TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN! Reflecting on a decade of authorship.

My First Book Was Published on September 13th, 2013

"TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN! Where have you been?"

This quote from the film Grosse Pointe Blank, a romantic comedy about a 10-year high school reunion starring John Cusack and Minnie Driver, came to mind this morning. To us humans, milestones matter, and as far as milestones are concerned, decades tend to mean the most. Where a high school reunion reflects on the end of a right of passage, the milestone I celebrate today—a decade since I published my first book—reflects on a new beginning.

In 2013, I stood at an awkward crossroads. I had abandoned a Ph.D. program in 2009 after my university cut the humanities by about half, and my second choice for a career as a school teacher had not faired any better. I graduated in 2011 with a teacher's license amidst a dissevering of education budgets nationwide. The week before I graduated, I sat through a staff meeting at the school where I had student-taught. The principal announced that either every teacher on staff would take a pay cut the following year or two of their colleagues would not return. I looked at my mentor teacher and asked, "What does all this mean for my career?" He replied, "I think you're f—d."

For two years after graduating, I managed a gym, worked as a personal trainer, and substitute taught, waiting for a teaching job that never materialized. Moreover, the entire reason I had gone into secondary education was to proverbially leap-frog back up into academia. In high school, one of my teachers earned a PDH on the school district's dime. Those sorts of programs had gone. My determination to remain in education waned.

I call this period of my life post-college purgatory. Or, as Dr. Seuss put it in his book Oh The Places You'll Go (which I read to my son), I was in the waiting place, where people are just waiting. Except, I didn't wait. Like the Vikings of the Icelandic Sagas, I am restless by nature. A whole pile of research was sitting in my closet, gathering dust. I felt it had to be put to good use.

At the time, everyone in my life was telling me that writing a book was a gigantic waste of time. My parents thought I should have been working harder on making real money. My friends thought I should be out drinking with them. Colleagues didn’t believe that I was truly committed to pulling it off. I ignored the nay-sayers.

Writing a novel seemed a daunting task while working three jobs. Frankly, I'm not sure how I did it. I suppose I didn't sleep much. Nonetheless, I devoted all my spare time to writing what would become The Line of His People. I finished it in the spring of 2013 and sent the manuscript for query. Every query I sent was rejected.

Around that time, I got hitched to my first wife, whose family lived in Burns, OR. One of her family members worked in the school district. Based on her recommendation, the administration gave me a shot at bat for a teaching job. At the time, I thought of it as a blessing. It was my last chance to stick with "Plan A."

The new job and a much earlier start date than I had planned put a bit of a rush on publishing my new novel. So, as a young, fresh-out-of-college kid will do, I decided to self-publish. I can't believe I'm admitting to this, but it's the truth: My mom edited the first manuscript.

Oh, the horror!

Still, with all the confidence in the world, I started my new teaching position in Burns with a published book to promote. That year, I studied how to market a book, from building a website and blog to building a social media following. I dedicated all my spare time to that endeavor, which paid off. I created a solid following, I sold a good number of books, and while the reviews weren't stellar, I could claim I was now a professional because I had made money at it.

The school year in Burns did not unfold as anticipated. Small towns have a hard time with outsiders, and I was about as "outsider" as one could get for them. The short version is that the year didn't go well for me. There was bullying by the school board, awkward prayer circles by militant Christian evangelists who protested my teaching the state curriculum, and very sharp pitchforks drawn in what the teachers union rep, union lawyer, and state investigators all described as "The most obvious witch hunt I've ever seen." I almost quit in February following the ordeal. Still, some convincing pleading from some parents swayed me to finish the year for the kids' sake. I was a damned good teacher, and they knew it.

I finished the year and got out of dodge as soon as possible. Returned to Bend, OR, I stood at another crossroads. A call out of the blue changed that for me. My aunt Aelea, who was running for Congress, had just fired her third campaign manager and needed someone with some marketing know-how to take over. Why did she think I had marketing acumen? My book marketing, of course!

