It feels as though origin stories are only popular in medias res, which for some this may very well be. But for most, this origin is coming at the beginning of the tale. It doesn't matter, we'll get back to real time in a few minutes at which point this whole introduction will seem self-indulgent. But that's not really my problem.
It was late May and my last day of work. My buddy Big C and I woke up that morning, got into a UHaul and drove into the office. There weren't any meetings that day, no paperwork to push, no donuts to eat, just boxes to clear out of my office, keys to turn in and goodbyes to say. By noon we were headed down Iowa St. past 31st and onward to Hwy 59 south. Next stop, New Mexico.
What awaited me at the end of the trip was the unknown. My wife and I had no apartment, I had no job and the longer I looked for either, the slimmer the pickings became. Within a few days I was sitting alone in the un-air conditioned cinderblock studio college dorm room we were temporarily occupying feeling sorry for myself. I'd left my beautiful home, my amazing job and my good friends to follow my wife across the country to her home state to be unemployed and living in a college dorm with college students who were less than pleased to have me, or my wife around.
Needless to say I began to think that I had hit the worst moment of my life.
Being a man of a particular age and pop cultural persuasion I was led to compile a list of the all-time worst days of my life. I figured, if my current existence was so miserable, I might as well put my misery into some kind of perspective. When I was done going over the previous 27 years I was left with a few incredible facts. 1) That day, and the days since I got into that UHaul weren't even in the Top 5 of worst days of my life and 2) All five of the worst days of my life were within ~18 months of each other.
I was amazed. Really? That day, which felt so terrible and empty wasn't remotely as bad as the worst day of my life? Really?
Then something strange happened, I started to think back to that worst day. To the confluence of factors that had made that day so overwhelmingly terrible that it ended with me passed out on my best friend's floor. And I realized that my memory of that day was beginning to decay, almost 9 years after the fact.
So I started to write it down, the story of the worst day of my life. Then, I started writing down the story of how I'd arrived at the worst day of my life and somewhere along the way the story changed and it wasn't about me and my friends anymore. It was about this other universe and these other people that I'd never met but who seemed vaguely familiar. I'd found a portal into an alternate universe.
Three years after that first day I had a book called "Beyond the Red Line."
It was a coming of age tale about a kid not unlike me, but nothing like me.
I began to shop it around the publishing industry, talking to different agents and editors for nearly two years. In this time, I left my job in middle management at Borders Books because I saw the writing on the wall. Big Box Books (BBB) are dying. People liked what they'd seen of my book, but they didn't see a place for it in BBB. Everyone I talked to couldn't figure out what table to put it on, or shelf to hide away in unless I made "changes."
Listen, I'm not an artist. I'm not better than the people who made great suggestions about how to make my book more marketable. And I'll probably write the book those really incredible people asked me to write for them. But RedLine is not that book.
I'm going out on my own. Things have changed since Benny Russell said that self-published books might as well be written in chalk on a sidewalk. eBooks have democratized the playing field, so I might as well get in the game.
This brings me to this blog.
This is the official blog for both me as an author, and my publisher, Hill 203 Press. This is where we'll document the ride we're about to go on...cuz it's gonna be a helluva ride.
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