Five-Year Mission

Many times throughout the two decades following college graduation, I would scribble ideas for a scene, or chapter, only to dismissively shove them in a drawer and forget about them. Although I had written a handful of halfway decent short stories in high school and at college, a novel was always the brass ring I hoped to grasp, but never could seem to achieve.

In 2010, I decided it was time to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing a book. It didn't really matter what kind of book, or if it ended up being a good book. Outlining, writing, rewriting, editing and formatting a book -- even a short one -- is no easy task. The challenge for someone like me with self-diagnosed ADD and crippling authorial insecurity was getting from the start of chapter one to the words "The End" without losing the thread of the story. The result, a murder mystery titled Damage, was just that: poorly constructed with a minimum of characters and no sense of urgency imparted, yet a fairly intact and coherent plot. My apologies to anyone kind enough to have read it for me, because they certainly weren't reading it for themselves. The only good thing to come from Damage was I proved to myself I could, in fact, write a novel-length story.

Halfway through the process, while mustering the courage to tackle rewriting the clunky first draft of Damage, I took a break from it and wrote several chapters of a fun story for my children. Then the urge to return to Damage struck and I abandoned those chapters. Some two years later, I came across them and determined they weren't half bad, so I redrafted them and created the first book in The Psi Squad series titled, quite unimaginatively, The Psi Squad: Book One. The book came quickly and was tremendously enjoyable to write. The characters spoke to me in ways none of the characters in Damage had managed to, and because I had already proven to myself I could write a 60,000-word novel, I didn't feel pressured to prove it again. The Psi Squad: Book One is only about 18,000 words long, if that, meaning it ended up being exactly the length it needed to be. The self-published book hit Amazon's virtual bookshelves in 2013.

The following year saw the release of The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost which was equally as fun to write and slightly longer at 27,000 words. Its story continued where the first book left off and fleshed out the world just enough for my liking. Intentionally short chapters, each moving the story along by inches and providing a little character development along the way, served as perfectly spaced stepping stones to keep me from veering off course. 

Neither of The Psi Squad books have made any waves in the literary world. That's fine by me. Would I like to get rich off my writing and retire to a private island where I could write all day? Of course, but writing is just my hobby and the joy of hobbies is supposed to come from the doing, not some external reward. Besides, middle grade fiction is a tough market. I'd stand a better chance at commercial success writing an un-illustrated 400-year history of gout. After that second Psi Squad book was finished, I felt it was time to try writing something other than fiction for children. I quickly fell back into my habit of scribbling and discarding bits and pieces without any clear purpose. Before long, I decided to give The Psi Squad another try and quickly completed a first draft of a third book. Then something terrible happened -- I convinced myself it was awful.

The first Psi Squad had minimal ghost story and was mostly about introducing the three main characters. The second Psi Squad had a better balance between ghost story and character development, even managing to introduce a fourth main character. With the third book, it felt I had taken a step backward and provided a story based more on the dynamics of the four primary characters than on the ghost story. As a result, that first draft sat on my Mac as, you guessed it, I scribbled and discarded scenes and chapters for stories that would never see the light of day.

Late last year, while browsing Amazon's website, I decided to take a peek at my books. Among the various details displayed for each one is the release date. I was shocked to realize it had been four years since the release of The Psi Squad and the Atherton Ghost. This is a series for which I planned to write nine books and there I was with only two published books to show for it and a disappointing first draft of a third languishing. To drive the delay home even more, someone named Tania left a review on Goodreads for the second book that simply stated: "This book was just as entertaining as the first one. Loved the characters and the story. Such a pity that the third is not out yet."

The very next day, during my lunch break, I pulled up that draft and started reading it front to back without stopping to make notes or edit. I wanted to see if it really was as awful as I recalled. It wasn't. As with any first draft, there were a few errors here and there, a few spots that went on too long, others that needed to go on a bit longer, but on the whole there were no major issues. During breaks in a busy schedule -- Hurricanes Florence and Michael didn't help matters -- a redrafted third book emerged and by January was ready.

So, five years following the publication of the second book in the series, The Psi Squad and the Unhappy Valentine finally is available on Amazon in ebook format (the paperback option is coming soon). At 33,000 words it is the longest of the books and, in my humble and unbiased opinion, offers a simple yet effective ghost story, some excellent character development, and several important setups for the next few books in the series. More importantly, work has already begun on the fourth book. While I won't promise a quick turn around, I can promise it won't take five years.

© 2019 Mark Feggeler

Avoiding the Inner Voice

There's this guy I knew way back when. Let's call him Jack Weinstein, which is appropriate since that's his name.

Jack was a year behind me at college and lived for a year in the dorm room next to mine. We were friendly, but not what I would call friends. As with other people with whom I was friendly-but-not-friends, Facebook has allowed us to reconnect in the virtual world for occasional glimpses into each other's lives. In the years since Plattsburgh, while I moved from journalism to public relations to sales, Jack became a philosopher. Seriously. He's a bona fide, published philosophy professor who writes a blog and hosts a public radio show called "Why?" once a month.

Just the other day, Jack dispatched through his philosophy-themed PQED blog a post that struck a chord in me. It was as though someone with a greater vocabulary, keener insights, more rapidly firing synapses, and a brain far less clouded by books like "Who Moved My Cheese?" decided to write an essay expressing my thoughts about the creative process and the inner voice that all too frequently seeks to crush creativity. It's easy to dismiss the inner voice that nags at you with unfounded fears and then berates you for having believed and acted on those fears. It's much more difficult to dismiss, however, when someone other than yourself drags that inner voice into the harsh light of day to lay bare just how insidiously harmful it can be.

Eight years ago, I realized two decades had passed since graduating from SUNY Plattsburgh and I had yet to fulfill my dream of writing a novel. Had I, or had I not, majored in writing? The only thing stopping me was fear of failure. To warm up to the daunting task, I started this blog. I figured if I couldn't write short essays about movies, parenting, candy, or clogged toilets then perhaps the novel was just a pipe dream. Fortunately, clogged toilets are great blog fodder. Is Ramblings of a Very Pale Man a great American work of living art? No. Did the novel I eventually get around to writing win a Pulitzer? Not by any stretch of the imagination. I never expected art, prizes, accolades or monetary windfalls. All I wanted was to find out if I was capable of accomplishing the task. The experience was so pleasurable that I wrote two more short books, introductory episodes in a series aimed at middle schoolers. Then, just as I finished drafting the third entry in the middle school series, something quite unexpected happened.

I lost faith.

