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.  We would go to school each day, complete out 6 hours, and then stop by someplace for lunch on the way home.

That year, 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.  By the end of the year, it had sold a whopping 87 copies.

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, generally based upon what a I thought a fantasy version of colonial imperialism would look like, 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 the book 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 (some involving a robot girlfriend). I also wrote a play, set in the world I had created for my kids’ Dungeons and Dragons game (the world that would eventually be home to Eaglethorpe Buxton), 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.

I remember I once commented on the fact that a man had to register for the draft at 19, he could drive a car when he was 16, could vote when he was 18, and had to wait until he was 21 to drink.  “Just when is a man, a man?” I wondered.  My aunt filled me in on the answer.  “When he has a mortgage.”

In 1989 I bought a house, had a mortgage.  I also 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.