#16 What's a long time?

As a writer, it's a scary thought when your debut novel racks up its tenth anniversary. A thousand questions surface in your mind at once, and you even revert to the old counting your fingers trick just to be sure you haven't missed a year. Yet it seems that ten years have passed since I signed my first publishing contract back in October 2006. The Long Way Home it seems is now a long way from where I started out, and a lot has changed from those early days of dreaming I was going to be the next Bryce Courtenay, Stephen King or Matthew Reilly. Ten years later as it turns out, I'm not.

A decade after the book was first released in February 2007, I can at least look back and admire the bravado I showed for even contemplating writing a novel, let alone the gusto at which I attacked trying to sell myself as an author for the six years that followed. If believing 1000% in your own work and ability can be attributed to success, then I should have been a millionaire years ago!

For a thirty-something author with a young family and a mortgage, I didn't let a sea-change from the city lights of Brisbane to the laid-back charm of the Sunshine Coast slow me down. Not even when a bigger mortgage coincided with a reduction in salary after my wife and I walked away from two well-paying jobs. I firmly believed that my next novel was going to land that big contract which would enable both of us to quit our jobs, pay off our mortgage and live the life of a full-time novelist. The reality couldn't be further from the truth.

Combined with our annual family vacations, I book-toured the east coast of Australia at my own expense, speaking or setting up with a table to sell copies wherever I could secure some time and space; bookstores, shopping centres, libraries, schools, even arts & crafts markets. In between working full-time and writing part-time, I even made time to meet regularly with a paid mentor who helped sharpen and hone what would become my second novel. Yet the immediate years that followed The Long Way Home were full of ups and downs. After landing a contract for my third novel in 2011 with Last Wish of Summer, the book ultimately failed by industry standards and by 2013 had been pulled from sale despite a sequel being in the final stages of editing. A mad scramble on my part saw me recover the rights to all four of my novels, and re-release them as eBooks that same year.

The whole experience taught me one important lesson. That as an author, all you can really ask for is that a reader be kind enough to invest their time to read and appreciate your work. For some, reading a book takes a long time. For an author, writing the book takes a long time. But trying to get my head around the fact that ten years have passed since writing my first novel is almost unfathomable.

A meet the author morning at Capalaba Library, February 6, 2010

So a decade after the fanfare of organizing that time-honoured first book launch, I find myself far removed from the idea of forging a career as a writer. That trail has been blazed. These days I'm busy running a successful small business with my wife, while my two children are both studying full-time at University, none of which are at all attributable to any of my books. For myself, that represents a long time.

Yet somehow my first book, The Long Way Home in that time has become a reminder that sometimes hard work and even the best of intentions can count for nothing. So there you have it, ten years.... over just like that. For a 122,000 word novel that took two years to write and edit, the following ten years have disappeared in the blink of an eye. If spending a decade of my life trying to 'make it' as a writer was a rush, then looking back on that time is pretty damn cool.

Not everyone gets to the top, not everyone gets a gold medal. Then again, not everyone can say they actually wrote a novel either. So to those who have supported me as a writer in the past, I once more say a heartfelt thank you. For those who are only discovering my work for the first time, I do hope you enjoy the read, and please by all means leave some feedback on the website you downloaded it from.