Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).
My adventure in getting published started many years ago when I was in college. I had written my first novel Prophecies of Atlantis and, having won a few awards for my short stories, figured that getting published would be a cinch. After all, I knew I could write well — I had some shiny awards to show for it and several of my professors telling me that I was a good writer. So, full of confidence in a way only a twenty-year-old can be, I sent my query letters and copies of Prophecies off, figuring I’d have a contract and be set for life.
Instead, I started up a rather impressive collection of rejection letters.
These were the days before Peter Jackson brought fantasy more into the mainstream with his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring trilogy. This was long before J.K. Rowling made it acceptable for parents to let their children read books about magic and wizards. This was back when Dragonlance was still something of a cult community and WoTers were considered eccentric.
So, I got rejected. A lot.
Looking back now, Prophecies deserved to get rejected. It was a good long story for someone who hadn’t seen the better part of life. But, the characters were very juvenile, the plot was rather bland, and my ambitions had far out-paced my skill or discipline at that point in my life. Still, getting rejected isn’t easy and, in those days (and even today) no one really bothers to tell you why.
So, I sucked it up and focused more on writing D&D campaigns, designing NWN levels and campaigns, attempting to write a MUD, and then just doing walk-throughs and guides for various Final Fantasy games.
I started working on a recurrent project around this time as well. Heart’s Flame was popular on various message boards I hung out at but then, I’m afraid it was probably something of the echo-chamber effect. In time, I moved to France, got married, found a job, and quit writing Heart’s Flame. I was focused on advancing my “real” career and just figured that, hey, I could do some short stories and all but I’d never get published by the majors. Fantasy fiction was just too “out there” and I had no good ideas for general fiction titles.
In 2007, I started writing a short fanfic set in World of Warcraft about my characters. Alayne’s Story got me a good bit of attention within the WoW EU community and I had a lot of positive feedback. I wound up starting a website for it over at www.magisters-terrace.com and even got the idea for a book called The Unexiled. However, juggling work, Alayne’s Story, and The Unexiled meant that one of the three was going to lose out. I had (at the time) a fairly sizeable fanbase for Alayne’s Story. Also, the more I worked on The Unexiled, the more I saw I needed to do background work on the universe it was set in. That led to a project I’m still tinkering with but am nowhere near ready to announce.
The years passed by. Then, in May 2011, I had a solid kick to the rear that got me to finally write something I could publish. See, in May 2011, I was told that my position at work was going the way of the dodo. I tried to find other jobs where I was but the demand for English-speakers in France is just not that high and I kept getting told “your writing skill isn’t good enough” for damned near anything I applied for.
“Not a good enough writer, eh?” I said to myself on one of many sleepless nights. I’d seen some of what passed muster for “good” in those areas and wondered if I’d entered the Twilight Zone where “good” meant “sparkly vampires who go to high school.” I’d had the idea for the Fall of the Lanarian Empire series germinating in my head for some time at that point. “Not good enough? Well, there’s more than one way to support myself. Hell with it, I’m not sleeping now anyways. Might as well get some writing done. Not good enough? Pshaw: did they read some of the utter shite out there?”
Adversity is a great motivator in my life. If you want to see me do my best, put me under pressure. The process itself may not be pretty but you’re going to get a diamond out of it. 😉
So, mildly ticked off, I fired up Word and started writing — which is always Step 1 in Getting Published.
Stop by later this week for Part II — Finish The Damned Thing Already And Find An Agent (or why you shouldn’t bother with the second part).
Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).
