A while back I put my pen down, as I sat at the kitchen table, looked at my wife Gwynne, and said, "I just finished my book." She looked at me like I'd just grown a second nose and said, "You're kidding." Since I had been working on Devon Loch for most of our wedded life I'm sure she thought I would be working on it for the rest of our wedded life. I smiled and said, "No it's done." The short version is that as I navigated the discouraging world of book publishing I stayed positive because no matter if Devon Loch never got published at least I knew I had finished my "labor of love". Semi-autobiographical, my book was influenced by family events growing up with my mother and brother, my service in the Marine Corps during Vietnam and my life long love of distance running. Like most of us who have been involved in sports throughout our lives I had often fantasized about competing on the world stage and being in contention to win against all odds. But like most of us that will never happen. Devon Loch was my, and anyone else who wanted to read it, chance at greatness with the world watching, holding it's breath.
After acquiring numerous rejections from publishers I received an amazing birthday gift from my two daughters Caitlin and Charlotte. Converting my book from it's floppies to a CD they arranged to have it published by an online publisher, Lulu.com. Not quite Random House or Simon and Schuster, but so what this was something my girls had done for me! Having a real copy of Devon Loch was an unbelievable gift of love and holding the book was something I secretly never thought would happen. Since then family and friends have had the opportunity to buy Devon Loch online through Lulu.com. The company is very professional and easy to deal with giving anyone who can't puncture the exclusivity of the publishing community the opportunity to see their dream published. Now my reader or readers have that opportunity too. We're not talking heavy reading here, Devon Loch is just a story about a man who is on a downward spiral who gets a second chance at his dream and it follows his family and friends and their journey toward the realizing of that dream.
Depending on how this blog goes I may end up serializing Devon Loch a chapter at a time or maybe in bigger doses. I'm just not sure at the moment.
