I feel entitled to brag that I’ve published Lightning Rod, my first novel. Click here to reach. Few can appreciate the obstacles, mostly internal, that had to be overcome to reach this point. I ran out of excuses not to and self published my work. Now I hope I’ve created enough tags so that more readers might find it.
Lightning Rod is dedicated to two groups of writers. The members of the Sapphire Writers Group in Dublin Ireland humbled me with their patience with my drafts and restarts and with their helpful criticism taught me how to write during my two years of membership. The book’s ending came together with help from the members of Our Writing League here in Bloomington. I could not have done this without them.
(Note to aspiring writers: Join a writers group! You won’t regret it.)
I love writing fiction. I get to make things up! I enjoyed getting inside the head of my protagonist, Bryan Getz. I tried to make a tortured soul likeable, not an easy chore. One of my Sapphire friends told me I had a knack for creating unlikable characters, so I’m battling natural tendencies.
This is contemporary fiction. Though the action is specifically set in 1993, the issues raised are contemporary: environmental protection and conservation, farmland preservation, gay rights, and political marginalization. A little wealth, lust, incest, and family dysfunction thrown in to keep the plot moving.
That’s really all I want to say about it except please read it.
I peddled Lightning Rod for 3 years to agents and the traditional publishing world – in my own way, which achievement-oriented type-As would find unacceptable. In that time I have moved on to a new book, one which I now have brought to where I see light at the end of the tunnel. Hence the urgency in getting my first novel out there. So, stay tuned.