car crash ended my writing career.

I’ve gone over the particulars on this before. I was on the fast track up through my publishing house and then was shut down and dropped back to the writer’s basement of non-representation by an act of fate. Made a few more attempts and then settled down to write for myself. And I’ve used my gift to save a failing newsletter (and gain “street”-cred on that), and then there are my blogs. Writers are occasionally touched by Dog Ear. Readers like my Review. And model railroaders love my OpsLog and On Sheet. So yes, I still write. I’m just not on shelves anywhere (other than amazon virtual ones). And that’s okay with me. I’ve made it okay.

So I picked up a scifi book from a local bookstore – this thing was written in the mid 80s so the book is four decades old. The cover is coming apart and is held together with painters tape. I’d never heard of the author and, frankly, was not enjoying the book all that much. As mentioned, it’s written in another time and scifi back then was all dream-scape hard-to-understand bullshit (think of 2001). Of course, the back cover has all these blurbs in the likes of “bold new talent” and “fresh new voice”, which I’ve seen on the covers of hundreds of one-hit wonders.

So I looked this author up.

Um…

Turns out she was a bold new talent and a fresh new voice. She went on to write about ten books, all well received and some were runners-up for some very prestigious awards. She even graduated from my alma mater under literature (which was better applied, it would seem, than my business degree). And after a very successful run, she passed away of cancer a couple of years back.

I read all this with a certain cringe-worthy winching. That was the life I’d envisioned for myself. Still, I did beat cancer, so it’s not all bad.

And while I’m impressed with her credentials, I’m still slogging through her book.

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