Welcome

Hello to everyone. This is my first blog, and I hope that it is a successful one. I'm a history teacher by training, and personality as well, so I'm a little behind the times as a rule. The Internet started to come into vogue when I attended Western Illinois University in the middle nineties. I've learned my way around the web pretty well, but now that I'm publishing and selling books, (as well as marketing manuscripts) I thought I better get on board with everyone else.

What do I want to do here? Well, that's a good question. I have a lot of interests, from hunting, competitive shooting, photography, and horses. What I intend to do here though, is to focus on my writing, what I have learned first hand about the business of writing, as well as what gets the creative juices flowing (usually lots of caffeine).

Why me? I've learned a lot of things about the writing biz the hard way. And believe me, writing is a business. I've said for a long time, that creating the stories is the easy part. What happens after that, is hard. My bonafides. I started as a reporter in 1992, at WIU. I worked for the Western Courier at school, as everything from an Opinions Columnist, to an investigative reporter. After that, I worked for the Bureau County Republican as a reporter, and have had my works published in American Hunter, Carousel Horse News and Trader, and Shoot! Magazine.

I got bored with non-fiction though, and about the time my daughter was born, in 1999, I started to concentrate on my fiction. What kind of fiction? Twisted horror, science fiction, fantasy, some erotica, some normal fiction. I've been a finalist in some big time contests, but perhaps my biggest accomplishment so far has been to have two books published in two years. Ghosts of Interstate 80 was released by Quixote Press in 2007, and Ghosts of the Illinois Canal System was released by Quixote in 2008.

I'm working on other projects right now. I'll post some of my short stories, and if anyone is interested, perhaps I'll post some chapters of the novels I'm working on.

See you all around the web, and hope you have fun stopping by. I'll start adding to this little corner of the web soon, so stay tuned.

Yours,

David