Day 1

For future reference, I will attempt to make this blog less about my personal life as much as the "life" of my books (in reference to sales attempts and availability), the "life" of the writing (in reference to the daily grind of trying to do the actual writing), and the "lives" of the characters in the worlds I'm creating (hopefully for some insight into the process of the worlds I'm attempting to create.

Over the past 17 years now, I have been writing, with very few stoppages in that time. That said, I've only got three books now to truly call "complete." I'm working on the current one, "Cherry Blossoms," as I write this blog. It has been a wonderful process in the actual creation process, though frustrating at times, and in the design process, of which I have designed almost all of the characters and creatures I write about.

That said, the selling of these books has been... to be nice, frustrating. I originally started writing one book, which eventually turned into seven 1st drafts of a long series of books. At each rewrite, the books have expanded and new stories have emerged. As such, while I love the created storyline, it is, to be honest, practically unsellable. From a business standpoint, selling one book is difficult enough to get a worthwhile return on investment, even from an established author. 7 or more for a series from an untested author (even if they are worthwhile) doesn't make practical sense business-wise.

I understand this, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

This blog, I hope, will mark a journey that in many ways is long overdue, but also I don't think I could have taken years prior. I attempted to write stand-alone books to flesh out the world and also gain a foothold on the worlds I was writing, and it was in that particular endeavor that I became a much better writer and also realized just how daunting a task this world I've lived in for 17 years will be to sell.

So I hope that this can, in some way, be a learning curve for anyone reading it to learn from my mistakes and miscues, and hopefully avoid them. At the same time, it would be nice to just talk about what I actually do. For 17 years I have answered the question: "What did you do today?" with the same sort of answer: "Got some writing done today." It's frustrating to know that I can spend months (and in the case of the larger story, years) working on a project that can be read in a few hours, but it is more frustrating to never be able to talk about it with greater intimacy. After all, talking about it requires a genuine interest first and foremost, which sadly I can't say is the case. They are interested, but only in the finished product, and not necessarily because they'd pick up one of my stories on their own if they didn't know me.

So hopefully this will be a worthwhile venture for anyone who reads it, and also a nice way to just talk out what is going on in my day-to-day with greater detail.

We'll see how it goes.

David Barentine
http://www.wotps.com