First Book! May 23!

I’ve always wanted to be a writer.
 
Even when I was a child I knew I wanted to write stories and novels. I wanted to put words together in a way that moved readers. I wanted to create characters and worlds. Books were cherished in my house growing up, and I would spend hours going through my father’s mysteries and my mother’s classic paperbacks even before I could read, and the weekly  trip to the library was like going to church. When I was younger I wanted to write big page-turners like my father read. During my teens I wanted to write lush and complex prose like Faulkner or Joyce—my heroes for years. And as time went on, and as I wrote more and more, I discovered my own voice and the stories only I could tell.

I received my first rejection letter when I was sixteen. I didn’t get an acceptance letter until I was twenty-nine. I would say I’ve written about a hundred short stories and about five novels over the past twenty years. And in a few days my debut novel will hit bookstores and go out into the world.

Writing is incredibly difficult.

Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or a fool.

It took me five years to write Cities of Men. The first draft took me about a year, and then I revised and rewrote it and added on and cut stuff out and reimagined it again and again and again. That was a lot of early mornings and weekends dedicated to a manuscript that may never have been read. I lived with the characters and their problems for half a decade! And I think people forget that part—they may read a book in a few days, but that writer was involved with the same book for years.

Publishing a novel has pretty much been my dream for as long as I can remember. And now I’m not sure where to go besides trying to write the next one. But that is where the fun and joy are. Sitting at the desk and trying to write good sentences. I mean it feels like HELL when the words just aren’t working, but when you find the right note, the right verb or noun, that’s electric.

When Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature, he said, “Writing, at its best is a lonely life.” Those are words I think every writer should remember—hell, maybe get tattooed on their bicep. You sit alone at a desk, you spend all your time with your imaginary friends, and you find yourself avoiding real people so you have time to scribble one word after another.

So now Cities of Men hits stores on Tuesday, May 23. I hope people like it. I hope it sells a gazillion copies. I hope it wins awards. But right now? I really want some time to work on the new book and start the process over again.
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I always told myself that I’d celebrate the publication of my first novel by hiking around Scotland, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I guess I’ll settle for Six Flags instead.

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