcist: the Beginning, which
would be a prequel to The Exorcist.
Sure! It was a rocky ride, though. I'm sure you've already
heard about how they got a different director and writer in
mid-project, which meant I had to keep rewriting the book. But
it's coming out August 19, so watch for it!
What Every Beginning Writer Should Know