Guest blogger Brian Lott on why he kept plugging away.
I first coined the phrase Shape Shifters during a rather boozy garden party with friends and fellow writers in western Hungary during the late 1990’s. At the time I was working on a book that had a good hook and grab, but lacked a defined title. My friends asked why I was laughing and I told them that the best lines I ever wrote just popped into my head. Curious, they asked me to tell them about it.
"You bastard, you would have me die as an animal, rather than a man." Jesus screamed and pulled against the stakes holding him to the cross. "All because we slept with the same whore."
They looked a bit shocked, curious, and very supportive. Encouraged, I went back to work the next day, and a year later my labor of love was delivered into the world. Then came the hard part…selling the damn thing. After a few months, I was given a contract by a middleweight agent, and was shocked after an additional few months when the contract was stopped due to changes in the industry. Many years passed, along with a couple of other contract disputes, and I was still plugging away with no real end in sight. More than one person questioned my insane dedication. Why didn’t I give up?
Because I wrote the book for myself, and simply because I had a story to tell. Nothing more, nothing less. More to the point, I believed in myself. The years rolled by in a stream of seemingly endless nights as I sent submissions to blurred names on a screen. Then finally I got the mail that that offered the coveted contract.
If you have the talent, you will know soon enough. Everything else is faith and dedication.
Here’s the Amazon link to Shape Shifters. You can also find Brian creeping around as Shape Shifters on Facebook, and at his website.
No comments:
Post a Comment