This is how the story begins...

On June 10th 2017 at about 11:30am I leaned back in my chair and looked at the completed draft of Saturnius Mons.  It is the first book of my Ruins of Empire series and currently 263 pages.  It's done.  I wrote a book.

This is my first completed draft since sometime in the summer of 2011 that I hiked up my big-boy pants and decided that I wanted to do this writing thing.  And not just think about writing something, shit out two chapters, cry, drink and forget about it forever,  (On a side note, write something, shit out two chapters, cry, drink and forget is going to be my version of Eat Pray Love.  So look for that.) but really, really do it.  Like sit my fat, lazy ass in a chair and actually fucking write.  A whole book.

That was... six years ago?

I had decided that working for other people sucked.  It was and remains necessary so that I might continue to buy booze and sleep in a house, but it sucks.  It's like taking a shit.  It's messy, slightly painful and takes too much time out of my day.  Most every job I've ever had, however, lacks the feeling of accomplishment.

So the jobs became the things I had to do in order to fund this. 

 And like I said, that was six years ago.

And now my first book is completed....

BOOZE!

....
...
Sorta.

More accurately, it as finished as I can get it by myself.  I'm talking to editors in anticipation of hiring one and my the first printed copy of my book is somewhere on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska with a man working on the cover.

And research.  So... much... research.   All trying to figure out how to turn some crap that I made up in my own mind into money.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Lao Tzu 

Stepping into self publishing is like one of those cartoons where the character is lost in the woods and comes upon a rediculous sign with twenty arrows pointing in all directions.  There is so much information out there and its hard to sort the useful advice from the survivorship bias, the incomprehensible and the douche bags who are more excited about being successful than they are about they thing they are supposedly successful at.

 Partially for my own edification, I decided to document the process here.  Think of it like open notes.  Or breadcrumbs thrown behind me so I can find my way out when I reach a dead end.

And who knows?  Maybe they will serve as a guide for another writer someday.  Or a warning.

This is a document about how the Ruins of Empire series turned some nameless, pantsless fuck in Nampa, Idaho into one of the best selling authors in history.

This is a record of some poor sods first attempt to put something together himself only to have it disappear into the fog of obsurity.

Maybe somewhere in between, but most likely more toward the latter.

This is where the story begins and, like any other good story I have written, I have no idea where it ends.