I've been writing since I was eleven, nothing special, and made my first attempt at writing a novel when I was fourteen. It was a romantic fantasy, and at eighteen chapters it became clear that the quality just wasn't up to par and that the storyline wasn't going anywhere. Two years later, a character named Alice appeared in another ill-fated project the actual story of which may still be in a box somewhere in Daytona Beach.
Alice was a very different person back then, and in this project she just wasn't mature enough to come out of hiding yet. So that one went on the shelf, too.
Last year I began writing Wandering Stars, the preface of which is the image above. Alice made her triumphant return, as I appropriated the name from my previous story for the book's main female protagonist. She'd grown a lot in our time apart - as had my ability to write. Several months later, after more than a few melodramatic announcements of writer's block on my part, the first draft was completed. (Don't worry, it's gone through re-writes since then.) My fiancée played a part in keeping me on the ball, assuring me that I could do it, that writer's block was not insurmountable and in any case, wasn't the end of the world.
