it happened.
my 40+-year dream of publishing a novel has come to fruition.
i’ve made a career of writing for other people. now it’s my turn to write the stories i want to write.
one day, probably 10 or 15 years ago, my daughter, autumn, asked me if my life looked like what i had expected it to look like when i was her age. the answer was both yes and no.
my plan was to be a writer, and i am and always have been. in college and right after, i had envisioned working in a large metro area on pulitzer prize-winning newspaper. after college, when i realized i had a story to write, i imagined writing a best seller that would become a successful writing path for me. neither of those happened.
but, in that conversation with autumn, i realized that my dream has come true.
i have spent my entire adult life writing professionally. i covered my share of football and basketball games. i spent so much time in the floyd county jail and local police stations that i knew everybody on a first-name basis. i covered crime, courts, education, government, business, you name it. later, i began writing people profiles and columns. since leaving the newspaper world, i have worked in health care communications, still writing. i’ve loved it, and it has .
my deep-down real goal wasn’t to be a successful, renown writer. it was to have a beautiful, stable family while doing something i loved. it was more important for me to be a husband and father than it was to be novelist. i wanted to be at home nights and holidays with them, not touring the country promoting my books. i wanted things in my life that i never had as a boy: a nice house that my family owned, a dependable car and family vacations. by the grace of god, those things happened.
but the itch to write a novel remained.
i cut hair to pay my way through college – that’s a story for another day, but it was my work at the ladies and gents beauty and barber shop that introduced me to the people and stories that would eventually become my first novel, lint head. i held on to that story until about five years ago.
my wife and i were participating in a small-group study based on the book the circle maker, by mark batterson. one of the early questions in that book asks what is the thing in your life that you always knew you were supposed to do. the follow up to that question is, do it! so, i started writing the story i always wanted to write.
i finished a first, very rough draft in about 90 days. work stalled for a bit when i realized that the story was only about 10,000 words and that novels were a minimum of 50,000 words. i began to think about my main character, brenda lee branch, and what her life must have looked like. little floods of inspiration would come to me, and i would write them down. over the next few months, the story grew to 20,000, then 30,000, then 40,000 words.
i reread the book, edited it and looked for opportunities to expand on the narrative or to answer questions the reader might have. when all was said and done, i was at about 55,000 words and ready for the next step. i reached out to gregg lewis, the most successful, published author i know personally. gregg not only advised me, but he also offered to edit my book. his careful and caring eye helped me to improve it many times over. he was incredibly encouraging.
once the manuscript was finished, i began shopping it to every publisher i could find that didn’t require an agent. i received a good many rejections and a couple “let’s move to the next steps.” and now, on may 31, 2024, the novel that i always said i would write will be published.
autumn, the life i imagined is turning out to be exactly what i dreamed. i’ve got an incredible family, a beautiful, stable home, dependable transportation, vacation memories and a published novel. i am grateful.
i hope you’ll take time to read my book. i hope it will mean something to you. if not, that’s okay. i know beyond doubt this is a story i was born to write, and now, it is written.
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