It struck me at one point to look into writing competitions.  I figured if I were already writing short stories, it isn’t much more effort to submit one to a contest.  It doesn’t really matter if I win anything.  If I get a chance to write half as much as I plan this year, I should have a surplus of material for a while.  It’s not like I’m expecting to get paid for everything out of my keyboard right now.  I thought it might be a fun opportunity as well as a means of getting in front of an audience.     What I found, however, is that there are often…

A few months ago, I found another avenue to get Three Degrees of Freedom into print.  I was bumming around the internet looking at local writer’s resources when I came upon Luminare Press.  They had a free e-book titled Six Steps to Successful Self-Publishing which I thought might be worth thumbing through.  It was a short, quick little read but it had some good information.  The book is a nice concise outline of the steps and requirements of getting a book published outside of a traditional publishing house.  I would recommend it to anyone looking to self-publish and will certainly be referencing it again myself. From my perspective, as someone…

It took a long time to complete my first novel, Three Degrees of Freedom.  Probably longer than it should have.  Not that I regret it.  I loved the process and was doing it concurrently with full time employment, an active social life and some counterproductive substance habits.  I am pleased with it though.  I think there are some first novel issues with it that cannot be undone, but there is some good stuff in there.  It’s certainly better than some other works that have been printed for sale.      When I completed it, I started a process of reaching out to all the publishers and agents I could find that…

Now that the first excerpt for my manuscript has been posted on this site, it is time to introduce it as a project that will be guided through the publishing process. It is a work of fiction titled Three Degrees of Freedom. It will eventually be made available through major booksellers. I’ve done a lot of legwork trying to get it published already and have gotten a handle on some of the industry basics. My first impressions of the book publishing process is that getting this book to print is a very reasonable goal. When I finally had a finished manuscript in my hands, I did not know what to…