Biography: So who am I and why did I write a novel? I've made my living as a performing musician and a music teacher in public, private, and charter schools my whole life. I was in the dumb English classes in high school and majored in music composition, not creative writing. Are you ready for a story? Because how I came to write a novel is a story in itself!
In my senior year of high school I was assigned an old grey haired spinster for English, Miss Andrews. My friends all told me, "Oh you're so dead, man. Miss Andrews will flunk you for sure!" Sure enough first day of class she assigns us a boring cliche original composition with our choice of "My Summer Vacation", or "Appreciation of ___." My summer had been event less so I decided to be a rebel and chose to write about "Appreciation of the fly." I happen to hate flies with a passion, incidentally, but I tried to think of as many positive things as I could think of and approached it with my atypical humor and wit.
I figured that I'd receive my usual grade of A/F with A for content and F for mechanics, as I could never spell or punctuate. This usually averaged out to a C minus or less. Much to my amazement this seemingly humorless mean old schoolmarm loved it! In fact she loved it so much she read it to all of her other classes! Suddenly I was getting ribbed by my friends with, "Hey DeRosa, Miss Andrews read your composition in our class today! It was pretty good, teacher's pet." And that is how the whole year went. I could do no wrong for this lady. She'd hand out absolutely sickeningly boring topics, like "My Mother" and I'd find a way to make them interesting and humorous. I got so many complements that it made me realize that even though I wasn't the best at English grammar, that I definitely had a gift for writing. So that planted the idea in my head that perhaps someday I would write a novel.
Many years later after majoring in music composition in college and becoming a professional keyboard player, singer, and performer, and music teacher, I found myself married with children. My wife and I relaxed at home on the couch watching the latest VHS rental, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure." When it was over I thought to myself, "OMG they spent so much money to make that movie, and the story was totally lame! They go back in time in a phone booth? Are you kidding me - really? I could write a better story than that!" And so I set out to do just that.
I decided to make write a story with more believable characters, who weren't just mindless idiots, but who had real motivations and likeable personalities. Mind you, I'm a classic case of arrested development, and never matured far past 18 years old, so this was second nature for me. And I love science fiction and mysterious events, but I wanted to write a story that was realistic and possible, not magical or farcical. Plus I had spent years and years of my life reading about mysterious places that seem to predate our known history. So I decided to put that to good use.
It took over six years of writing a sentence here and there while I was stuck in traffic, waiting in a doctor's office, or on a coffee break at work to finish that story, but I did exactly that. Then as my wife was finishing up the daunting task of typing all my scribble on a now antique word processor, I took out some self-help books from the library. I began to write literary agents and publishers with "query" letters to see if they might be interested in my novel, expecting to get a then normal pink rejection slip or just a "rejection stamp" on the letter. Much to my surprise, time and time again I got back handwritten notes and actual letters of encouragement, saying that I had a great idea, but unfortunately not what they were looking for currently, and not to give up on it.
Then I got an actual request to send the entire manuscript to an agency in New York City named Macintosh & Otis. We had barely typed out one copy of it at that time, and I didn't have a copyright on it yet. The only Macintosh I had ever heard of made computers. So I told my wife, "I'm not sending my one and only copy to some fly- by-night company in NYC and have them steal it." I didn't send it and several years later we were driving by Park Avenue near Grand Central Station, and my wife said, "That's the building where that company that wanted your manuscript is located." I almost had a stroke, and said, "Are you kidding me! With an address like that they must be the biggest agents in New York!" They are, in fact they still represent the works of John Steinbeck! That was one of the dumbest decisions of my life!
It wasn't the only dumb decision I was to make however. In looking for a literary agent, we ending up sending it to someone whom I've only recently discovered tops the list of warnings on a website called, "Editors and Predators." Just as the warnings predict, he loved the story, but said it needed a little editing. He could however give me a break and give me a "teacher's discount". I paid a sizable amount for his services, which took the course of several years, and three rounds of editing. In fairness to him, (and no names mentioned here), he is a very good editor, and the book did need it. However he never was able to sell it, saying that it had become almost impossible to sell new fiction to publishers in the current market, (which there is some truth to these days.) He suggested I have it converted to a screenplay.
Not one to give up easily, I decided to convert the novel to a screenplay myself, ` (something that the agent offered to do for a fee amounting to the cost of a luxury car). After years of learning how to write a screenplay, I finally accomplished that, and began to contact screenplay agents and producers. Again I got the same response. Everyone loved the concept, but it's not exactly what they're looking for right now. That is something that still persists to this day.
Then I decided to convert the story to a TV Pilot. Again after a period of learning how to write a TV Pilot, I started trying to contact teleplay agents. This time the vice president of comedy at NBC asked to see it! However, even though she liked it, it wasn't what she was looking for at NBC for the upcoming season.
So after years of working at a story that I knew for a fact was a good one, I decided that I'd self-publish it with the new Print-On-Demand technology that has emerged. In fact my cousin, who is one of the top literary agents in New York, told me he couldn't sell fiction from an unknown author, but if I got enough sales from self-publishing, that big publishers would find me!
