Nobody Asked Me…

One year ago…

TL;DR version- I self-published The Grey Man- Vignettes

What brought me to that point? Well grab a cup of coffee and I’ll tell ya…

I write mostly on airplanes and in hotel rooms on the road, and weekends at home. It’s something to occupy me and keep me off the streets and out of trouble when I can’t get to the range. I’d written some short stuff and posted it here on occasion and a couple of loyal readers said I ought to write a book…

Since I can’t write about what I do (without going to jail for a LONG time), it was a case of finding something else to write about. Science fiction? Nah, too crowded. Horror? Nah, I’ll keep my nightmares to myself. Shooting? Hmmm, that might work…

And the OBTW is I just took myself out of the mass market for readers with that decision, but more on that later.

The genesis of TGM was really a couple of conversations down at Quantico when we were moving firing lines from 600 back to 1000 yards. Most of the folks who come out are pretty serious shooters, some still active duty, some retired and a few of us hangers on.

One of the first conversations was over the whole ‘operator’ meme that was going around, and the perception that only buffed out 6’3”, 200lb chunks of muscle with a weeks’ worth of beard growth were operators.  One of the old retired shooters said something to the effect of, “I’ll let him start from a thousand with all his toys. I’ll sit here with Ol’ Betsy and five rounds and let’s see who wins.”

One of the young active duty guys started down the road of being in shape, and running etc. To which another one of the oldsters said sarcastically something to the effect of “That’s why I was a sniper, so I didn’t have to do that s**t.”

Another conversation surrounded challenge coins, and how they’ve proliferated over the years. Again one of the youngsters pulled out a coin and he was amazed at how many ‘old farts’ pulled out coins too.

The third conversation was in the pits during an F600 match, where we got to chatting about the camaraderie among the shooting sports, especially high power and long range. Everybody is a competitor, but at the same time everybody is willing to help someone else out, even down to loaning them a rifle or ammunition or (and that seems to populate across all the competitive levels)…

Those conversations and a bunch of what ifs became the challenge coin post and later chapter in the book. After I’d written it, I took it down to Quantico one Sunday and showed it to a few folks, and most of them died laughing, especially the older guys.

Then it became a process of actually developing the characters beyond one little short story. Being an old fart, I have a pretty wide range of acquaintances, so I ‘built’ composites of John and Jesse Cronin based on those people.

Setting it in Texas killed two birds with one stone, I knew the area, and it was a tribute to folks I knew in the area who had been or are LEOs.

I also reached out and asked questions.  Yeah, surprised aren’t ya…

Larry Correia, Larry Lambert, JD Kinman, Peter Grant and Wing graciously shared advice throughout the process and wished me luck (which I would need).

One thing both Larry’s said that stuck with me was make the guns right. And if you’re doing shooting sequences make them believable. The deeper I got into TGM, the more research I did, the more I reached out to friends and fellow shooters, folks in the medical world and others. Each of them graciously gave of their time to set me straight, or to make me ‘prove’ what I was writing was correct (you know who you are).

I had finished the first draft in late 2013, and worked with another of my 5 loyal readers on a cover for the book.  Tina did an outstanding job on it, taking my wild hair idea and turning it into what I think is an eye catching cover that matches the book’s tone well.  I reached out again to friends and went through a series of alpha and beta readers and edits (Thanks for slogging through all my lousy punctuation and mis-spellings), and ‘I’ felt pretty good about the story. So I started submitting it… And getting rejection after rejection, after rejection. About 50 all told…

So why did I self publish? Basically one rejection that stated words to the effect that I didn’t have a mass market book, it was at best a niche market and the book was so poorly written that no one would read it IF I published it.

And then the fight started… 🙂

I reached out to Peter and Wing and they gave me great advice on going through Amazon’s process and in early March 2014, I published The Grey Man- Vignettes.

To say I was worried terrified scared s**tless was the understatement of the day! I’d spent a chunk of change to get the editing and other pieces done, and now I was putting myself out there for what? I had no clue… Ridicule? Very possible. Being laughed at?  Probably. Nothing? Yeah, a strong possibility…

My ten loyal readers bought copies! Yea!!!

But I didn’t have an advertising budget, so the blog and friends who spread the word via their blogs were the sum total of the ‘advertising’ (thanks to those that stepped up and took a chance on me). I didn’t obsess over sales (well not too much anyway), it was going to be what it was. I just wanted to break even, that was pretty much my goal.

Larry L had told me to never read the reviews. So I pretty much didn’t other than seeing how many I had gotten. But I’ve to admit when I got the 1 star, I read that one…

The book actually took off a little bit, but what truly humbled me were the emails and positive comments I got from a number of readers.  That led me to try to write a ‘real’ book, which lead to TGM- Payback.

I’ve sold over a thousand copies of Vignettes and it continues to trickle out today, so I did break even.

Thanks to those of you who have read it and told your friends or given away copies of it. And thanks too for the reviews you’ve posted on Amazon. If you have time, I’d appreciate reviews of either book. The more reviews, the better the chances somebody will read them and decide to take a chance on my little niche book.

I’m wrapping up the first draft of the third book in the series, it will be The Grey Man- Changes. It will probably go live around mid-summer.

Thank You.