My love of stories goes back to when I was little. My grandfather taught me to read at an early age. I already had the basics down by the time I started school. In fact, my grandmother told me that I came home from my first day of kindergarten very disappointed. "All they taught was numbers to 10 and started on the ABC's. Who doesn't know that?" Was apparently my first words off the bus. I did, however, happen to walk out of the library--despite the librarian's insistence that I choose a book with more pictures--with my first "big boy book. Savage Sam: Son of Old Yeller. (For the record, I had no idea who 'Old Yeller' was...yet.)
As I settled down enough to start getting serious, I was plunging headlong into marriage number 2. There were a lot of bad things about that marriage, but I will stick to the ones that are relevant to my writing. I started laying down the groundwork for an idea inspired by my time in Charleston, South Carolina. My ship, FF-1079, the USS Bowen, was doing circles waiting for a fog to lift. Looking at the city in the fog, it was like being back in time. The city has fought to preserve its "Old South" heritage. The downtown area is almost a shrine to history. That gave birth to Dakota--my first novel.
I started spending a little time each morning with my notepad and my coffee. When I felt ready, I moved to my computer. (A Commodore 128D!) The words started flashing across the screen and I was underway. However, about five or six weeks into it, my wife (and eventually ex-wife number 2) told me "You are wasting your time with that! Nobody is gonna read it. You should be spending that time with me!" So, I put it in a box and shoved in to the back of the closet where it would stay until I moved out one Memorial Day weekend.
Once again, my dreams of writing were put where most dreams go...away. After all, isn't that why they call them dreams? Once I freed myself of that matrimonial bond, I drifted around with no purpose. I had jobs ranging from club DJ to home automation technical support. (Yep...I yawned just typing that last part.)
Eventually I went back to my old stand-bye of being a waiter and a bartender at some of Seattle's nicer establishments. That is where I met wife number 3. For as terrible as I was as her husband (every bit of the fault in that divorce is truly mine...I was awful...not violent, but words can be far more damaging if used {im}properly) I actually owe a big part of where I am now to her. She found "the box." When she asked me who wrote all the stuff she had been reading that day while I was at work slinging drinks to the business elite...I shrugged and admitted to the deed. I don't know what I expected, but it was not the response she gave me. Her words to me that day were simple. "You have to write. I may not know much...but I know what I see here is good. I also know that you will always wonder about what might have been." So...I got a Brother word processor (that would eventually be replaced by my P133, 2GB hard drive desktop computer) and I went to work. This time it would be different. However...things would not go exactly as planned...
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