My journey as a writer began young, but I never had much support for it. I guess I never realized that I could make a living as a writer and felt I should do something much more “important” for the world. Whenever I’d write something creative for work or for my fantasy football league or something, I’d almost always get the “you missed your calling/you should have been a writer” comments.   Finally in 2001, I began writing game reports for a fantasy football website. Watch football, write about it, and get paid?!?! It was a dream come true! It was around that time that I first got the idea for my first novel Dream War.   It took hiring a personal coach to get serious about writing the story, but I completed it around 2006. In 2007 I entered it into gather.com’s First Chapters contest and things took off from there. I learned more about writing than I’d ever known. I finished in the top 5 of the contest. I got an agent at a top literary agency. We revised the manuscript, and submitted it to the top publishers for auction. No one bought it. That was likely the worst day of my life, but everything happens for a reason. I’m at the point where I’m beginning to see that reason panning out.

Top 5 Finisher in Gather.com's First Chapters Contest.