This is where it publicly starts. It's not the start of the road but it's not the end either. I can't wait for people to start reading my stuff but I'm not quite there yet.

Let me explain. While at uni in the early 90's I started writing short stories on a house mate's PC. I'd written short stories at school and my English teacher had even suggested collecting them together.The person sat next to me liked to read them, but that was a far as it went. I've since lost everyone of those hand written stories. 

But the difference now was that I was saving them electronically, and I would never lose them again. (Although I did have to buy a USB  3.5" floppy drive to access some of them recently!). I wrote about 12 good ones in the next few years.

Fast forward a few more years to the summer that I graduated from Uni and in the 6 weeks I spent hunting for my first post grad job, I wrote a ~80k word sci fi novel, called "theFomalhautPlague". I touted it around a bit but got no where, i.e. no one wanted to publish it or represent me. So I forgot about it and instead turned to screenplay writing for the next few years (with some very, very minor success).

So, this novel languished on my hard drive for a few years, until near the end of the 90's when I picked it up again and gave it a minor re-write. Again I tried to get it published but to no avail.

I forgot all about my lifelong ambition to be a writer and concentrated on my career. Towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century I started to become aware of ebooks and that some (traditionally) unpublished writers found an audience via them. I mulled this over for (quite) a years, but did nothing.

Earlier this year (2012), I decide enough was enough. I had a finished novel which a few people even told me they liked. I'd re-written it twice. All I'd have to do is pat it on the bottom and send it out into the world as a ebook. So I started the tiny process of just 'checking it over'.

I found structural problems, a sci fi novel with dated or none existent technology, unclear themes and God awful names. So I started correcting it in the spare time when I wasn't working. Six to seven months later I'm approximately two thirds of the way through with some new scenes to write to fix a timing issue.

While fixing the novel I got my short stories together and thought they'd make a decent second ebook. I've even written a really good new one with the idea for another one driving me crazy daily. I'll have to reread and edit them too. I have no idea how long that might take.

In the meantime I started searching the internet for anything else I'd need to do  before I could finally give public birth to my (problem) child. To my dismay, I found that I'd needed a proof reader, a pro cover, a Facebook page, a website and a blog. All of this scared me half to death and I forgot it and just kept on writing.

But there it was - niggle, niggle. niggle. So this weekend I made a website  then late one night I wrote my first blog, which you're just finishing reading.

Oh, and the novel? Well, it's still months away. But this weekend I broke through two important barriers. And as I said, my journey to ebook author starts here...


I'll keep you in the loop.