Well..

So, it's next week. September 15th is on a Wednsday, that is when my first novel will debut to the world. A number of family and friends have all ready pre-ordered, and that absolutely coolest thing?

Copies of my book are overseas. Two of my military friends stationed in Iraq and Dubai have pre ordered, received their copies and are happily reading away. I have gotten positive feedback so far, so that is somewhat gratifying..

But how do i feel, really?

Can I really say I'm excited to have gotten this far? Can I say I am vindicated just because a small number of people have told me that they are enjoying what they have read so far?

meh.

I have had the idea for A Distant Battlefield for over a decade and change. It was originally one of the notebook stories i used to circulate to my friends around the way back in the early 1990s. I decided to copywrite it in about 93 i think. (then I had to change the title because it was originally Battleground Earth, and L Ron Hubbard had an issue with that. (of course he finally got his book made into a movie with John Travolta and it turned out to be a terrible damn film.

I never knew exactly what I was attempting back then, my mindset was not very advanced for a guy in his early 20s. I had other obligations and distractions and back then I never truly considered my writing as my ultimate career path.

But no matter what I did, as the 1990s became the 2000s, writing was always the thing i enjoyed more than anything, I never abandoned the Distant Battlefield concept. I hit upon that title, swirled it around my mouth like one of those snooty wine tasters and found that I enjoyed it. I rewrote it as a screenplay, changed people, places and things and then I went out there and tried to sell it like any other respectful screenplay writer.

In my bedroom, I still have all of my rejection letters. Bill Cosby, Spike Lee, Circle of Confusion, Valhalla Productions, all of them said no. (Circle of Confusion actually read the screenplay and stated that they even enjoyed reading it in their postcard response to me..but they still passed on it.

That's ok, I said to myself. I spent a serious amount of time weighing pros and cons and possibilities and scenarios, I knew I had a good property there, I understood (or leastways, I thought I understood) how the Hollywood machine worked, so i wasnt totally infuriated at the studio heads and reps for turning down the guy they didnt know.

I put the screenplay away and moved on with other things. I was not discouraged. I would find a way to get my property out before the people. (and the voice in my head even back then was asking; "well, why not turn it into a book?") I ignored that voice.

In 2000 I shot my first indie music video for an underground hip hop act. I shot for SOD, I shot a video for a dude called Banes, even shot a nice video in 2001 for an R&B chick named Candace Vendetta.

None of the videos went anywhere, and outside of the SOD guys, I have no idea what happened to any of those unsigned artists, either. I met a guy named Richard Hodge who wanted to shoot a series of very low budget horror and urban films around Brooklyn. for a period of time I was all over Brooklyn, on the waterfront, in an alley somewhere, running around train yards and rooftops, filming material for project after project.

I got minor credits for my camera work there, but that is as far as it went.

In 2003 I even tried filming my own urban/horror flick. And outside of having the experience of meeting the people and doing the work, my own film never went anywhere. (it was just good to have under my belt though)

other minor projects and plans came and went between this period, and i was pretty much in a rut until May of 2007 came along. (my lower intestines decided to send me to Woodhull Hospital for a brief vacation and it almost took my life)

Sitting in that hospital bed after the surgery, being told how close i came to shaking hands with the reaper was a pretty sobering experience. As I sat there for that entire month, I had nothing but time to think. (what was i going to do now? I almost died and now i have been given another life so to speak. what do i do with it? Am i just going back to the way it was? Am i going to 9 to 5 for the rest of my life without ever having even attempted to make a grab for something greater?)

And then the voice came back.
All right, let's make the damn thing a novel.

So here we are. September 15th is coming up and my labor of love is available to all. As I stated before many a time, this is more than just Science fiction/ action. there are some things about the human condition that I will discuss briefly, and every character you meet in this book will be yet another aspect of my diverse personality.

So, please read, enjoy, think, discuss..and just be.

I'll meet you within the pages.