When you lose faith in yourself, it's easy to blame other things for your lack of productivity. Busy work schedules, family responsibilities, the nasty political climate in the country -- anything becomes an easy scapegoat to avoid admitting the real problem lies within. After six years of writing blog posts and books for fun, it suddenly became a chore. And why? After the first year, people stopped buying my books on Amazon. The blog's tracking of visitors had plateaued. There were the occasional digs, as well, by dismissive people. No one other than me seemed interested in my writing. Perhaps all those people who weren't me were right to be disinterested. Who was I to judge my writings worth reading?

[NOTE: My Lovely Wife informed me, upon reading this post, that she misses my blog and that I am, and I quote, "a doodyhead." She would be correct.]

During the past two years, and despite having completed a first draft of that third book, I fell back into the tried and true, unfocused, fruitless endeavors of a nay-sayer. I started writing and outlining at least four different books without conviction or success, considered trying my hand at a screenplay, and entertained other lofty dreams when, in reality, what I wanted to do was write more silly blog posts and finish the middle school series. But, because no one cared about them, they weren't fun anymore. They were unrewarding, or so I thought until a few weeks ago.

Frustrated at my inability to move any project beyond a few chapters, I opened that third book in the middle school series and started reading. It didn't suck. It wasn't perfect. It needed some nips here and tucks there, but it didn't suck. Before I knew it, I found myself in full rewrite mode and enjoying it. How could I have forgotten how much fun creativity can be? That inner voice lied to me and I was stupid enough to believe it. It told me my writing didn't matter because it wasn't worth anything to anyone else when all it really needs to be is valuable to me.

When Jack's blog post about creativity titled "Maybe Your Work Isn't Lame After All" appeared in my Facebook feed, it was a perfectly timed validation of what I was already coming to understand. While his post presents a longer list of ways to assess the value of one's own work than I needed, since all I need is my own personal satisfaction as a contented hobbyist, the basic message was clear -- don't let self-doubt crush your creativity. That's what relatives are for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to edit and a blog post about deadly apple slicers to write.


2018 Mark Feggeler

Word Count Envy: A Pep Talk for Slow Writers

It’s all too easy to feel inadequate as a writer of fiction. So many opportunities to embrace self-doubt arise during the writing process it’s remarkable any writer has ever managed to complete a book.

Are the characters fully developed? Does the plot make sense? Is the manuscript riddled with continuity errors? Does the sentence structure create a natural flow for the reader? Should the story be told by a first person narrator, a third person limited narrator, a third person omniscient narrator, or a biased, secondary, first person narrator? Is my grammar flawed? Does the book I just finished writing tell the same story as the book I began writing eight months ago?

There’s almost no way to keep some of these doubts from lodging in your brain and festering, but there is one often self-imposed hurdle that should be avoided right from the start: fear of inadequate productivity.

It seems no matter where you turn for writing advice – blogs, books, magazines, chatrooms, social media – everyone has a firm idea about how many words you should write each day to consider yourself a serious writer. Two-thousand words a day and one-thousand words a day are the most common numbers you’ll see handed down as required output. They are preached so frequently and so adamantly that not achieving them can weigh heavily on your authorial conscience.

The problem with expecting to write thousands of words a day is it isn’t always realistic, particularly if you are, like me, not a full-time writer.

When I see comments by other authors on blogs or in group discussion threads in which they tout their daily word count, some reporting as much as 8,000 words during the course of a single weekend, a fleeting sense of envy often surges through me. My current work in progress is thoroughly outlined and my enthusiasm for it is boundless, so why can’t I achieve a similar level of productivity?

The answer is simple. I can’t write 8,000 words in one sitting, or two, or even three. It isn’t the way my brain works, and it might not be the way your brain works, either.

After a maximum of 1,000 words, my brain wants to go back and reread what it just produced. My brain wants to take in the latest effort and consider it, make certain it accomplishes what it should, and ensure it will lead me properly to the next thousand words. I learned a long time ago that forging ahead without the full consent of my brain yields only page after page of substandard writing.

There’s also the matter of time.

I have a job, and three teenage kids, and friends, and family, and a dog, and a house, and a life, and all of the experiences and requirements that come along with all those things. In order to remain a viable activity, writing has to take a back seat to the primary responsibilities that provide steady income and make life worth living in the first place. Not only do some days pass without my having an opportunity to write, sometimes entire weeks will pass without the first word of fiction being set to paper. If I allowed every day that passed without accomplishing any writing to impact my belief that I am a good writer with a good story to tell, then I would have given up trying years ago.

If you need a 2,000-word goal in order to keep motivated, then set that goal and achieve it. Does a one-page-a-day goal work better for you? Go for it. Is it enough that you take the time, when you have it to spare, and do as much as you can? If you don’t have a publisher pressing you to meet a deadline, yes.

The best any of us can do is experiment with writing and find a level of productivity that is sustainable. Just keep in mind, it isn’t how many words you’re able to churn out on a daily basis that matters most. It’s the quality of the final product.

2014 Mark Feggeler

The Year of $100

One-hundred dollars.

That's roughly how much money I earned last year as a direct result of my writing. Three books and this blog as a platform to tell the world about them and all I managed to make off those books was one-hundred dollars. Sounds about right to me, and let me tell you why I think so.

For starters, I ain't no Shakespeare.

I realize that, as an author, I should be the first person shouting from the rooftops about why you should buy my books. I should be that person you avoid at parties, the one who'll bore you to tears with details about the painstaking care I took to plan out plot twists, afflict my characters with bizarre yet endearing traits, and leave the story dangling precariously at the edge of a precipice so the reader achingly yearns for the resolution offered in the sequel. But, even after years in sales, I've never been a fan of the hard sell.

What do I think of my books? I like them. I enjoyed writing them. They were fun to outline, fun to write, and fun to edit. I had a good time creating the covers. And while they are far from perfect, I think you might like them, too.

Secondly, I never planned to make a living off this.

Hobbies should be just that -- hobbies. The problem I see is when people experience the smallest taste of success or attention, they tend to run wild with it and get way ahead of themselves.

One of my lifelong dreams was to write a book. Just because I realized that dream doesn't mean my book is any good, or that I deserve legions of adoring fans tripping over themselves to hand over their hard-earned money. That I have a collection of blog posts and two finished fiction books to my name (with a third coming out in the next few weeks) means just as little. All I did was find the time in my busy schedule to indulge in my hobby. Nobody owes me anything for that. It's the difference between chasing your dream in the hopes of realizing fame and fortune and chasing your dream because it brings you a sense of fulfillment.

