Welcome To Wrighter's Block

In this new blog I am going to do my best to journal my experiences, joys and frustrations as I attempt to write my first novel. Hopefully, this can be an interesting behind-the-scenes sneak at the process without giving away any story details.

Several things have conspired over the last 18 months to lead me to writing. I began working closing with a friend of mine named Sam McDavid. Sam enjoys creative writing and has a passion for language. Secondly, another friend of mine named Van Plexico wrote and published his own series of superhero novels. This was very exciting for me. Through the miracle of print-on-demand technology, one does not need a lot of money to self-publish. I read Van's books and they were fun. And the books themselves were well made.

I had a story in my head I wanted to tell but it was seeing these high-quality self-published books that gave me the needed motivation. Here was proof that, no matter how well or poor my story turned out, in the end I could have a book.

Of course, it helps that I already had a story idea. It is a plot that I've actually been developing for about ten years. The characters, places and events in the story are quite real to me. I didn't know during those ten years that I'd ever want to write a novel, but after seeing Van's books and being around Sam everyday, I realized I had a story that I had to tell. I have a need to get this story out there.

Then a funny thing happened that really pushed me to begin my novel: I got published.

I wrote a humorous superhero short story for an anthology Van was putting together. And doggone it if it didn't turn out really well. It is titled The Adventures of Captain Cook (or There's No Accounting for Taste).

"Hey," I thought, "maybe I can write."

No, I'm not a professional novelist or a student of literature. But I'm enjoying the process and, hopefully, you'll enjoy the end product. I started writing the book, the first in a trilogy, back in November of 2007. In upcoming posts, I'll try to give a general idea of what to expect, how it has gone so far and what's going to happen next.

If you want to see the book that contains my short story, click here.

I also contributed to Assembled!, an unofficial companion book to Marvel Comics' Avengers.

--David