I didn’t like reading much when I was younger. Eventually it grew on me and I read a bit of everything. One year, my junior year of high school, one of the assignments was to pick an author from a list and write a report on him and one of his works. I decided to pick Stephen King and I read his “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” I immediately fell in love with his writing. I couldn’t get enough of it, and suddenly I found myself writing my own stories. And that was even better than reading.
They usually find me. Sometimes I get hit with an image or an emotion, and I get compelled to write about it. The image of a garlic clove has turned into a thriller about seeing the future and being condemned by such a “gift”. When an emotion hits me, I just try to stretch it as far as I can and I apply it to a situation. I take that emotion and I try to find out how a character would respond to it. Then everything else starts to build around it.
Originally it was titled, “Chosen” because in the book Jeremy—the hero—is chosen by God to deliver a message. Once I submitted the manuscript to my publisher they asked me if I could change the title since another author under them had already used the name. I couldn’t think of anything good, but then one day I was in the shower and the steam was just building around me. It was hot and relaxing. I took a deep breath of it and it felt amazing somehow. It was like breathing God, I thought. And then it hit me. I wanted to use that phrase for my title because in my book Jeremy had literally been breathing God himself.
Not at all. In the novel Jeremy’s parents are killed when he’s only nine years old, and he gets to watch them die. Then the story builds toward the coming days of God’s judgment. It’s all fiction. The only thing I stole from my life was the dream that Jeremy has just before darkness hits the world.
In the book, Jeremy dreams of entering a torn and dirty public restroom where in the middle of it a very large man sits at a small table. On the table is a chess board, and the man starts putting the chess pieces on it and asks Jeremy to play. When Jeremy looks at the play pieces, he sees that the two sides are angels versus demons. He then realizes the man is the devil. The only thing I changed from my dream to the one in the book is that in my own dream, the chess pieces were revolutionary war soldiers.
It came over a long period of time and in small pieces, but the first big piece was from when I was in church at age 14. I was sitting there, looking around, and for some reason I started to think of what it would be if God took over my body. What would he have me say to the people attending? What would I feel like? I didn’t know, but it was three years later, when I was 17, that I decided to write about it.
I think my favorite chapter is when Jeremy and his friend Ben decide to go streaking onto the street when it’s freezing cold outside. I had some fun with that one.
When my fingers struck the final period, I just stared at my computer screen. I think I started laughing. The kind of laugher that comes when you can’t believe something just happened. It took me by surprise. I mean, I knew I was about to complete it moments before… but then I still felt surprised. I took in a deep breath. I felt like I had never breathed that well before. It was like having taken my first breath ever.
It was a lot like that, yeah. I couldn’t believe that someone would actually want to print my book.
Through a lot of patience. Any writer will probably tell you the same about his first work—probably with few exceptions out there. I had been submitting my manuscript to agents and publishers for about a year. I started sending it out when I was 18, looking anywhere and everywhere for a publisher who was looking for new authors. I got a lot of rejection letters during that year. Sometimes I took a break and didn’t send it to anyone because I couldn’t take all those rejections. Then one day when I was working at a Pizzeria in Bellevue, Pa., a young author came in and talked to one of the waitresses about his book. I looked him up online that night and saw that it was printed by Publish America. I gave them a try and they were interested.
Marketing is so hard. Unfortunately I’m mostly on my own to find marketing opportunities. My girlfriend has been a huge help and really fantastic in getting news out on my book. I’ve sold a lot of copies thanks to her. Getting the word out there is still very tough. I had a book signing at Borders few months ago and I had to be so persistent before their marketing agent agreed to come on board. In the end they were great and the signing went really well.
There are two things I would tell them. The first is: Be patient, because no matter how badly you want your work published, and no matter how good you are, you’ll still get heavily rejected. You’ve just got to be more stubborn than all those people who say no to you and keep driving.
The second thing I’d tell them: Don’t get sucked into those Vanity Presses. There are a lot of scammers out to get authors’ money. If a publisher charges you money to take your book than stay away. That’s different from a printing press charging money to print you book, though. Those are very legitimate, and many authors have great good success in self-publishing through them. Whatever you do, make sure you do your research on whoever decides to print your book.
|