Sad to say, on those occasions when I do peruse the blogs and websites of authors with similar track records to mine, it seems these authors spend far more time than I working the market, buying ads, attending book signings, managing social media, and for what? So they can end the month having sold seven copies of their books on Amazon? No, thanks. I have far more important things to do (like spend time with my family and earn real money by being good at my real job).

Thirdly, I'm cheap.

If my hobby were wood-working, I wouldn't spend hundreds for a professional to design the rocking chair I planned to build in my basement. If my hobby were painting, I wouldn't seek out a mentor at a national art gallery for pointers on how best to paint a picture of my dog.

Likewise, with writing as my hobby, I'm not about to spend hundreds of dollars on cover designers and editors, regardless of how many times established authors tell me I should if I want to be taken seriously as an author. I'm a hobbyist. By definition, I don't give a crap if people take me seriously.

Of course, I do feel warm and fuzzy when people compliment my books in reviews, or tell me in person that they enjoyed reading one of my books. I'm not immune to feeling a sense of pride or accomplishment when someone shows appreciation or admiration for what I've created, but I try to keep it from going to my head. Publishing success (either through self-publishing or traditional publishing) is, like any other success in life, equal parts hard work and luck. Call me a no-fun practical stick in the mud, but I'd rather put my energy into my day job which yields success in the form of a paycheck every two weeks.

So, at the end of the day, I enjoy writing and hope that my skills improve with each book I complete. If what I write brings a few fleeting moments of enjoyment to friends in my neighborhood or strangers halfway around the world, so much the better.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Edit Me, Big Boy!

You might know that I've written and self-published two books. One is a murder mystery written for an adult audience ("Damage"). The other is a paranormal adventure for middle-grade kids ("The Psi Squad").

Well, I finally finished the first draft of the second book in the "Psi Squad" series and am set for the most rewarding part of the process -- edits and rewrites. Writing a book is like assembling a model with parts that fit roughly together, leaving bumpy bits and sharp edges. Editing and rewriting are like taking sandpaper and paint to that model to make it all smooth and pretty.

It's good to have a high opinion of your writing while you're writing it. After all, if you aren't excited about writing your book, you can't really expect anyone else to be excited about reading it. But you can't let it bring you down when, upon review of your completed first draft, you quickly begin to realize it isn't the masterpiece you hoped it would be.

The other night, for example, I read the opening chapter of the new Psi Squad book to my sons. I had already performed a quick and sloppy edit on chapter one and believed it to be in excellent condition. After reading it aloud -- one of the best things anyone who writes anything from an epic novel to an off-hand Facebook post could ever do -- it became clear there were at least three harsh transitions and a moderate amount of unnecessary verbiage.

All this despite the fact my editor had already reviewed the material and assured me it was error-free. In fact, I believe the words "perfect" and "no mistakes" passed his lips several times. I know you're thinking "get a new editor," but that's easier said than done, since my editor is half of the twins that are my sons.

The Italian is an avid reader and connoisseur of some of the finest literature ever to pass through a middle school library. According to the asinine Lexile system presently being thrust mercilessly down the throats of students in our school district, he is a sixth-grader who reads at a college freshman level. Mind you, he is still expected to show growth in his reading skills, which means he is required to consider reading books that fall within his lexile range such as those by Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Or, he can read a nice nonfiction book, like Stephen Hawking's "The Origin of the Universe." But I digress…

In short, the Italian got the job of editing my manuscript for three reasons: Nepotism, No Cost, and Begging. (I should point out that he begged me to let him edit the book, not the other way around.) He pestered the living daylights out of me for months about wanting to edit the next Psi Squad book, although I suspect his motives were less of a helpful nature than they were selfish. He wanted to read the book before anyone else, most especially his twin brother.

His "editing" of the first few chapters magically required no red ink and resulted in not a single criticism. He found no typos, no grammatical mistakes, no incorrectly used character names, and no plot holes. This is what happens when you hire a drooling fan to do the job of a slash-and-burn critic. Fortunately, the errors I am finding while reading the book to the boys are easily rectified. Even better, the boys chuckle when they are supposed to and I haven't had to explain any parts of the book to them after the fact.

Now that I know better than to trust a twelve-year-old who loves me to edit my book, I can start searching for a proper editor. I wonder if my Mother would be interested?



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

A Brief Update from a Busy Life

The Pale Rambler, my mainstay blogging alter ego, must be scratching his pink and balding scalp and wondering what has become of me.

After all, he was created for the sole purpose of providing a creative outlet for the wanna-be writer trapped deep inside of me. He hasn't always had profound things to say, but he had been posting fairly consistently up until recent months.

Truth be told, time has been scarce. What little spare time I've managed to get my hands on has been devoted to writing the second book in the "Psi Squad" series. I've never written a series before, and to date I've only completed two books, but I take seriously the challenge of completing the nine-book series as originally outlined. That leaves little time for pale ramblings or other online shenanigans.

Some day in the distant future, when I smell like my Grandfather and worry more about the regularity of my bowel movements than the earning of a paycheck, I might find the time to sit and write all the day long. Rather than scratching down errant sentences or paragraphs here and there on scraps of paper in the hopes of tying them together into a collective whole, my energies can be focused from dawn to dusk when the mood strikes and the ideas are flowing.

It's a pleasant dream, just not one to be realized today. Today is meant for more important things.

Today was spent bringing a meaningful wage into our household. Today was spent calling the school (and being called by the school) to straighten out our twin sons' schedules on their first day of middle school. Today was spent talking with our daughter over breakfast as she prepared for her first day of eleventh grade. Today was spent sitting at the dining room table as our entire family of five attempted (and failed) to solve a sixth-grade math problem. Today was spent enjoying a quiet lunch in a noisy restaurant with my best friend.

As time continues to pluck hairs from my head only to plant them in my ears, I realize how fleeting are the opportunities to carpe the remaining diem of my children's childhoods. The memories of walking Sara through the hallways of middle school for the first time have hardly faded, yet here we are entering her critical college-planning year. Two years might sound like a long time, but for a parent looking at the prospect of sending a first-born to college it might as well be two weeks.

And so, the Pale Rambler waits patiently, as do the "Psi Squad" characters. They'll be there when I need them. They'll come running when I call them out to play.

In the meantime I will cling tightly to every hug, capture the essence of every laugh, collect kisses and wipe away tears. Those are the things that make up a life, and they are far more tangible, valuable and meaningful than any silly dream.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

A, E, I, O, U and Sometimes 5

You'd think the dyslexic member of our family would be the one whose writing required deciphering. While the German does come out with some interesting new vocabulary when speaking, and although he does create unique spellings for many words, it doesn't normally take much effort to figure out what he has written.

