The Beginning: A Dedication
Where to begin? I suppose it would be most fitting to start this off with a dedication, to explain how and why I find myself where I am today.
Twenty years ago, I was going through school and after some lengthy discussions with friends as to what our futures would hold, it was recommended that I check out a book by Robert Doherty, the pen name of an author named Bob Mayer. A friend gave me the first two books in one of his series’ and I was hooked. I read each one, bought every book of his I could find, and found myself not only lost in the world that Mr. Mayer had created, but filled with a motivation as to what I could see my life become.
I followed him through a world that effortlessly melded the real with the fantastic and made the imagined believable. In a way, it was the outlet I needed in my youth to escape my surroundings and fill my mind with what could be. Over the years which followed, I took Mr. Mayer’s example and resolved myself to serve as he did.
Some things just don’t work out as you imagine. I couldn’t make the cut for West Point, but ended up at The Citadel with a commission in the Air Force. Not perfectly executed, but so far it’s been just where I’ve needed to be.
Along the way, writing found its way into my life. Just as so many other activities I got involved with, it became a creative outlet that I desperately needed. Over time, I wrote individual scenes and slowly developed characters that became interesting enough to keep me from forgetting about them.
Mission:SRX went to paper in the summer of 1999 and over many years of stops, starts and overhauls a real story began to develop.
For most of those days, writing a real book felt like an impossible task. It wasn’t something a normal person could aspire to; I likened it to running a marathon… until I ran one myself. I began to understand that even a mountain of a task like writing a book was not a flash of inspiration, but as a grand strategy to be executed one step at a time until victory would not only be in sight, but be inevitable.
As I stand on the far shore, staring not at a blank page but at the release of book #4, I find myself filled with the same motivation as at the beginning and with more ideas than when I started. I’m glad you’re here and I hope my work can light a fire within you as was done to me years before.
& like I said before, @bob_mayer, I couldn’t have done it without you.
