19) The Rocky Road to Writing…

One of the great joys of parenthood is reading to your child. Jayme and I delighted in sharing some of our favorite stories with Emily as she was growing up. We also discovered a number of new stories as we sought out bedtime entertainment for our darling daughter. I liked discussing the meaning of stories with Em and we’d often speculate as to where the storylines were headed. Occasionally we’d come across a tale that was a real dud. One such terribly written story by a relatively famous and successful author inspired me to write The Mythfits. The story was so bad that I thought, “Hey, I can write a better story than this piece of crap!” So, I did.

Whatever one might think of my efforts, I am positive I wrote a better story.

My fascination with mythology and the themes that swirled in my brain congealed into my first novel. The big discovery was that writing the story gave me more pleasure than anything I had ever accomplished in my roller coaster of a career in animation. I was happy with what I had  created, but I was ignorant about the profession of writing. I tried to play catch-up by doing as much research as I could, but it seemed an insurmountable task to get my work out to the public. The few agents I contacted showed no interest, so I decided to send the manuscript to publishers who accepted submissions from unrepresented authors. A few weeks later I was contacted by a senior editor at a publishing house. The first edition of The Mythfits came out in 2003. Bolstered by the publisher’s encouragement and praise, I began work on the sequel. I’ll write more about my journey as a writer in future blog posts.                     

The cover of the first edition of The Mythfits with illustration by Aron Dittbrenner

If you have any questions or comments, please email me at themythfits@gmail.com.