My Lovely Wife, on the other hand, who suffers from no learning challenge of which I have been made aware, seems incapable these days of scribing a single legible sentence.

By her way of thinking, her penmanship is clear and concise, but that doesn't seem to help the rest of us too much. We struggle and squint like we're trying to figure out one of those puzzles from the funny papers. You know the kind where the letters are all jumbled up and you have to figure out which letter is used in place of whatever other letter? Think that, only indecipherable.

Her most egregious offenses appear on the weekly shopping list.

"What does this say?" I frequently ask, pointing at a series of unrelated squiggles on the magnetic notepad stuck to the side of the kitchen refrigerator.

"That says grape juice," she explains, as if I am silly for even raising the question.

Grape juice.

Really?

Because no matter how long I stare at the words, the best I can come away with is "Care Jews."

I'm not sure if those are anything like Care Bears, or if there is some important issue My Lovely Wife wants the world's Jewish population to take more seriously, but there was no way I was getting grape juice out of that hieroglyph.

It wasn't always this way.

Twenty years ago, when we first began dating, I could read her writing without any trouble. It's as if the English alphabet ceased to exist sometime within the past few years. Probably not all at once, but gradually and unnoticeably over time, until all of a sudden it became impossible to discern. One day I was able to pick up a note in her handwriting and easily read "Call your Father back" and the next day that same message seemed to say something more like "Growl soy Feather dank."

As her handwriting continues to decline in legibility, perhaps my premature senility might make the entire matter a non-issue. She can happily jot down all the meaningless scribbles she wants, and I can pretend they mean whatever I want them to mean.

For instance, that might not be "dry dog food" scrawled haphazardly at the top of the grocery list. Maybe it's My Lovely Wife saying "I love you."

Works for me.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Word Count Envy

[I try hard to keep my fiction writing hobby from spilling into this blog too much, but from time to time I figure "what the heck?" Here is a recent post from my author site (Books by Feggeler) that I felt like sharing here.]

I'm not one of those fortunate few able to spend countless hours each day writing to my heart's content. When I see comments by authors on blogs or in group discussion threads wherein they refer to writing two thousand words a day, or eight thousand words during the course of a weekend, a fleeting sense of envy does surge through me.

Imagine my output of published (albeit self-published) works were I capable of dedicating similar quantities of time to writing. The remaining eight books of "The Psi Squad" series would be finished by the end of 2013. And those two murder mysteries I've outlined? I'd be celebrating their sales by this time next year!

Instead, I'm lucky to manage three thousand good words a week. Why?

Well, let's see. Among the things getting in the way of daily writing are: cycling class, breakfast, bringing the boys to school (sometimes), bringing my daughter to school (sometimes), work (and that handy thing called a salary that comes along with work), business travel, meetings, phone calls, laundry, lunch, more work, picking the boys up from school (sometimes), picking my daughter up from school (sometimes), dinner, helping with homework and projects, dance, hockey, church, church youth group, marching band boosters, band concerts, after school meetings, and sleep. Oh, yes, don't forget that every now and then I wouldn't mind spending quality down time with my wife and children, which is why I don't even think about writing on weekends.

It seems my problem stems from not being able, or willing, to give any of that up. All that stuff makes up my life, such as it is at the moment, and it's all meaningful and rewarding. My resulting writing time consists of a maximum of two, maybe three, hours wrenched in bits and pieces from each busy week, but that's okay.

If nothing else, I've discovered a slow pace forces me to think more about what I'm writing than I otherwise might have. It allows me to fully consider the seven-hundred words for the new murder mystery (working title "RevPAR") and the four-hundred words for the second "Psi Squad" book I cranked out in an hour early Tuesday morning before I advance to the next scenes. All that time for extra thinking helps me catch plot holes and fix mistakes before I get too far ahead of myself.

You other writers go ahead and write your two thousand words a day, if only because some oft-quoted remark from Stephen King has you believing you're not a serious writer if you don't achieve that daily goal. Go ahead and celebrate NaNoWriMo by cramming during the month of November to complete an entire novel in thirty days. I did enough last-minute, panic-fueled, late-night writing during college to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. If self-imposed deadlines and massive word-count goals are the things that feed your passion for writing, then God bless and best of luck.

I'll continue to envy your production levels, but I'm not interested in trading places with any of you.




© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Two Books and a Blog

It's amazing what can be accomplished when you apply small bits of time and attention over a span of years.

In January 2010, when I decided to start writing this silly blog, I hadn't written a thing in more than 15 years. And blogging? I'd heard about the practice, but didn't have the first clue how to make it happen and whether or not I could dredge up enough posts to last a month.

I felt the same way in May 2010 when I began writing my first book. Figuring out how to structure the novel, how to manage the small amount of spare time available to yield the greatest results, and how to maintain enough interest in the project when, at best, I could produce only a handful of pages each week, were daunting tasks. Had I known from the start it would take close to three years to move the project from first draft to finished product, I might never have attempted it.

Yes, the blog has suffered in quantity and quality due to time spent writing the books, but it's free, so you're getting what you paid for. That said, the books also have had to wait on the blog from time to time. The fact is I can't write when I'm supposed to be working, and I won't give up the fun of family and friends just to hunker in the solitude of my basement to write, so time really is limited.

Covers for my first
two books.

Yet here I am starting off 2013 with an almost-finished novel-length murder mystery, an almost-finished novella-length children's paranormal fantasy, and three solid years of blogging under my belt. If all goes well, both books should be available for purchase as ebooks within the next 60 days, which will be a big relief. I have discovered the only thing more annoying than not being able to write when you want to is having to wait on edits and feedback when, in your own mind, the book is finished. But all it takes is one person to point out several typos and examples of unintentionally poor grammar to make you realize you can not serve as the sole editor of one of your own books.

As hobbies go, writing is a rewarding experience I recommend to anyone considering giving it a try. The biggest obstacle to overcome is the fear of sharing what you've written. Once you move beyond that, the rest is easy.

© 2012 Mark Feggeler

How Not To Write a Book

So, there's this book I've been writing over the course of the past two years. I wouldn't call it the Great American novel. More like the moderately decent Southeastern regional dime novel. I've wanted to write a book for the better part of my adult life, but I kept convincing myself such an unwieldy task was beyond my capabilities, like it was brain surgery.

One of the three things that challenged that outlook was this blog. After all, if I could find time to tap out these silly little posts, I certainly could find time to write a page or two here and there. The second thing was when I viewed the task as a puzzle. Ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed working on those large interlocking puzzles. Piecing together a novel shouldn't be all that different. Each page is just another piece that drops in to help create a larger picture. The third and final shift in my thinking on the matter came when I learned about online self-publishing. I had no more excuses. It was time to write a book.

