The Price of Victory

My very first sale

I dabbled in writing when I was in high school for a literary magazine a bunch of students put together. The two stories I wrote were total ripoffs of Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar universe. I hope all the copies have been lost to unfortunate water damage or mysterious fires because I’d be embarrassed for anyone to see those now.

Anyway, I had little intention of publishing professional writing ever. I had more than enough hobbies, a family, a busy job, and it just wasn’t on my radar. Then a friend of mine and I got to talking and he wanted to start writing. Then of course that got me thinking about it.

I already thought a lot about stories. How they were put together, what they were about, what they meant, what made them good, what made them bad. I replayed scenes and arcs from books in my head frequently. What would I change here? This book lost my attention here, how could this be better?

But I never planned on putting pen to paper, either literally or metaphorically.

Then I sat in on a Four Horseman Universe panel at LibertyCon in 2019. At that panel, Chris Kennedy talked about how they were going to have a new 4HU anthology coming up the next year with three or four slots open for new writers. Now that got the wheels turning and my fingers tap-tap-tapping on the keys.

After completely throwing out my first story and a few more false starts, I had something I was pretty happy with. But it still lacked something, and I had a hard time figuring out what that was. So I asked for help.

I reached out to an acquaintance I had met at LibertyCon. He was another young writer with a half-dozen short stories to his name and working on a novel at the time. I am immensely thankful that he took the time to read through a story from a total beginner and provide me with feedback that’s stuck with me for going on five years now.

I think the most valuable piece of writing advice I could give is that you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for feedback. It’s not always going to be right, it’s not always going to make you happy, but it’s probably going to be something that you need to hear.

In my case I lucked out and got fantastic feedback. Without that, I wouldn’t have sold that story, The Price of Victory. But sell it I did, to an anthology titled The Gates of Hell, set in Mark Wandrey’s Four Horsemen Universe.

The Gates of Hell was published on April 28, 2020 and did quite well! I was very excited to be among a number of superb writers.

And that’s what kicked off my writing career. Soon after that anthology came out, I started work on what would become To Have and To Hold, the novel-length follow-up with the same characters from the short.

I’m immensely proud of these stories. To Have and To Hold is a great story, one that continues to make sales. The Price of Victory reverted to me after the one-year exclusive period and now lives on through Kindle Direct Publishing.

For those of you that have read my work, you have my undying gratitude. The knowledge that people like reading the words I put down of paper is humbling and a great source of joy for me.

And if you haven’t read them, what are you waiting for? Get out there right now and feed that reading habit!

The Price of Victory, available now on Amazon for only $0.99!

To Have and To Hold, available on Amazon!