I grew up reading (thanks Mom!). I read mostly fiction books. Hundreds of books…sometimes hundreds of books in a single year. The first “big” fiction book I read was the Civil War novel, Rifles for Watie, when I was seven. It was 352 pages.
I then read The Dark is Rising and The Lord of the Rings series. Nobody ever told me I was too young, or that the books were too big, so I kept on going. If it was fantasy or science fiction, I devoured it.
In junior high, I tried to write a novel, but I only made it through two pages. It was terrible. What I know now is that I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to write a fiction book. I thought you started with the first page and kept writing until you got to the end. I didn’t know about outlines or research.
In my 20s, I started blogging. In my 30s, I began writing professionally for publications like Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch, and TIME. In my 40s, I got my first book deal for Chief Marketing Officers at Work, a compilation of interviews with CMOs.
Writing non-fiction taught me I could put a lot of words on a page, quickly, but I still lacked the confidence to try my hand at fiction.
One day, I wandered into a bookstore and saw a long line of people holding books. I followed the line with my eyes as it wove through the store until I saw where it ended, at a desk where the fantasy author Brandon Mull sat, signing books. My daughter was a big fan, so I ran home, hurriedly threw her in the car along with a stack of Brandon Mull books, and drove back to the bookstore so she could meet him and get her books signed.
When we got back, the line was gone, but Brandon was still there, looking sad and lonely. He brightened up when we walked up. He signed my daughter’s books, then asked me what I did. “I do some writing myself, but it’s all non-fiction,” I explained.
“Oh, I could never do that,” he said. “Non-fiction seems like it would be so difficult.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Because that’s how I feel about fiction. I love reading it, but I can’t imagine writing it.”
“You should try it sometime!” he said.
I didn’t take his advice…at least not at first. But the idea of writing fiction kept popping back up, and one day, an idea for a novel came into my mind. That idea grew into plans for a 7-volume series. I’ve now worked on it for a few years. The story follows a twelve-year-old named William Brown, who discovers he can do something rare: he can speak to the dead (although anyone can do that, I suppose) and he can hear the dead when they speak back.
Next time, I’ll share how I’m working on this novel, and a little more of what it’s about.
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