It's a murder mystery of sorts, with characters shaped from bits of people I've known or heard of during my life. No one character is modeled directly after any one real person. [This is where I should write some cleverly structured sentence to use fancy words like "melange" and "gallimaufry," but I don't feel up to the mental challenge at the moment.] Suffice to say to those of you who know me, if you read the book and think a character is based entirely on you, you're wrong.

Some of the settings might seem familiar. For instance, the main character is a newspaper reporter. The office in which he works is very similar in layout to the one in which I worked many years ago. My coworkers from those days should have no trouble envisioning it if they read the book. Believe it or not, I worried about this for quite some time. Why was I doing it? Nostalgia? Laziness? Was I subconsciously trying to make a point about my first post-college job? No. As it turns out -- and this was a revelation -- I did it because I wanted to. Creating an environment similar to the one in which I worked back then, with its back-to-back cubicles and limited privacy, worked well for the kind of book I was trying to write. End of story.

In fact, much of the writing of the first draft involved time wasted worrying about what people might or might not recognize from real life, as though it were my authorly responsibility to utilize nothing from the real world and completely fabricate every aspect of the fictional environment. Looking back from where I am now, I'm amazed I didn't require some sort of anti-anxiety medication when writing the first draft.

I certainly needed it when I began work on the second draft. It was painfully clear upon reading what I had written I had no idea what I was doing in the first five-to-ten chapters. Utter crap. All of it. I made several half-hearted attempts to salvage it, but it was futile. After a couple months of delays, the rewrite began in earnest as just that, a complete rewrite. Every word, sentence, paragraph, page and chapter would need to be rewritten from scratch. Eventually, I thought, the quality of the material would level off and I could begin lifting large chunks and dropping them in. Not so. I'm almost exactly two-thirds of the way through the rewrite and have finally come to terms with the realization that not a single bit of the original warrants "ctrl-c/ctrl-v" inclusion in the second draft.

With every stage of the book, my initial assumptions about the process and schedule have been wrong. For instance, I thought:

1. I could start off writing the scenes that seemed most clear in my mind, then come back later to string them together with connective scenes. Wrong.
2. I didn't need an outline to keep the story clear in my head. Very wrong.
3. Once I outlined the story, the structure wouldn't change. Even wronger.
4. It would take 12 months to complete the first draft. Fairly wrong.
5. It would take 3-4 months to complete the second draft. Unbelievably wrong.

When you take into consideration the number of books and articles I've read over the years on how to go about writing a book -- and given the fact my college major was Writing -- it truly is astounding how thick-headed I've been from the onset of this adventure and through every twist and turn along the way. But you know what? I wouldn't want it any other way. You can learn a lot from books and teachers, journals and professors, but the best way to truly understand anything is to jump in with both feet and figure it out for yourself.

Unless you plan to be a brain surgeon. You might want to stay in school for that one.



© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Naughty Bits

I've discovered the key to bloggerific internet success and I'm ready to share it with you. Lean close to your computer screen and I'll whisper it in your ear.

A little closer.

Closer...

Here it is. Don't tell anyone, okay?

Naughty words.

You must understand how foolish I felt upon discovering this simple truth after having spent the past two years worrying about the content of my blog posts. Content, feh! What good has it done me to fret over wording, context, grammar and style? Where is the reward for baring my soul (or at least my chocolate cravings) to the world?

Had I known all this time that the key to driving traffic to my silly blog lie in the placement of a few carefully combined mischievous morphemes in the title of each post, I would have scoured the world to quarry a collection of indecorous utterances for just that purpose.

Forget about sentimental stories of my children and Lovely Wife. Forget humorous rants about whatever might be striking my fancy on any given day. Forget, again, any rules learned through years of schooling and professional practice regarding sentence structure and supporting a thesis. They all have led me nowhere in a great big hurry.

Blog post titles such as "Toilet on the Edge," "Pink Snuggie Thief," and "Sissy Hissy Fit" also have not paid off in comparison to the value of the time spent creating them, especially when compared to the traffic generated by two little words in the title of one recent post. What are those two words?

Naked Midgets.

Back on August 11th, I published a post titled "Frilly Beds & Naked Midgets." The post initially received the same immediate response most of my posts receive. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about it. I wrote it, some friends and family read it, and we all moved on with our lives.

But two months later it has not died. It is the most visited post of the 130 I've written so far, with a 60% lead on the next closest post. Each and every day it receives at least one more hit. Think I'm exaggerating? A quick check of the stats shows exactly 31 surfers finding this blog in the last 30 days because they searched for those words and only those words.

So, with the data seemingly backing up my hasty hypothesis, I fully intend from this moment forth to craft salaciously suggestive titles for all future blog posts, regardless of the content. Keep an eye open for my next post, "Chunky Butts."

I don't know what it will be about, but I guarantee it'll rocket to the top of the charts!

Goal: Accomplished

So, there's this book I've wanted to write.

For some reason, I've always thought of myself as a writer, even as far back as elementary school. The projects that peaked my interest were those that required creativity and imagination, particularly when writing was involved. But when you're pathologically insecure, as I believe I was during my childhood, it's near to impossible to believe in seemingly unachievable dreams. Still, I scribbled away in the quiet of my room and hid my writings away from the world.

A handful of fanciful and forgettable short stories bubbled into being during my teens and early twenties. Although I found myself fully capable of creating characters, relaying emotions and setting scenes, my root problem was an inability to develop compelling stories.

Give some people even the weakest of plots and they can create epic dramas that drown readers in rich detail about worlds heretofore unimagined. Not so much with me.

For reasons I can't explain, my style of writing does not allow me to wander off into superfluous descriptive detail for the sole purpose of painting a pretty visual image. Perhaps because my writing reflects the kind of books I enjoy reading, I tend to assume readers don't need me to tell them every last thing about a character's physical appearance or the furnishings of a room. I'm far more interested in how the characters behave and respond to what's happening around them than I am in the minutae of the world in which they live.

When the notion of writing a murder mystery presented itself to me twenty years ago, I had no idea how to go about developing a proper story. I knew only that it sounded like a really great idea.

For the longest time, I struggled to start the project. I honestly don't know how many times I wrote and rewrote the same ten pages, hoping each time to break beyond to page eleven with a clear understanding of the journey my protagonist had to take. I held to a false belief that my progress was impeded by a lack of quality in those first ten pages. Rewriting them until they were perfect was the only way to move to the next stage.

