400 Years Of Publishing and Hardly Anything has Changed for Authors!

We live in a world of progress, from the Pony Express to Skype; from covered wagons to planes and drones; from long hand-written scrolls to today’s instant messaging through texts and e-mails. I’m sure our ancestors would faint from shock at traveling down the highway at 80 MPH, or being able to talk to a loved one through cell-phone face time, or share pictures and news through Facebook.

The Writing Curse

I have discovered something about writing that I should have known for all these 30(+) years of sitting at the computer for thousands of hours and getting arthritis in my lower back and suffering shoulder and wrist inflammation and having carpal tunnel surgery and going through the incredible highs and lows of writing for a living … having the talent to write can be a curse!

What Goes Around – Comes Around

When you have been writing as long as I have, I guess you have experienced just about every triumph and tragedy you can expect in the world of writing. I’ve written 59 books, working on #60 and hoping to reach 100 before I die. I started writing in 1979, sold my first book in 1981. It was published in 1983, and it was at that time the 9th book I had written in my effort to sell something. I re-wrote and sold only one of the other 9 books, the other seven becoming simply a learning process as I struggled to write something worthy of being published.