What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
This is an easy question. The greatest joy is watching a story develop right in front of me. Most of the time, when I write, I have only a vague idea of the story and plot so it is exciting watching a story come to life. Once, I worked on a story with one of my sons. We started with an opening line and moved from there. That is extra exciting because there are no limits to where the story can go. After a few more sentences it started taking on it's own life and I was just a guy pressing keys on a keyboard. That's where the joy of writing ends with me. Editing is drudgery and promoting my writing is out of my comfort zone.
What's the story behind your latest book?
I think the story behind the book is as interesting as the book. I am an ex-school teacher and currently a software engineer, not a writer. Like most people, I toyed with the idea of writing a book but never acted on it. At one point in my career I got a job which was a one hour and forty-five minute commute one way. So, I had a lot of time to think and listen to audio books. I downloaded some wonderful books on http://www.loyalbooks.com/. One of the books was "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions." This book set some thoughts in motion and a great story idea. My sister is a writer, so I called her and pitched the idea. She told me she couldn't write the book but if I could send her an outline she would help write it. This sounded great. I plopped myself behind the keyboard, my fingers started moving and in about two months I didn't have an outline. I had a hundred thousand word rough draft.
My sister lived in Chicago and I lived in Texas. We spent a lot of time chatting on IM and talking on the phone. Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive allowed us to work together and revise the story. This worked well for a while but we really needed to be in closer contact. Well, a bankruptcy was just the thing we needed. Her three year job search in Chicago resulted in her having to move. Most of our family is in Texas now so she packed her family up and headed south to live with our parents until she could figure something else out. (We have wonderful parents.) She was now about five hours away. Well, that wasn't good enough so the stars and planets aligned and my group at work needed a technical writer. Three weeks later she was living in my RV in my driveway and commuting to work with me. We had to time to together to work on the book.
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