Whoa

This weekend I set a new high for endorphin rushes due to compliments on my writing.

For those of you who are keeping score, the first compliment that really set my feet on the path to becoming a writer was back in 07. One of the Barflies on the Baen forums posted that he put down the latest Weber release to read my most recent snippet.

The second shot of squee was roughly two years after that, when the chief slush reader at Baen took the time to send me a critique and tell me they'd like to see it again. The third shot was last fall, when an agent sent me an email saying she'd agonized for nearly a year over my first book.

The second and third shots were based on the fact that professionals in the industry thought I had something good. Maybe not good enough, but very, very close. I still remember that first time though, when a complete random told me 'hey, this is good!'. I got another shot close to that this weekend. The person wasn't a complete random, but the circumstance scoured away any thoughts of 'he's just saying it because I'm a friend'.

I have a friend who, despite being well read, doesn't read science fiction. When he heard I wrote a book, he asked for a copy. He told me science fiction wasn't his thing, but he'd give it a shot.

Didn't. The operative word for whether he reads Sci Fi or not is 'didn't'. He does now, because of my novel.

Some things just make you wanna go 'whoa' like a stunned Keanu Reeves.