Well, I am still here so i might as well....

   Talk to myself for a while longer.  Yes Ma'am I would like to share funny stories with the class.  Perhaps you would like to refill your coffee?

    I wanted to write in 8th grade.  In seventh grade I had Steve Smallwood for English.  He taught us about theater, because he was the one stuck with my classes English overflow students.  What I learned there was much more valuable in life than a regular English teacher would have taught.  My mother had insisted I speak in complete sentences and dissecting them to find out why they were complete was of no interest to me.  I had skittered by without anyone who felt I needed to evaluate a gerund crossing my path. 
In 8th grade two things happened.  First I had the good luck to be assigned a quirky (even for the seventies) reading teacher named Mrs. Duncan.  She wore butterflies on her shoulder and some people said she was a Kook.  I was not a good reader.  She taught her off beat method of reading that was not considered correct at that time.  She taught us to remember each word as a picture and kick up the speed.  I was hooked.  I memorized the dictionary. 
     Also, My all time favorite English teacher, Cindy Tomlinson, insisted that we read Flowers for Algernon and Shakespeare and (Ugggh!) Write?  She was the first person who told me I should.  She ripped apart my words with her red pen, yet made me want to try again.
     I began to write in secret.  I was into Soap opera's that year, All My Children specifically.  I named characters after friends.  It was full of back stabbing. pregnancy scares, odd parental revelations and basically exactly the things I saw on TV.  It was horrible, thoughtless, twisted and my first try.
     My mother cleaned my room.  She thought it was a diary.  No amount of reason, logic or laughing would convince her that I and every friend in our zip code were not Monsters.
She bought a Stephen King book called The Stand.  I read it.  It was the first adult novel I ever read.  I didn't read another kids book until I read them to my own.  She bought a gift for her sister.  It was titled "Interview with a vampire".  I read it in one day.  She was furious that I had read it because she could not send her sister a used gift.  To this day, I don't understand her secret power to know if i have snuck around and read her "gift" books.....but she hides them better these days.
    I would like to get a book published someday.....so I can prove to my mother it was a Soap Opera and I am a writer.
Even if i never get an agent to give me the time of day.  I wrote IGNITE for the two most important readers in the universe.  Ashlynn and Greylyn adore it.  It is successful.  That is all I need.  If it is meant to be published, it will be.  If not it is a two reader blockbuster.
I am afraid of no editor, I survive Greylyn.
Mom, you need to have a World War One German war ship in your book.
Honey the book is set in present day, in the middle of the country.  Seth and Natalie are not near an ocean.
I know, but it still needs to be there.
The Markgraf appeared with Herr Schumann, It's captain.
You also need an angel.  Ok....see what I can do.
I want to be in the book too.   Yes, Grey.
I will need some cool weapons.    Greylyn....your character is 11.
When you get to that part, let me know and I will tell you the weapons I like best.  Yes dear.
Ok Mom, what about the Cheerleader?  My cheerleader asks.  She's there Ash.
And I like Seth, but he needs to be a little monster too I like bad boys.....and it really can't be a Great book without at least one vampire.   Sigh...Ok.....vampire.

Seriously ....editor causing tears.....bring it on Bwwwaaa haahahaa.

I have no qualifications to write.  I am interested in everything and spent about 9 years in College with about 9 majors ....til they kicked me out with a Business degree.  Once I decided to be a writer, I have really not had a job since.  I have paycheck activities sometimes but I am a writer whether i make a living at it or not. I drove a truck, sucking the life out of every location i landed in.  I have loved and lost love.  I have learned that i am a tough guy even with a gun pointed at me. (I fall apart later....but I am a cool cucumber for the party)  I know love does not stop if it's true, even for death.  That's all I have to bring to the table.

Mom, My friends want to read the book, you need to get it published.    Sigh....yes dear.

So what does all this have to do with anything?  Where is the blue apple in this?

I write books.  They now have endings.  I never plot.  I never plan.  The characters do all the work.  The 25 novels written into corners, written to death and written stupid are no longer my best effort.  Seth, Natalie, and Malcolm Live, that was the important part.  The important part is knowing what the Important part is. That is the blue apple.