Who’s Idea Was This?
Have you ever wanted to write a book? What were, or are your reasons?
There’s an old saying, “I still have a novel in me.” That led to that cartoon of a surgeon doing an operation and, surprisingly, finds a novel in the patient.
I have always admired writers. Successful writers who pump out one book after another and make a living off it, while publishers and agents do a lot of work for them. That kind of help is not to be found in the self-publishing world.
People like Hemingway, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and Lee Child just to name a few. They are artists creating works that millions of people love to get lost in. Authors that can work from home, or anywhere, as long as they can concentrate.
I never imagined I would someday become an author.
No matter how many books I’ve read and loved, I never imagined I would someday become an author. The few people in the airline industry I let in on my secret of having been an outlaw biker, always told me, “You need to write a book.” But I never entertained the thought, I was too busy flying airplanes.
When I was shooting the one-thousand-yard rifle competitions with the .50 BMG, I started writing magazine articles to help other shooters make better loads or shoot better in the wind. For the smaller caliber thousand-yard matches with the NBRSA (National Bench Rest Shooter’s Association), I started writing match reports, making them more lively than they needed to be, but I was having fun with it.
“Who’s the ‘novelist’ writing those match reports?”
One day someone derisively asked, “Who’s the ‘novelist’ writing those match reports?” I decided, maybe that’s what I should be doing instead. Not novels or course, but memoirs. Ernest Hemingway said, “Before you can write about life, you have to live it.” I figured I had a pretty good start on that, so that’s where I began.
When I got together with other bikers, they always wanted to hear stories from the old days. But I soon got tired of telling them, and another thought was knowing when I am gone, those stories would be lost forever. So, I decided to put them in a book. Thus, “Hangmen” was born.
Perhaps it’s in my genes.
I had no education for writing; indeed, I didn’t even finish high school, but I started anyway. Making notes that turned into chapter titles, then I fleshed them out into complete stories.
Somewhere along the way, I started reading books on how to be a better writer and put those lessons into my stories.
Perhaps it is in my genes, my mother wrote novels but was never published. She died long before Amazon came along. Her father was an editor of a magazine in New York City. That was about one hundred years ago.
Today is the best time in history to self-publish a book.
The beauty of Amazon is they let you upload corrected manuscripts for free which is great, since my first efforts were filled with mistakes. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I persevered and eventually got it right. I like to say, “Original copies of Hangmen are like a flawed stamp and will be worth millions someday.” Of course, I don’t say millions of what.
I have been overwhelmed by the reception and support from my readers; it has been beyond my wildest dreams since I started this journey.
If any of you have ever wanted to write a book, I encourage you to put pen to paper, or, nowadays, fingers to keyboard and get started.
You never know where it will lead, and today is the best time in history to self-publish a book.
Get started!
Still a number one bestseller in Motorcycle History