Looking back, it's clear that my primary problem had nothing to do with the storyline I was trying to get out of my head and onto paper. Sure, there were a few things here and there that seemed silly in the harsh light of day, but they were easily remedied. No, the biggest problem was me.

After close to 30 years of imagining myself a writer, there I was continuing to imagine being one instead of simply being one. I remained that kid hiding under his covers with a flashlight, scratching away in a notebook, hoping my efforts would never be discovered for fear of embarrassment should someone actually (Gasp!) read them. It sounds pathetic to me now, but that's what insecurity can do to you. It can make you doubt what you love, doubt your proven abilities, and doubt your loved ones.

In May 2010, when I finally declared my intention to write a book, it was like being set loose in the world's largest playground. I continued to struggle with the many decisions I needed to make in order to advance the project, but I was no longer working in a vacuum. And having My Lovely Wife following along with every page and providing constant feedback made it easier for me to remain focused on the story. Before long, I was working from a proper outline, drawing out maps, and charting characters and their relationships to one another without a care in the world about who saw it and what they had to say about it. I was knee deep in the creative process and loving every minute of it.

Late this past Friday night, after 14 months of sneaking to the basement after everyone else in the house was asleep, I finally finished the first draft of DAMAGE, the murder mystery I dreamed of 20 years ago when I was a fresh-out-college newspaper reporter.

I don't believe in hard sell tactics. I'm not about to say that it's the best book ever written, but it's mine, and that's enough for me.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

A Little Break

So, I've been taking a little break from the old blogger mill lately.

Not that I've abandoned it to some cyber alley to fend for itself amongst the digital derelicts of other well-intentioned yet uncommitted bloggers. I really do enjoy allowing my mind to wander and my fingers to follow along the keyboard as I create my fluffy bits of piffle to amuse, primarily, myself. They help me to vent many of the distractingly silly thoughts that bounce around inside my head.

There are times, though, when maintaining the blog becomes an arduous task of searching for the next best thing about which to write. Following a month in which I've handily managed two posts per week, I'll find myself suddenly dry of ideas and struggling to patch words together. In the year-and-a-half since creating "Ramblings of a Very Pale Man," I've deleted one post for every two that survived to publication. Trust me, if you've found some of the posts that made it to the blog lackluster, you should have seen the turkeys that faced the firing squad.

The simple truth is that communication is a tricky little beast. Too little of it is unhealthy. One must be able to communicate effectively with spouses, family, friends, employers, coworkers, pets and plants in order to live a productive life. Too much communication, however, can leave a person longing for silence. My Lovely Wife and I experience this fairly regularly. Both our jobs require steady streams of conversation with our respective clients that often drain us of any desire to make conversation with anyone.

This isn't anything new, of course, but in our modern age in which every person has a Facebook account, Twitter account, LinkedIn account, personal email, work email, Hotmail or Yahoo email just for junk mail, cell phone with unlimited texting, voicemail, e-fax number, and an old MySpace account to which we've forgotten our username and password, the potential for over-communicating is greater than ever.

And if it isn't bad enough that we have way too many means of intruding on each other's lives, there is a heightened level of importance associated with it all.

I'm old enough to recall a time before answering machines. If someone called for my parents and neither was in, I wrote a message on a piece of paper and left it in a conspicuous spot in the kitchen, which was where "the" phone was. I couldn't call, text, or instant message them to let them know my hypochondriac Grandfather had called with news of his monthly visit to the proctologist. Heck, if he were alive today, he'd probably be able post a photo of the lab results of his fecal exam to Facebook using his iPhone before he got home from the appointment.

Anyway, back to the blog, or not back to it -- whichever. Now that I've publicly declared it difficult to come up with ideas, I'll probably be inundated with them and shoot out four or five in rapid succession. But if I don't, it hardly matters. I doubt the fabric of society will unravel if the handful of people who read this blog have to wait another week for the next post.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

I Got Nothing

You know the great thing about Disney movies? There are so many of them, it doesn't matter if a few of them suck.

"Pocahantes?"

Wow! That one really sucks. Nothing like making a movie for kids that makes you feel guilty about being white. Not that I think white kids don't need to understand the ugly truths about American history. They do. I just don't believe it's up to Disney, Mel Gibson, and a personified raccoon to shove a big morality lesson down their throats.

And sucky as "Pocahantes" is, it's not nearly so miserably awful as "Hunchback of Notre Dame." You have to wonder about the thought process behind funding a kid's movie about a disfigured man, a super hot gypsy woman, and a sexually deviant clergyman. What exactly about that screamed "children's feature length cartoon musical" to the suits at Disney's not-so-wonderful world of executive decisions?

The great thing about what makes something suck is that it's entirely subjective. For instance, my list of all time most horrid Disney films differs greatly from My Lovely Wife's. Topping her list would be "Wall-E."

See? I don't understand that at all. "Cars" maybe, but "Wall-E?"

What gets Disney off the hook for its occasional putrescence is its prolificacy. (It's a word. Look it up.) For every sucky movie Disney made that tanked at the theater, there are four others that soared through the air like Tinkerbell.

My point is that anyone, even an uber-imaginative braintrust like Disney, can suffer dry spells as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. (More specifically, the desert side of the Grand Canyon, where the Brady Bunch went on vacation and got locked up in a ghosttown jail because apparently that's hiliariously good fun.) Which is why I don't worry too much about these blog posts being perfect. If Disney can afford to suck a little, then so can I.

There are times when all the bloggerific ideas are locked tightly away in some secret little vault to which I do not possess the key. Now and then I look back at the increasingly long list of posts I've published and am surprised by a few I had forgotten. Then I read them and understand why I forgot them. They suck.

Same thing goes for the fiction I'm working on. Sometimes I belly up to the computer or notebook with all the enthusiasm in the world, but nothing worthy of being written presents itself. At these times, I force myself to write something, anything, just to keep up the practice of writing.

I know if I maintain my productivity, and achieve a prolificacy, I stand a good chance of sucking less than more.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Letting Go or Giving Up?

Recent events in our community gave me pause to wonder if I should take on a certain, specific role of responsibility. I won't say what it is, only that it would involve attending many meetings and events throughout the next school year.

The reason for the consideration is that My Lovely Wife and I have definite opinions about what should happen, how it should happen, and who should be doing it. We've recently spent way too much time thinking and talking about all the different things that, in our version of a perfect world, need to be accomplished.

So, I've been toying with the idea of stepping up to put my money where my mouth is. After all, there are few things more irritating than a gutless loudmouth, and I know there have been times in my life when I have been one.

