I wrote my first play when I was 14. I got the neighborhood kids to put it on in the basement and invited everybody’s parents. When they actually laughed at my lines, I was hooked. From there, I kept writing.
At the same time, I was in love with music and I started taking drum lessons. The details of this part of my story are in the Kick Drum. In summary, my teacher quit after 9 months, I took over as teacher, and I got called to sit in when local bands needed an emergency replacement.
I had my two passions, but I decided that I had a better chance of being a good writer than drummer. I sold my drum set and moved to Minneapolis to pursue playwriting.
I gave it a good shot for 25 years, writing plays that were performed in Minnesota, Chicago and Denver. But my career never took off like my friends did.
In the meantime I married a wonderful woman and started a family. I began software development as a day job. With much less time time devote to writing, I still kept my hand in by writing short stories which were published in a weekly column in the Boulder Weekly paper called “The People’s Republic.” These were collected and published in a book by the same name.
Now, that our daughter’s grown, I have more time to write and I have finished several novels. I tried self-publishing one and found it was easy to put a book up on Amazon, but much, much harder to get anyone to know it was there and want to read it.
With “Kick Drum” I came full circle with my love for both music and writing. It’s the best thing I’ve written and I’m putting all my efforts to doing right by it.
I hope you’ll give it a try and help me spread the word.