Here’s the thing I sometimes get a moment to think about and it blows my mind. I was a poor kid in a minister’s family, then I was a single mother with a great kid – the offspring now grown, and I survived a terminal diagnosis followed by several more bouts of cancer – all of it lived out in a lot of apartments in big cities in the US. I look back at my time in Chicago and see so many people crowded in a tiny kitchen around a glass top table, talking and laughing and sharing a dish. It was the best and already a good life. Money never defined it even if lack of it made it a little tougher at times.
The house I’m selling (and bought 4 years ago) was my first house and was a BIG step up. A washer and dryer without a coin slot, a garage of my own (no more running through the rain or trying to remember where I parked last), central air conditioning and my own little backyard. Heaven…
So, here’s the cool part. Since I met Michael Anderle and this dream of being a successful author has come true, I’ve stretched out my dreams and grown them bit by bit. I’m moving into a house that has all kinds of upgrades that I’m not used to near a state park not too far from downtown Austin. My dream home.
It’s been a journey of ups and downs to get here – wouldn’t trade any of it – because it got me here with all of you doing something I love with some wonderful people like Magic Mike and Craig Martelle and Steve Campbell. Now, the good dog, Lois Lane and I are going to move on up…
I’m not unique – just stubborn and willing to keep trying – so if you have a dream, keeping going. Don’t give up just ahead of the most amazing parts of your journey. Makes me wonder what is coming next. I can hardly wait… More adventures to follow. Thank you to each of you who read these books and write to me all the time – I am so very grateful.
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Written May 1st, 2018
First, THANK YOU for reading these author notes!
Right now, I’m sitting in Javier’s in the Aria Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m sitting in the second booth from the right in the bar area.
It’s a circle. Probably sits maybe three (3) comfortably and five squished together. Today, it’s just me and my laptop, working on these author notes before I call Martha when I get back to my office.
She is still packing, if you care to know (she messaged me in Slack, so I know this now.) Right after I speak with her, I’ll get on a call with Hayley Lawson regarding a project we are working on, and then type out another two chapters for Payback is a Bitch due out in less than two weeks.
I turned in two chapters this morning.
I was working with Laurie Starkey (Protected by the Damned) yesterday. I had a collaborator ask me a question three days ago, and the concept came up yesterday as well that is summed up like this:
“How the hell do you put out so many books, so fast?”
The answer is I work with fast people. Or people that may not be fast, but they ARE productive. They get shit done and they know the value of dreams being realized. In general, most of my collaborators are older (not than me, just in life) and know what it takes to make their dreams come true.
Hard work. Often boring, typing our fingers off, work.
I’d bet (without putting it to a spreadsheet) the average collaborator age is early forties. I’m fifty turning fifty-one this year. Craig is older than me and so is Martha, and Steve (Zen Master Walking ™.)
CM Raymond and a LOT of the Age of Magic / Oriceran folks are younger as is Ell Leigh Clarke and Hayley Lawson.
Hell, even TS (Scott) Paul is only one year younger than me (but he looks ten years younger.)
For many of us, this is our second or third profession. We grew up book readers and book lovers, but not authors.
Except Martha.
She has been working this profession (one way or another) for thirty years. As a fiction writer, journalist, ghost-writer, nationally syndicated columnist and a believer.
She mentioned before just how much has been accomplished in the last year, but she isn’t scratching the surface very much. She spoke in Las Vegas for the 20BooksTo50k event in November of 2017 on what works and doesn’t work when building a Universe. Then, just three months later she was in London at the 20BooksTo50k event there talking about getting through multiple battles with cancer and overcoming to see her success.
This year, after 30 years of hard work in writing, writing is offering her the chance to see the fruits of that labor.
I couldn’t be happier for her, and the last two of her wishes.
Grandchildren to spoil, and a good man to share her life with.
Her new home is supposed to be finished sometime late summer or fall, I think. Martha says she wants to make me ‘touch’ all of the upgrades. (Yes, she means that literally.)
I think I’m going to be busy that half of this year. Maybe