Over the past few days, as my leanings have shifted to and fro, I've had to take as full an account as possible of my existing responsibilities.

Work.
Certainly not more important than family, but I address it first because without my paycheck, I'm not much of a provider. Work requires attention to clients and projects. It requires analysis of trends and predictions of usage. It requires trips to Ohio, DC, Virginia and Maryland, in addition to other states as necessary. I frequently am able to control my schedule, but there are times of inflexibility.

Kids.
We have three. One will enter high school next year and two will be in fourth grade. Every weekend in the fall will be filled with high school marching band activities, and every weekday will be filled with dance class, Boy Scouts, band, school play practice, Girl Scouts, yoga, and playdates. Add band concerts, play performances, and dance recitals and you have a pretty full schedule.

Wife.
I have one. I enjoy spending time with her. I often don't have the ability in the course of a normal day to spend as much time with her as I would like.

Family & Friends.
We have those, too. As opportunities arise to spend time with friends and family, we appreciate being able to take advantage of them. In the past year or two, we have made a concerted effort to participate in more activities with people who, in the past, we might not have made time for. As a result, our social life has improved dramatically, and we feel for the first time in a long time that we have an honest to goodness social network of friends.

Interests.
This is, perhaps, the most selfish part of my argument, but in case you hadn't noticed, I enjoy writing. I've finally arrived at a place in my life that affords me the luxury of time to write. In addition to this blog, which serves as a wonderfully therapeutic means for me to vent the errant thoughts that cloud my mind, I also am 90% complete with the first draft of a novel. In the past two weeks since this recent community event erupted into our lives, I have not completed any writing.

I fully realize that others who choose to lead often sacrifice some, if not all, of these things. For better or for worse, I am not the kind of person who can so readily do the same. Time is fleeting. I have no interest in mourning a lost minute with my family for a transient cause du jour. Trust me, I'm the kind who would.

My conclusion? If I'm not willing to jump in and help lead things down the path I believe they should be taking, then I need to shut my mouth and support the best efforts of those who are. Not so much giving up, I see it more as letting go.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Why Write?

Thanks to that pesky little prankster known as the internet, there's a minor revolution occuring in the publishing industry these days. You can't look at any author's webpage, blog, or tweet history without stumbling headlong into one of many prognostications about the future of print media.

Are traditionally published books a dying breed?

Will ebooks and the immediacy of the digital medium turn all authors to self-publishing?

Can the traditional publishers and self-publishers co-exist in a harmonious and symbiotic relationship of peace, love and grooviness?

While I have an opinion on the matter, it can't be said I have much of a financial interest. I run a free blog with only 12 confessed followers (67 if you count my 68 Facebook followers and subtract me from the list). My only book is a self-published collection of items one can get for free on this blog, and I'm almost one solid year into the first draft of my first novel. Literally speaking, I am a literary nobody. Not even a speedbump, I am a grain of sand on the eight-lane super-highway of the publishing industry.

Not only might I never, I very likely and almost certainly never, will need to kindle a fire in my brain over whether to accept a major traditional publishing deal over going it alone as an indie author. When my novel is finished to my satisfaction and released on Amazon and whatever other digital format I'm able to sufficiently comprehend, I'll be happy if anyone buys it at all.

So, why write? If I'm so convinced an audience won't flock to my digital doorstep, why go through the time-consuming process of writing a book, or even a blog?

Well... It's just... Well, because! That's why.

As interesting as the discussion about the future of publishing might be to a wannabe author like me, I didn't start writing my silly little murder mystery last May because I thought I could make a big splash in the literary world. The book is mine. It's being written first and foremost for me, to prove I can do it, to prove I have the creativity and fortitude to push beyond the self-doubt that for twenty years has buried the idea of this book under excuses.

And the reality is that even if the book does sell reasonably well for a self-published, indie author's first attempt -- even if it blows the designer casing off your Kindle or Nook as it rockets to the top of every digital platform's best seller list -- I still won't make enough money to quit my day job and live in luxury on some private Greek island.

And that's okay. I don't like olives anyway, and I'm pretty sure I'd end up with some variation of skin cancer from over-exposure to the sun.

I have no grand illusions. I don't expect a movie version of my book in the offing (although with a few tweaks it could make for some seriously awful local dinner theater). I don't expect a mass audience to sit up and take notice, or critics to fall over themselves lauding the book's superior qualities, or even for my Mother to like it. It's very likely the F-word appears far too often for her tastes.

The fact of the matter is not every person who writes dreams of being a best-selling author. Some of us simply dream of being authors of finished works. That might put me a rung or twelve lower on the indie author ladder, but so what?

So what if I achieved only 1,300 new words this week on the novel? It's 1,300 more than I had when the week began.

So what if the only people who read my novel are friends and family? Aren't they the people I care about most in this world?

So what if I don't sell a single copy?

I didn't start writing because I had big green dollar signs in my eyes. My vision consisted of a well-told story, with believable characters and a compelling mystery. And, if I'm lucky, the cover art I slap together won't be too cheesy.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Don't Trust That Cookie!

"New and rewarding opportunities will soon develop for you."

That fortune came out of a cookie during a meal at one of our local Chinese buffets. If you haven't yet eaten at a Chinese buffet in rural North Carolina, it's an interesting experience.

As a child in New York, I recall being deathly afraid of the exotic selections served at the Chinese restaurant to which my parents would take us every now and then. It was a special treat for them. It usually turned into a night of "I'm Still Hungry" for me. My solution was to order wonton soup and egg rolls, the Happy Meal of Asian cuisine, then scarf down cookies and ice cream when we got home.

My sons have adopted a similar tactic. Their meal at the Chinese buffet includes wonton soup (broth only), "chicken on a stick," and that classic Chinese dish known to most of us as fried mozzarella sticks. I learned years ago that China is the real birthplace of pasta, but I had no idea Farm Rich was based in Hong Kong.

Anyway, back to the fortune cookie.

I had just launched this blog, and was seriously considering an attempt at writing the novel I had always dreamed of writing, so the fortune seemed timely. For several days, it helped inspire in me the notion of becoming a successful writer, maybe even achieving the ultimate goal of making enough money to be a full-time writer and quit the day job.

Time, however, can be cruel to dreams. As dust settled over the rectangular scrap of paper resting atop the laptop on my desk, it seemed as though I had foolishly allowed myself to be suckered in. No riches presented themselves. No books -- magnificently conceived and self-edited -- came flying from my fingertips. The abominable cookie lied!

Or did it? Maybe I misunderstood.