I spent the next three months slogging through the world of politics, but it paid off. When the campaign ended, the man who had taken over Aelea's telecom company offered me a marketing job. For two years, I learned the ins and outs of online marketing. I applied what I learned from my books to the company and vice versa. I also wrote and published two more novels. It was getting easier.

Eventually, I was poached by another company that had me do the same for them. They were a bit more demanding of my time than Aelea's company, so the book writing broke to a halt. The marketing, however, did not. At the time, I lamented that I couldn't write full-time, but I couldn't see the big picture—that everything I was doing was taking me to where I was meant to be.

By 2017, my books had gotten me known enough to receive an invitation to participate in a round-table discussion about historical fiction at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. My author career, as well as my marketing career, had gained momentum. Teaching was in the rearview mirror.

Reinvigorated by several invitations to speak at events worldwide, I sat down and evaluated my books with a fresh, objective lens. Were they good enough to keep me going? I had the money to pay an editor for the first time, and I sent the manuscripts to him for a cursory examination. The return opinion was harsh: they sucked. I'm not afraid to say it. No one pens their life's best work on the first go-around. The main problem with them was that they were poorly edited. The stories were good.

During this entire journey, I made regular visits back to France to visit family. My grandfather was appointed president of the local historical association, where I focused my Ph.D. research and novels. I had the good fortune of having access to all the leading information about the Viking invasions in the area and speaking with the preeminent historians on the subject. My interactions with the association would later lead to their publishing of my research on the Viking invasions of Southern Brittany, which minted me as a "published historian."

It was through that research that the character Hasting was born.

In preparation for the Hasting trilogy, I shifted my focus from studying Vikings to studying people. I read the expansive works of C.G. Jung, as well as his myriad of disciples, such as Bly, Hendrix, Scarf, Bradshaw, Hillman, Griffin, Wilber, Sanford, Von Franz, Becker, Lifton, Stone, Metzger, and many others. Most importantly, I devoured Joseph Campbell's works in my quest to become a better storyteller. The research paid off.

While I could talk about the success of my second trilogy (which won awards, hit bestseller lists, etc.), what they did more for me than make money is take me on a journey of self-discovery and discovery of my fellow humans in a manner I never before could have conceived. And that's when things got really interesting.

While I wrote the second series, I worked in sales for a well-known local paint contractor, and the job was terrific insofar as it allowed me the flexibility to write my books again while also earning a good wage. I gave them four years of my life, and I grew personally and professionally during that time in ways no other period had allowed.

At the end of my tenure at the paint company, I met a young woman with the ambition to open 25 restaurants by 2025. It was a lofty, unattainable goal. But she was also in the middle of writing a memoir about the first part of her life, and when she found out I write books, she asked if I could ghostwrite for her. At first, I said no. When she finally pressed the issue, I gave her an estimate of its cost, thinking she'd never say yes. She agreed to the contract. So, as the ghostwriter, I started writing my seventh book, Patta's Empire.

I applied my typical writing regimen to the project and completed it in six weeks. The editor took longer than me. When I delivered the manuscript, the restaurant owner said, "Of all the contractors I'm working with, I thought for sure the writer would be the last to be on time!"

My work so impressed her that she hired me to take over her restaurant's marketing. Today, I am the president of the whole company with five locations and a sixth on the way, and I chuckle to myself that I only got here because I took a gamble and wrote that first book.

"TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN! Where have you been?"

I've been writing books.

What's in store for the future? I have several projects on the docket today. There's another Hasting book (check out my Viking historical fiction books) in the works and a collaboration with my wife on a young adult high fantasy novel. I also have a Western I've been trying to finish. All that to say, stay tuned; there's much more to come!

I’ve also started a successful and growing podcast with someone who wouldn’t have found me without my books. Terri Barnes and I share several things: we live in Oregon, are fascinated by the Vikings, and share the same birthday! Check out the podcast at vikingology.substack.com.

Here's to the next TEN YEARS! 🥂

Present day, holding the original manuscript of The Line of His People, printed over a decade ago!