Write What You Know - Cleveland Edition

For many of the great writers, it has always been a matter of drawing inspiration from their previous experiences and places that they know best.

It makes sense. For example, many of Stephen King's stories center around the fictional town of Castle Rock, no doubt and homage to the New England setting where he grew up and still resides.

For me, of course, that place is Cleveland, and, even more so, Northeast Ohio.

Sure, some of the names have been change to protect the innocent (Like you don't know what Forest State University actually takes the place of!). Each location that I've feature to this point represents a little bit of this area.

I wanted to bring this up because this is a time of great turmoil in Greater Cleveland. The jobs aren't there like they used to be. People are leaving in droves. And every time you pick up a newspaper, watch the news or read something on the Internet, it seems like this town's not getting any better.

Mind you, let's not confuse the constant browbeating gets in the hands of of a site like Forbes.com with the self-deprecating humor that was recently brought about by Mike Polk's Hastily-Made Cleveland Tourism Video and its sequel. Personally, I took the Spinal Tap approach: If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

With my writing, Cleveland's always served as the backdrop to the action. Places like University Circle and Little Italy figure prominently, as does the Warehouse District and the Flats prior to its downturn (remember, the Stories from the Forester series timeline is between 2000 to 2003, before the East Bank completely disintegrated).

And why not? If you're from Cleveland, you'd already know that these places were vital to this city's history. And if someone is writing a story set in Cleveland, they damn well better mention all of these places.

I will admit that like many people, I find myself constantly wrestling with my feelings about the area. But as a writer, there's no doubt that if I didn't include Cleveland, there wouldn't be much of a story, would there?

New Release Date for Volume 1: July 25, 2009

This shouldn't really surprise anyone.

As I continue to stare at a blank screen where a chapter of Unwritten should be, I have come to the realization (as if it wasn't already realized in my April 20th post!) that there's really no chance in hell that Stories from the Forester: Volume 1 will be completely ready for public consumption on June 21, 2009, as promised.

But fear not. While visions of other stories and other projects continue to race through my head (albeit not the screen!), I won't be giving up on getting Volume 1 done and ready for the masses! So, instead of canceling, I have bumped up the release date to July 25, 2009!

In the meantime, folks, I'm really looking to do this one right, and in order to do that, I'm going to try and get Lulu.com's Published by You option. However, as you know, that requires money; money that I currently don't have.

So, with that, I'm going to go ahead and ask for your help!

To keep from having the push my release date and further, please go ahead and purchase a copy of Flagrant Foul, available for the special Web site price of $19.99! Click on the link on the side bar to buy it! Of, if you have an Amazon Kindle or Kindle app for your iPhone, please buy Dilemma, available for only $0.99! Click here to purchase!

Thank you, and wish me luck!

My Book is Available? Really? Where?

Before you keep reading, go ahead and search for Flagrant Foul on any other book site besides Amazon...

Now, if you found it somewhere else, you clearly have been eyesight than I do.

For months, since I slapped an ISBN on the Foul as part of Published by Lulu, I at least figured that the cycle would have come around where it would be all over the place.

And then I came to a startling discovery.

One of the indie bookstores I follow on Twitter pointed out that it wasn't on their database, Indiebound. That led me to check around to some of the other stores.

Barnes & Noble? No.

Borders? No.

Books-A-Million? No.

While I don't doubt there's a way to try and get Flagrant Foul onto their site and the Indiebound database, I have yet to find it. Most sites like this don't necessarily come with a step-by-step instruction manual. And the question I sent to Indiebound has, at current, gone unanswered.

So, what's the deal? I can't believe that only showing up on Amazon is my penance for not having the $99.95 to shell out for my own ISBN.

Can it?

Flying Solo By Choice (aka Why I Stopped Looking for a Literary Agent)

A little more than two years ago, soon after I finished my first draft of Flagrant Foul, I did essentially what most aspiring writers did. I searched around the Internet seeking contact information for literary agents. And I was on my way, armed with e-mail addresses, an e-mail query and some sample chapters.

I get it. You're going to hear a lot of rejection. It comes with the territory. But after some thought, I began to wonder if it was really worth my while to send out inquiry after inquiry to no avail. Most of the inquiries I either never heard any kind of response or received the boilerplate "Sorry. This isn't a match. Good luck with your future endeavors" letter.

So last year, instead of wasting time trying to gain notice among the sea of manuscripts, I went solo, posted Flagrant Foul on Lulu.com, converted that and Dilemma into Kindle books, and started jumping on every social network I could think of.

OK, I have no book sales, electronic or otherwise. I'm struggling to find an identity and key demographic and I'm suffered from an ugly case of writer's block that has kept me from finishing Stories from the Forester: Volume 1.

But it's out there. Had I went the literary agent route, there's a good chance nobody would have ever known that I had written anything.

The choice is yours. We all go our different paths. I'm not sorry I went mine.

You never know, though. Perhaps I'll let a stray inquiry letter loose in the future.

Quest for an ISBN? More Like Quest for a Job!

Publishing, especially self-publishing, is a brutal business. And despite my best-case scenario hopes, I was realistic that I probably wouldn't sell enough books or get a good enough deal to be able to quit my job.

Of course, I wasn't banking on having to try and find another job, either. But here we are. Almost a year into the Quest, and the books have barely gotten noticed...

...and I'm looking for a job...

Yes, in a series of events that combine equal parts of hubris, Luddism (is that the ism for Luddite?), cutbacks and complete stupidity, I've been in the unenviable position in recent months of being unemployed. My situation makes even less sense when you consider that I spent years working in career development and recently published articles on the subject.

At this point, I'll go ahead and go with the "doctors make the worst patients" defense. Not a valid excuse, but the only one I can come up with at the moment.

You would also think that my joblessness would have given me plenty of time to get back to the task of completing Stories from the Forester: Volume 1 (Still, theoretically, slated for release June 21st). Well, I've found that apparently the soul-sucking experience of being unemployed also has left me devoid of the inspiration to finish the second story, Unwritten.

Undoubtedly, there are times where you feel like you've been knocked down so many times, you just want to stay down...

But this is me we're talking about. I figure if I can at least finish writing a full-length novel, I can get through this.

And I promise, I'll get back to writing!