Yup, I'm pretty sure I did. Search for the verb in the fortune and you'll see what I mean.

"Develop."

New and rewarding opportunities will soon "develop" for you. They won't be handed across like a present, or awarded like a diploma. Just as when you plant a new flowerbed, the development begins the moment the plants are in the ground, but the flowerbed itself doesn't mature for another few years, if ever.

So that's where I am. I'm in the development stage, which began right around the time I ate that cookie. The blog is going strong, the first draft of the novel is nearly complete, and I've been able to experiment with self-publishing thanks to the blog. I'd have to say things are developing nicely.

Pretty smart cookie!




© 2011 Mark Feggeler

I'm A Guest Blogger!

Okay, so this isn't one of my traditional blog posts. But I'm all a flutter about being a guest blogger for the very first time on someone else's website!

Go to author Jack Wallen's website, Get Jack'd, to see my post in his series of guest authors telling about their first writing experiences.

Negative Blockage

There are times when you simply don't know what to write. No topics come to mind, no words fall out easily onto the page or through your fingertips to the keyboard. You struggle and search in vain for ideas that do not come.

Then there are times like this past week, in which many ideas present themselves, but there isn't enough time to address them. Notes are scribbled on scraps of paper while driving at 80 miles an hour down a rural highway to man a tradeshow booth. Errant thoughts, worthy of further consideration, pass fleetingly without so much as a moment's pause as you sit through mandatory meetings. The hectic schedule of work and family and extracurricular activities leaves no time for the quiet reflection necessary for creative writing.

I've come to the conclusion I would prefer writer's block to the inability to write when the ideas are flowing.

Somewhere in the past 168 hours, I've lost at least four decent ideas for blog posts, two plot twists about which I seemed pretty excited when they came to mind for the murder mystery I'm writing, and most of the details for the conclusion of the short ghost story I work on when the murder mystery has me temporarily stymied.

And the notes that survived the week are so cryptic as to be almost useless. I don't know what I was thinking when I hastily jotted down the word "fencing" on a pad of paper next to me in the passenger seat of my little green car. Was I intending to write about sword fighting, split rails, or people who sell stolen goods? Did it relate to the blog, the book, or the short story? I'll never know.

What I do know: Despite being away from home and family for longer than I like, this week also brought many personal rewards only a fool would wish away in order to obtain the solitary confinement required for writing.

Did I spend two days away from home to attend a conference in Washington? Yes.

But I also was home the night my twin boys performed in their school musical program. The Italian sang his heart out and square-danced around the stage, and the German got to play the xylophone for an audience of hundreds. Even their big sister got into the act by serving as a volunteer handing out programs to families as they arrived.

Did I spend two days in a row manning tradeshow booths on military bases and repeating the same spiel over and over again to hundreds of people? Yes.

But I also made it to Fayetteville from Camp LeJeune last night in time to be one of 19 people cramming around a table at Red Robin (yum!), after which we all headed over to Crown Coliseum to meet even more friends for a FireAntz hockey game. The game was terrible -- the only fight saw one of our home team guys getting his butt kicked with no back up from his teammates -- but we laughed and yelled at the players and had a great time.

Did my Lovely Wife and I spend most of today making up for the demands on our time that kept us from our normal weekly routines? Yes.

But I got to spend a beautiful weekend with my best friend, our three amazing children, and a bevy of friends.

If the blog sits for a week without a new post, it isn't the end of the world. If the short story never gets finished, it's okay. If my book has to wait a few days, or even a few years, for me to get back to it, it's not a problem. I have the rest of my life to write. My life, on the other hand, won't wait for me.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Dear Amazon: I Love You

The first thing I ever wrote was a meandering story about a high school student traveling through time and experiencing firsthand the many historical events discussed in his social studies class. I thought it was the greatest thing ever written and shared it with my friends who, like me, were pimply high school sophomores.

Ever since then, I've known I would become a writer.

Deep inside me, longing to escape, was that great American novel. It took shape gradually over years, the first foundation stone laid in my senior year at college when I decided it would be a murder mystery about a guy named Ray. Seriously, that was all I had at the time, but I held onto it like it was a Nobel prize winner.

As I moved through my life, Ray took on new characteristics. For a while, he was a newspaper reporter. Then he was a doctor, then a lawyer, and then back to a reporter when I realized I knew nothing about doctors and lawyers. But I was a reporter from 1990 to 1993, so it seemed best to stick with what I knew.

After ten years, I had gone from "murder mystery about a guy named Ray" to "murder mystery about a reporter named Ray." Doesn't sound like much, I know. Keep in mind I've been working on this for twenty-two years and you'll better appreciate the magnitude of the development.

In the last twelve years, I found myself inventing additional important things for the book, such as a plot, a murder victim, a reason why the victim was murdered, and a cast of characters to support the story. These details came in bits and pieces, in dreams and daydreams, in blond moments when I should have been paying attention to more important things, and quite often only after I had given up on the dream of writing the book.

In other words, the book wouldn't leave me alone. It wouldn't allow me to give up.

Oh, to be sure, it wasn't jumping out in front of me with it's arms flailing, yelling "Here I am! Write me! Write me!" It would throw just enough of a bone to me when I least expected it to keep me struggling forward.

But then I did something the book wasn't expecting. In January of 2010, I turned my back on the book and started writing this blog, primarily because I wanted to write and I didn't care if it was a book, a blog, or a birthday card. Blogging offered a release through which to vent the overwhelming need to write.

After a solid year of posts, I suspected I had enough to fill a small book, so I began compiling them. Sure enough, at approximately 120 pages, the first compilation of posts from this blog -- "Ramblings of a Very Pale Man: Volume One" -- is now available for Kindle through www.Amazon.com.

If you had told me two years ago that I would become a published author on February 6, 2011, I would have laughed in your face. Had you told me that first book would be a collection of humorous essays instead of my beloved and long-suffering murder mystery, I would have called you crazy.

But thanks to Blogger and the astoundingly simple process Amazon has created to self-publish I can now call myself a published author. Without trying to make more of this than is necessary you must understand that I have, within the last twenty-four hours, achieved one of my life-long dreams. It might pale in comparison to my wedding day and the births of my children but it's a dream come true all the same.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my friends who have been kind enough to read this blog. Thank you to all of you who have forwarded posts to friends, joined the Facebook fan page, left comments about posts, and otherwise encouraged me.

And a special thank you goes out to the mystery shopper in the UK who was the first person -- and presently only person -- to purchase the book. I have no idea who you are, and you have no idea how much you mean to me.



© 2010 Mark Feggeler