Six Years Later, We Can Finally Snoopy Dance!

In the spring of 2006, I started on a long and incredible personal journey. Vehicle of choice? Pen and paper to start, which was soon upgraded to keyboard and monitor.

For the first couple of years, the journey was filled with bumps, potholes, detours and right turns taken at Albuquerque. In 2008, a good cyber friend of mine suggested that I try my hand at blogging, and thus, a blogger was born.

For the next two years ('08-'10), I practiced my craft on this blog and tried to soak up the knowledge of my fellow writers as well as my fantastic readers, either on their blogs or here on my bog, that they were gracious enough to give to me. In 2009, I had reached the first milestone in this journey of mine, when David Cranmer, editor-in-chief of the fantastic e-zine Beat To A Pulp, took a gamble and published a short story of mine (Cedar Mountain), which not only gave me that all important first writing credit but gave me a fantastic boost of my confidence as well.

Two years later, after diligently applying the tips that such diverse writers as David, Elaine Ash, David Barber,  Charles Gramlich, Jane Turley and Travis Erwin were gracious enough to give, I got my 2nd short story published (Red Stripe) at another fine e-zine.

In between having those two stories published, I was inspired to not only get serious with my writing, but to get published in the traditional sense of the word. Thus, Line 21 was born.

From February 2010 thru the spring of 2011, I wrote, polished, edited, re-wrote, and re-edited this novel until it shined. When it was ready (thanks in large part to my very good blogger friend M, who writes this fantastic blog and allowed me to pick her brain more times that I can possibly mention), I decided to pursue a two-pronged approach to the submission process, in that not only was I going to target agents, but I was going to target publishers as well. I also decided that I would chronicle this latest submission process with a page on my blog.

July 2011 found me at the doorstep of Solstice Publishing, which I had first learned about in 2010 from a blurb written by U.K. writer Jack Martin. I e-mailed my submission to them and by January 2012, I got a semi-rejection, which I wrote about here. I took the editor's feedback to heart and spent the next month revising and polishing, then resubmitted. For my efforts I received another round of fantastic feedback, which I took to heart and revised yet again.

That final revision produced three curious things: last week's cryptic post.

This video: 

And this announcement:

I DONE GOT MYSELF A PUBLISHING CONTRACT WITH SOLSTICE PUBLISHING!

Details to follow in the coming weeks, but for now, let's all celebrate the fact that for the first time in a very long while, I am again a somebody.