I will be a published author!

You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™

Kindle Books.

Yes. I have the power.

I will become a published author.

I’m not sure what day. I am not sure what time. But this month, it will happen. You hear that UNIVERSE. I am talking to you.

I am going to push the SEND button and the Internet is going to do what the internet does and deliver the contents of my wishes, my thoughts, my dreams, to people across the spectrum of humanity.

If you live under a rock in Australia, get ready. If you have a shanty in South Africa, prepare. If you have a rocking chair in the Catskills, rock on like Donkey Kong.

It’s coming to a lap top near you.

This month I plan to send thousands of words, and millions of bits of data. I will launch them across an invisible hurricane to a web site invented by man, designed for dreamers.

Kindle Books, here I come.

Can you say self-publishing?

I read a quote from a man who said “I took 5 years to write my story. I published it in 5 minutes.”

That’s power, I plan to harness.

My mom says I have been writing since I could hold a pen.

Something about moons and planets, she says.

I have done many things in my life.

I have pulled weeds. I have waited tables. I have washed dishes. I have covered hurricanes.

Through it all, I think all I have ever really wanted to do was write stories.

I started with pen and paper and now I put dreams on the internet.

The fact that you folks can absorb that message is a plus, a blessing, exciting beyond, well, words.

As many of you know; I use to write manuscripts and then throw them in a multitude of boxes. I have a dozen projects, each one taken months to complete.

I think my mom read a couple. Maybe a sister or two. And that’s about it.

I have recently pulled those projects out of the boxes. They are dusty, archaic. Some of the font is clearly type written on paper with white-out still evident.

Hey kids, ever hear of White Out?

It is amazing how many words I have typed, touched, dreamed.

And then at the end of the day, I had no options. So I threw the manuscript into a box.

I have Star Trek: The Next Generation Teleplay treatments. I mean full hour-long episodes written and sent to the studios only to be returned with a note that says; “We don’t accept unsolicited material.”

Hmmmm?

I am so driven, so addicted, so cocky, I didn’t think those words applied to me.

Don’t accept unsolicited material?

That must mean, write another 60 page story and send it blindly to the same people who just slapped your literary face.

So I wrote another Star Trek tele-play. 60 pages of words about The Star Ship Enterprise. Scenes with Captain John Luc Picard ordering Commander Data and Worf to the transporters. It took weeks to write to format to re-write. It took dollars to send and unbelievable determination to do it.

What the hell was I thinking?

I would write it, marvel at it, hold it in my hands and dream.

I would make a copy and stuff it in an envelope and mail it to Paramount.

I would wait for the phone to ring. It never did.

6 weeks later, my project, rejected like rotting fish would return in the mail.

I would sigh, sometimes curse. Some times do a shot of my favorite adult beverage.

Then, I would toss the manuscript into a box.

Maybe I took a few days off. Usually I just got mad as hell and got back in the saddle, doing what addicts do, writing screenplay after screenplay after manuscript after manuscript.

I have a box full of dreams.

I wrote White Boy. A screenplay about a white boy moving to South Central L.A.

I wrote Deadline – a screenplay about a newsman.

I wrote – Block Ten – a screenplay about 2 detectives chasing a Killer.

I wrote Melt Down – a screenplay about an arctic prison.

I wrote Time Zone – a screenplay about a madman hiding in a time vortex.

I wrote Static Charge – another screenplay about a news man.

Screenplays are very regimented. Turning points at 28 pages and 90 pages. Screen directions at the top and bottom of the page.

They are really a pain in the ass.

So I also wrote novels.

I wrote the Rainbow Tale – a story about little animals rescuing a rainbow from an evil queen in a far away land.

I wrote Journey to Hell – a story of my young life heading to my first news job in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

I mailed them all out. Every single damn one.

I sent them to multiple agents, to multiple agencies, to multiple contacts.

Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

I send query letter after query letter. Over the years I will send out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of query letters.

I remember a table full of envelopes stacked 3 feet high, all hand written, ready to be dumped in the mail bin. We’re talking the early 90’s people. There are no computers, no email.

If you wanted something done, you had to do it manually. It was hard ass work!

A query letter for those who don’t know is a one page synopsis designed to get an agent who doesn’t really want to represent you, to take notice of you.

Each agent gets 100 query letters a day. What makes your query letter stand out?

That’s the 64,000 dollar question.

I hate sending query letters to agents. Back in the day, they were a necessary evil. Agents are irascible bastards who have less talent than most writers and the power to say “your writing isn’t what we are looking for.”

So the agent rejection letters would go into the trash and the manuscripts into the box.

And so it went.

20 plus years of writing. Thousands of pages. Millions of words.

Nothing.

I think even my family got tired of reading my stuff.

“Andy has a writing problem,” I imagine them saying.

Sometimes I would write. And not wanting to bother anyone, I would just finish it and throw that writing in a box.

Then Al Gore invented the Internet.

Thanks Al.

Now I could write and send it around the planet at the speed of light.

That was great and all, but now, everyone with a modem could fill up agent In Boxes with crap and literary noise.

Back In the day, you had to want to send crap to someone. It took effort and money and time.

Now, thanks to the internet you can be high on jet fuel and send dribble to an agent at no cost.

I think the internet made selling manuscripts harder than ever.

More noise, more crap, means you have to try even harder to break through to get attention.

I created this web site so I could write. And as many of you know, especially if you have chimes and alarms every time an email arrives in your morning in box, you know I am relentless.

I am a mechanism. I have words in my head. Like weeds popping up through the sidewalk, new words keep popping into the fertile garden of my mind. If I don’t get the old words out, I might explode.

Some of you said, take me off your list.

Ha.

GONE. GOOD BYE. SEE YA.

You are like the agents who have dismissed me as so much noise.

Well, this month, not sure when, not sure exactly how, but this week, things are about to change.

I am going to self publish my newest book, LIFE’S CRAZY SOUL SURFING on Kindle Books.

I have it written. That was the easy part. Writing is always the easy part. I have the illustrations done. That too was easy. Creation for me is easy. It’s all the other technical crap that I hate, that is so impossibly time-consuming.

But that is the beauty of Kindle. I have a cover page and I have a table of contents and I am a thumb and forefinger away from pushing SEND to the internet.

And when I do I will for the first time ever be a Self Published writer.

And when that day comes, a 50 year quest to achieve will begin.

Up to this moment, nothing I have, done is important to me.

Broadcasting? To me it’s like waiting tables.

It’s not what I want. It’s just what I do.

I’m like a waitress with square hips waiting tables till my big acting break comes along.

When I hit Send, my e-book goes into the mix.

Will people find it? Who knows? Will people buy it? Even less predictable?

But my philosophy is this.

I gotta write it, so why shouldn’t people want to read it?

And so this week might just be the answer to a life long quest.

Write. Send. Read.