My vocation for the past twenty years has been selling software and my avocation, off and on, has been writing fiction.  I have in the past two years become much more serious and dedicated to my writing.  The process has become a habit, much like tuning in to a favorite TV show or enjoying a morning cup of coffee.  In fact, I wrote my first novel, The Death Cheaters, while sipping coffee mornings in my local Starbucks in Beverly, MA.  I'm compelled  to rise at 5:00 each morning to be at Starbucks by 6:00, unpacking my VAIO notebook to begin my day by writing 200 - 500 words in the first hour of my day (the Starbucks crew is the greatest and there are writers in their ranks as well).  Writing is a process by which we put ourselves out to the reader and we have to be willing to sacrifice the time necessary to develop and fine tune the craft. I have experienced such a sense of accomplishment in actually finishing a novel and now pushing on to get it published while beginning another story.  For me, knowing that I could actually create a story from scratch and finish it has made me even more determined to dedicate more time to the writing process (maybe two hours in Starbucks or some quiet time late at night; don't know, but I'll figure it out). At this stage, I'm not even sure of the genre I want to claim; The Death Cheaters is a work of horror fiction, but I've started a new novel where the protagonist is a private detective based in the Boston scene of the late 50's.  Who knows.  I do know that I'm having fun trying to figure it out.