For about eight years I maintained a website for my consulting business. I worked with smaller businesses and nonprofit organizations in the areas of staff, board, and fund development. As a service of the website, I offered a monthly (eventually quarterly when things got too busy) newsletter. In the newsletter I would tackle a different topic of interest in each edition. My emailing list grew and, finally one of my subscribers suggested I take all the past newsletters and put them into a book for the nonprofit management world.
I thought this was a fantastic idea. I even came up with a title: “Herding Cats: Nonprofit Management”. But, I had no clue about how to write a book; not even where to start. I literally googled (I think that’s an acceptable verb now) “how to write a book”. One of the hits that appeared was for a disk that guaranteed I’d write a book in 90 days or money back. It cost $14.99. Well, I’ve managed to toss that kind of money away on more frivolous things so I decided to take the plunge. This was before the day of instant software downloads, so I had to wait for the disk to be mailed.
In the meantime, I decided to do some informal market research. I made a trip to our local Barnes and Noble. My purpose was to look over the section on “Management”. Much to my surprise (perhaps not literally) there were a gazillion books on the same kinds of management issues I proposed to write a new book about.
I was back to the drawing board. The disk arrived. I shoved it into the drive. The first options to pop up on the screen were: “Chose One: Fiction or Non-Fiction”.
The wheels began turning in my head. I knew I was not destined to write the “management book”. However, I did have some stories rattling around in my head for a number of years. This happened in December of some year in the past and before the end of March I had finished my first draft of Pine Woods. This is my first sci/fi fantasy novel recently published.
Since then I’ve written three more stories in the same genre and have three more in the works. I’m hoping these will be picked up as a series I am calling “Bicycle Tales”.