I spent a long time researching agents, sending out queries, following up with chapters (when requested) and full manuscripts (when requested) and after two years finally secured a New York agent. One with a great track record. Things were looking up. Until our first real conversation that is. That is when he told me that every once in a while a book like mine comes his way that he knows will be a difficult sell but he loves it so much he just has to give it a try. Why is mine a difficult sell? I asked. Because it has no definable niche, no ready made genre. Working with my agent I made some revisions, added a pivotal character, made it more "edgy" which is what he said the editors were looking for. But even with that it turned out he was right it being a difficult sell. We got rejections from every major publishing house, most of them after it had gone through several layers of review, and nearly all of them turned it down because they had no idea how to market it.

It was tough to receive all of these great comments about the writing, the characters and the premise and not have it all end in a publishing contract. But soon after my contract with my agent expired I started exploring the then new world of Print On Demand and then the e-book revolution began. Time to try it on my own.

Distribution and formatting. I have very limited computer expertise, and the Style Guide was an easy to follow way to make my paper manuscript into something that worked well on a variety of e-readers. And the fact that from one place I could get my book into multiple online retailers sealed the deal. Having Mark Coker and the rest of the Smashwords staff be so easy to work with doesn't hurt either!

Getting the right words in the right order to say what I want to say.

I have met some of the nicest people through Boomerang. People I continue to correspond with to this day (Boomerang has been out for a while). I have never thought of any of them as "fans", but something much better, "readers". A writer writes for readers. It is the greatest feeling in the world when someone tells you they enjoyed your work.

A very different, "quiet" novel called "The Baer Boys". Not going to say much about it here outside of the fact that it is first person, deals with at least some of Life's Questions and yet is still, I hope, able to make readers smile or even laugh at times. I'm hoping to have it ready by December, 2013.

We don't have enough room here so I'll just go with a few. Twain, Shakespeare, Wodehouse, Donald E. Westlake, Douglas Adams, Bill Bryson, Christopher Moore, David Sedaris, Nick Hornby.

I have a family and a full time job. There isn't much of an option. Besides, each day offers a lot of lessons to any writer who has eyes to see and ears to hear.