I knew that if any of my books was likely to capture attention, it would be His Robot Wife.  His Robot Girlfriend was being downloaded by the thousands each month, despite not being my best work.  So I really worked to finish a book that was much better written than the original.  I also for the first time had letters from over a hundred people who had questions or suggestions about a sequel to His Robot Girlfriend.  That was pretty strange– that kind of feedback was definitely new to me.  I finished it and published it in February with a goal of selling 8,000 ebooks in a year.  It seems like I might make that goal.

I promised myself that I would finish five books this year, and I’m going to be a full time writer this summer.  I usually write after school and on weekends anyway, but I’ve been sick now for almost two months and just don’t have the energy.  But I’m going to get it done!  I have ten projects in various stages of completion and it’s only a matter of which one comes first.  I’ll tell you about them all over the next few days.

By 2010, I had mostly given up on traditionally publishing the Senta and the Steel Dragon books.  I entered the Voyage of the Minotaur in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, and though it made it to round two, it was very disappointing.  I was very unhappy with the feedback I got from the publishers who were evaluating the books.  Some of the criticism was valid, but some I felt was very mean and some was just incorrect.

I decided to publish it myself and did.  I also decided that Senta and the Steel Dragon shouldn’t just be a trilogy, but a series.  The three books I had written (as one long one) took place three to five years apart.  I thought I should write books to fill in the void.  So my original three books became:

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur
Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 3: The Drache Girl
Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 5: The Two Dragons.

I sat down and wrote Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land.  It was a real challenge making it fit between two already completed books.

I finished it and published book 2, then revised book 3 again and published it.

I also decided that I would write a quick and short little prequel and so Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon, was done.

In the meantime, I was playing a lot of Rock Band on my Wii.  This inspired a story that just popped right out of me, seemingly without much effort on my part.  It became Tesla’s Stepdaughters.

So, I had five books published in 2010, and I started having visions of dozens of Wesley Allison books or even scores.  If I write 5 books a year, I could write as many as Edgar Rice Burroughs before I die.

It was about here that I really decided I wanted to be a writer, I guess.  I had published His Robot Girlfriend as a free ebook, and I put out Princess of Amathar as an ebook.

I realized that The Steel Dragon was way to big to ever be accepted by a publisher, so I split it into it’s three parts and sent them off, trying to get them published as a trilogy.  The rejection slips started pouring in.

I was speding so much time sending out letters and queries that I didn’t have too much time to write, but I wanted to write something, so I made up a little story, inspired a bit by Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events.  I set my story in the fantasy world I had created to play Dungeons and Dragons with my kids, and Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess was done.  I had so much fun that I wrote Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress, based on the play I had once written for the Brown JHS Thespian Club.

In 2008, I finished my huge steampunk book, which I called “The Steel Dragon.”  It was just shy of 1000 pages long, about 375,000 words.  I printed up 10 copies and gave them to friends and colleagues over the summer to help me revise and edit.

In the meantime, I taught summer school for the first time that year, teaching 11th grade U.S. History.  It was a great deal of fun, mostly because my son John was in my class.

I also discovered ebooks for the first time.  Some friends urged me to get something written to get my name out there, so I took some of my sci-fi flash fiction, mashed it together, rewrote it, and wrote an ending for it.  This became His Robot Girlfriend.  I posted it on Feedbooks and then Smashwords.

One day in 2007, a friend and fellow teacher and I were discussing World of Warcraft, and I commented that I would rather spend the time creating my own worlds than playing around in someone elses.  He said. “When you write the book, I’ll read it.”  I whipped out Princess of Amathar and gave him a typed copy– which he didn’t really want to read.

He asked if I had ever heard of Print on Demand, like Lulu.  I looked into it and liked what I saw.  Here I could publish my book without a huge investment on my part.  At least a few friends and relatives could get copies.  I would “vanity” publish it.  I did, and friends bought it.  I spent $50.00 and bought an ISBN (which seems expensive now, but wasn’t then) and it appeared at Amazon.

All of a sudden, I thought, “Hey, I wrote a book.  I bet I could do it again.” 

I sat down and plotted out a huge steampunk story.  I had many inspirations.  I wanted to write a huge multigenerational story– a fantasy version of James Michener.  I was also fascinated with the Victorian mind set and Imperialism and its affects on local indigenous people.  I plotted out a big story in three parts and started writing.

I collected enough rejection letters for Princess of Amathar during these years that I could have wallpapered my room with them.  Eventually I set it aside and didn’t think about writing anything as long as a book again.

I rediscovered poetry and began writing quite a bit and posting it online.  I also wrote quite a bit of sci-fi flash fiction and shared it with friends online.  I also wrote a play, set in the world I had created for my kids’ Dungeons and Dragons game, called The Ideal Magic.  It was performed by the Brown JHS Thespian Club, but alas, the only tape of the performance was taped over (by my wife).

I began teaching in the 1994/95 school year.  Only those people who have been teachers know how much of your life can get swallowed up into your job, especially in the first few years.  I have heard teaching described as more of a lifestyle than a career and that is true.

During this time period, I really began to try and finish Princess of Amathar.  I worked in fits and starts, setting it aside for long periods of time, but at last I finished it.  With the help of several wonderful friends and colleagues, I revised it and polished it again and again.  Then I sent it out to publishers and agents.

In 1989 I bought a house, had a mortgage, had a new baby, and started back to college– and was working full time.  I didn’t have time to do much writing.  By 1992, I had a second baby and had decided that I wanted to be a teacher.  I graduated from UNLV in 1994.

About the only writing I did in this entire period was to add a few chapters to Princess of Amathar.

I continued to write (mostly bad) poetry all through the 80s as I wandered through life without much focus.  I had a few interesting jobs, most notably Ambulance driver, but nothing that I thought worthwhile in the long run.

I started writing what would be called “fan fiction” during these years.  I didn’t call them that, having not heard of that term at the time, and I didn’t show the stories to anyone.  I wrote Star Trek, Tarzan, Pellucidar, and John Carter stories.  They were episodic and I didn’t finish any of them– just wrote a few chapters of each.

I also wrote a few chapters of original stories– a couple of time traveling, alternate dimension stories, and a very early version of the first few chapters of Princess of Amathar.

I married my lovely wife in 1985 and my daughter Becky was born in 1989.

In high school, I had an inspirational English teacher named Mrs. Reisman (I may be mispelling her name).  In her class I learned to love writing poetry.  I wrote tons of poetry over the next five or six years– most of it pretty bad.  I wrote a few stories, but nothing that I really remember.

One of the highlights of Mrs. Reisman’s class was putting together a Student Arts Magazine, which was a big deal back in the 70s, because print on demand hadn’t been invented yet, and even copy machines were relatively rare at school (although they were firmly entrenched in the business world).  We had to use mimeograph machines– the ones that smelled really good.

I graduated High School in 78 and tried a couple of semesters at UNLV before dropping out.  I really didn’t know what I wanted out of life yet.