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”.