Getting To Know Me

Getting to know me-Cliff Popkey/author
I am a man of many faces. I’ve had so many different occupations in my life I don’t know where to begin. So I’ll just say I’m experienced. I’ve been a worker doing the lowest of jobs and I’ve been the general manger who was responsible for the whole operation but didn’t get the big bucks. I’ve been a Politian, though I’m now reformed. I’ve been the business owner and made the big bucks and I’ve been the business owner who watch it all collapse, taking me down with it.
I’ve been up, down, inside, and outside, spindled and mutilated. And yet I’m still standing despite the scars. Now I’m an author. I guess I like challenges. When I was a teenager I was told the only way I’d ever be an author was if I went to college and studied literature. That meant spending another four years doing things I had no interest in. Talk about a challenge. It was one challenge I failed at. Well, for me college was the longest two hours of my life, after I was hurt on a summer job and couldn’t play football anymore, I had no interest in college. Football was all I dreamed about as teenager, but God had other plans. Maybe I wasn’t that good at football or maybe I was. The one thing I do know is I’ve gotten a whole lot better as the years have passed. While in college I let the professors tell me, I couldn’t be a writer. Like the doctors, I almost let tell me I wouldn’t walk again. But I did walk and I did at least try to play football again. It took three years to make it onto the field again but I did it.
After that I found once I stopped believing the other people who did their best to talk me down, I could do whatever I really wanted to do. Now that, by it’s self was a trick. Because deciding what I really wanted to do proved to be something that was very difficult indeed. It took most of my life to figure it out. It took me years to understand that I have a gift for making people feel at ease around me and that if I had a good product, I could sell it to almost anyone. That was the supposed fatal flaw, I could sell almost anyone. But I wouldn’t sell everyone cause I didn’t push everyone to buy, I was told I was too nice by numerous slimy sales managers. They were wrong; this nice guy won national awards for selling roofing and for selling preowned manufactured homes one year after another for five years straight. I think I did it because of those other people who said I couldn’t do it.
Writing is like for me. The more I hear how tough it is to get an agent or publishing contract, the harder I try to write. I’ve vastly improved since the first book, “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story”. I self published it after three dozen agents refused to represent me. I wonder if it’s because I’m not a college graduate? Oh well, their loss. I will write a best seller and soon. I can feel it.
For me, life is all about persevering, never giving up. Never accepting what they say are my limits. When I was twenty, I received more than a hundred rejections and I’m still receiving them. But you see I believe I can do this. I believe I will be a best seller. I’m not a perfectly polished writer with perfect prose or even good punctuation, but I am very passionate. I am willing to learn and I am going to be a successful author whose name is known. I just am. I will persevere through the challenge and I will make it. If you develop the same attitude, it will happen for you, too. Write what you know and write it with passion, set the world on fire with your dreams –Chris Keys! Oh by the way, I’m retiring Chris Keys, it’s a pen name and I’ll be writing under my real name Cliff Popkey from now on, so look for Cliff Popkey AKA Chris Keys. “Write what you know, write it with passion and set the world on fire with your dreams.” –Cliff Popkey