Hey there, let’s get stated with some basic info about me that may help you understand how I came to be an author. I’m medically retired, something about a nerosystem failure brought on by too many concussions and a genetic failure that cause me to be susceptible to blood clots. I’ve had eight concussions, five from playing football, at one time I was hopeful my suspect skills on the grid iron would lead to a free college education and then to a life of wealth playing in the NFL. Several childhood friends made it to big college game and one made it to the pros, but that wasn’t to be for me, God had a different plan, but I digress. Five concussions from football, two from life, just hitting my head on dumb things and one from my older sister who when I was seven and she was ten, decided my head looked like a softball and whacked it as hard as she could with a baseball bat. Oh, you gotta love that sibling rivalry.
I wasn’t ready to retire, I’d just struggled through two businesses failing and I was recently divorced. I must have done something right because I managed to meet a new woman who became my wife, Donna, and she convinced me to accept the fact that I was in desperate need and should take the disability retirement.She convinced me that we could survive on her income while I battled the Social Security Administration for what turned out to be three long years. So there I was, retired and being a voracious reader, I quickly went through all of the novels that I hadn’t read by my favorite authors and then I went through a number of authors I had just discovered only to one day, a year later, discover I was out of good authors to read. I was bored with TV, movies and just staring at the walls, so I took the leap and started reading lots of authors I had never heard of. I was quickly convinced that I could write better than many of the, what I call the second tier, authors. You might call them Journeymen authors. They can be men or women doesn’t matter. Anyway, I had toyed with the idea of becoming an author when I was laid up after almost having my foot severed by a huge industrial lawn mower, shortly after high school. Thus the non-existent college career majoring in football. it is also a story Ill share with you as we go along, if you chose to become one of my followers. I spend three years struggling to walk again and while I was laid up, I read a lot and I took a creative writing course as part of my short lived college days. I was very creative but I was very inexperienced in life, yeah try telling that to any teenager, I dare you.
The writing I presented to publishers was really quite bad. I wrote it with lots of passion but failed miserably at grammar, spelling, context, sentence structure and … well you get the picture. I got a hundred rejections and a job in an appliance store. Then life got in the way as a family came along with kids and a mortgage. I went on to careers in trucking, warehousing, insurance sales, trash removal, landscaping, carpentry, home improvement sales, building, mobile home sales, politics-I’m reformed, car sales and driving cabs. But I didn’t stop writing, I just wrote for myself. I was a closet writer so to speak. As the years went by I kept reading and reading and reading. Slowly I learned how to write by reading good writers. I still couldn’t tell you if I’m using a dangling participle? Am I?
When I retired and suddenly had time on my hands I started writing in earnest. I decided since I wasn’t going to be able to work outside the home, I need to find something to do at home to keep my sanity and make a few bucks. Writing has fit that bill perfectly. I spend most days writing for ten to sixteen hours and now and then I’ll write around the clock. I take my laptop on trips because I’ll write while I’m hanging out waiting for flights or setting in rest stops taking a break from driving. But as this quotes states, “
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe
I am always writing. I am very lucky that my wife understands and is encouraging me to write. I think she’s just hoping I make it big, so she can go shopping, without me telling her how much she can spend. Yeah, like that works.
So where was I, oh yeah, so I write all the time and I have seven books I have self published to prove it. When I decided to actually write something to share with other people and not just the family dog, I wrote a monster of a first book. I was a 175,000 plus words. The first editor I sent it to told me he’d charge me ten thousand dollars to help me rewrite it so that it was saleable. And oh by the way, it would have to be made into at least three books. I didn’t have ten grand to have him tell me how bad it was, so I took his critique to heart and started reading books on how to write novels and took several online classes, then took another college creative writing class only to have the professor tell me that I didn’t write a bad story; just my mechanics were poor. Just goes to show you that my high school teachers didn’t do me any favors by not making me work harder or at least try to inspire me more. I got lots of free passes because I was good at catching football passes no matter which side of the line of scrimmage I was on.
So my first book became five books now, three of which are completely finished and I’m still working on the last two, but it also became my second book published. The first book I had published is titled: The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story. My daughter said she wasn’t interested in reading action/adventure books. So as a challenge, I decided to write a horror story. It’s about four friends who are on their annual fishing trip to Lake Michigan for the salmon run and how they, despite knowing better, stay out on the lake well beyond dark. As they finish catching their limit they discover that they can no longer see the light from the Ludington Light House and all of their instruments have failed. So they start trying to reach shore by dead reckoning. Shortly they are alarmed to discover they have gotten turned around somehow and the light is behind them, so they turn around and head for the light, only it winks out after a while and once again they are completely lost on the huge lake.
Now it gets real interesting because they spy an old paddle wheel ferry in the near distance and make for it only to find their is seemingly no one on board. I’d tell you more, but it will ruin it for you when you read it. Suffice to say, it has gotten five stars from several authors and reviewers and only one three star because it wasn’t Steven Kingish enough for their taste. It’s a good read for the young reader as well as the adult. You should check it out, since it is free for the next two weeks. It is a FREE book at Smashwords.com, in fact, four of my seven books are FREE on Smashwords. Here are the FREE book codes:
RQ93W The Fishing Trip—A Ghost Story
QA46C Reprisal! The Eagle Rises
LB86W Pirates Plunder-A Nate Nevwas Adventure
WZ97D Reprisal! The Eagle’s Gauntlet
They are under my pen name Chris Keys. The other three are exclusive on Kindle and they are only.99 cents each. I wrote them under my own name Cliff Popkey. What a deal!
I’ll introduce you to my other books in the next blog and the blog after that and the one after that and.. you get the picture. I’m going to write about what I know, do it with passion and hopefully set the world on fire with my dreams. Go download a FREE BOOK at smashwords.com, heck, download all four. You don’t need a reader of any kind, they come in plain text too. Thanks for reading-Cliff Popkey
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