Welcome to Gunsmith Press!

Yep, it's official: I own a business now.  I went down to the County Building last week, filled out the proper paperwork, and they gave me a lil' certificate with my new company's name on it.  In case you're wondering, "Gunsmith Press" wasn't my first choice, but the one I wanted was already taken (this is the same problem I've been having with the book title), so I racked my brain for a entire half-hour and came up with that.  Not the most spectacular name, I'll admit, but it suits me and my work just fine, I reckon.

On that note, I'd also like to inform you that today marks the 18th anniversary of the day I started writing my book.  I'd been noodling around with another series of stories before that, but it just wasn't panning out.  Then I hit on a new idea, partially-crafted from the old.  Since I was about to go on vacation from my paying job at the time, I decided that, on September 1, 1994, I was going to sit down and spend the entire day working on the first chapter.  Thus began a ridiculous cycle of writing out 50 or so pages, rereading them, then starting over from Page 1 because I didn't think it was good enough.  This is part of the reason why it took so damn long to finish: I had no confidence in myself, and there are many days when I still don't.  It took my husband telling me, "Just keep going, don't look back," to really buckle down and write (along with a bet that I couldn't reach Page 100 before the year 2000...I was writing furiously up until midnight!).  The first full draft of the book was completed not long before I hit the 10-year anniversary in 2004 and, after taking a breather for a month or so -- during which the book was read by many friends and relatives, some of whom were kind enough to give me notes -- I went back in and started second-draft work.  Not long after that, I began doing fanfiction, which slowed things down, as did having to load all 400-odd handwritten (!) pages into our computer.  Another polish or two later, and I was sending the manuscript off to agents and publishers...and you all know how well that turned out.

I didn't mean for this to take 18 years, I really didn't.  But that's the way it worked out.  I'm just glad things are finally progressing to the point where I'll soon be able to offer my work to the public in a nice, professional format...with the name "Gunsmith Press" printed down near the copyright info.