So that's what I've done, and that is how a professional musician came to write a novel. The story has more to it than you'll find in this first novel. It is really the first installment of a trilogy, which has much more teeth to it than this first part which familiarizes the characters and gets the story started. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. If I get enough responses to it from readers I will finish the next two sequels of the story. Writing a novel is an awful lot of work, and that's the easy part. Getting it sold and generating a following, is far, far more difficult, and is often not a talent that writers are blessed with. So I encourage you to write to me with any comment, questions or criticisms you may have. Hopefully MY saga will have a happy ending where the novel gets to the silver screen, because the whole story of how I came to write a novel has not ended as yet!
In my senior year of high school I was assigned an old grey haired spinster for English, Miss Andrews. My friends all told me, "Oh you're so dead, man. Miss Andrews will flunk you for sure!" Sure enough first day of class she assigns us a boring cliche original composition with our choice of "My Summer Vacation", or "Appreciation of ___." My summer had been event less so I decided to be a rebel and chose to write about "Appreciation of the fly." I happen to hate flies with a passion, incidentally, but I tried to think of as many positive things as I could think of and approached it with my atypical humor and wit.
I figured that I'd receive my usual grade of A/F with A for content and F for mechanics, as I could never spell or punctuate. This usually averaged out to a C minus or less. Much to my amazement this seemingly humorless mean old schoolmarm loved it! In fact she loved it so much she read it to all of her other classes! Suddenly I was getting ribbed by my friends with, "Hey DeRosa, Miss Andrews read your composition in our class today! It was pretty good, teacher's pet." And that is how the whole year went. I could do no wrong for this lady. She'd hand out absolutely sickeningly boring topics, like "My Mother" and I'd find a way to make them interesting and humorous. I got so many complements that it made me realize that even though I wasn't the best at English grammar, that I definitely had a gift for writing. So that planted the idea in my head that perhaps someday I would write a novel.
Many years later after majoring in music composition in college and becoming a professional keyboard player, singer, and performer, and music teacher, I found myself married with children. My wife and I relaxed at home on the couch watching the latest VHS rental, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure." When it was over I thought to myself, "OMG they spent so much money to make that movie, and the story was totally lame! They go back in time in a phone booth? Are you kidding me - really? I could write a better story than that!" And so I set out to do just that.
I decided to make write a story with more believable characters, who weren't just mindless idiots, but who had real motivations and likeable personalities. Mind you, I'm a classic case of arrested development, and never matured far past 18 years old, so this was second nature for me. And I love science fiction and mysterious events, but I wanted to write a story that was realistic and possible, not magical or farcical. Plus I had spent years and years of my life reading about mysterious places that seem to predate our known history. So I decided to put that to good use.
It took over six years of writing a sentence here and there while I was stuck in traffic, waiting in a doctor's office, or on a coffee break at work to finish that story, but I did exactly that. Then as my wife was finishing up the daunting task of typing all my scribble on a now antique word processor, I took out some self-help books from the library. I began to write literary agents and publishers with "query" letters to see if they might be interested in my novel, expecting to get a then normal pink rejection slip or just a "rejection stamp" on the letter. Much to my surprise, time and time again I got back handwritten notes and actual letters of encouragement, saying that I had a great idea, but unfortunately not what they were looking for currently, and not to give up on it.
Then I got an actual request to send the entire manuscript to an agency in New York City named Macintosh & Otis. We had barely typed out one copy of it at that time, and I didn't have a copyright on it yet. The only Macintosh I had ever heard of made computers. So I told my wife, "I'm not sending my one and only copy to some fly- by-night company in NYC and have them steal it." I didn't send it and several years later we were driving by Park Avenue near Grand Central Station, and my wife said, "That's the building where that company that wanted your manuscript is located." I almost had a stroke, and said, "Are you kidding me! With an address like that they must be the biggest agents in New York!" They are, in fact they still represent the works of John Steinbeck! That was one of the dumbest decisions of my life!
It wasn't the only dumb decision I was to make however. In looking for a literary agent, we ending up sending it to someone whom I've only recently discovered tops the list of warnings on a website called, "Editors and Predators." Just as the warnings predict, he loved the story, but said it needed a little editing. He could however give me a break and give me a "teacher's discount". I paid a sizable amount for his services, which took the course of several years, and three rounds of editing. In fairness to him, (and no names mentioned here), he is a very good editor, and the book did need it. However he never was able to sell it, saying that it had become almost impossible to sell new fiction to publishers in the current market, (which there is some truth to these days.) He suggested I have it converted to a screenplay.
Not one to give up easily, I decided to convert the novel to a screenplay myself, ` (something that the agent offered to do for a fee amounting to the cost of a luxury car). After years of learning how to write a screenplay, I finally accomplished that, and began to contact screenplay agents and producers. Again I got the same response. Everyone loved the concept, but it's not exactly what they're looking for right now. That is something that still persists to this day.
Then I decided to convert the story to a TV Pilot. Again after a period of learning how to write a TV Pilot, I started trying to contact teleplay agents. This time the vice president of comedy at NBC asked to see it! However, even though she liked it, it wasn't what she was looking for at NBC for the upcoming season.
So after years of working at a story that I knew for a fact was a good one, I decided that I'd self-publish it with the new Print-On-Demand technology that has emerged. In fact my cousin, who is one of the top literary agents in New York, told me he couldn't sell fiction from an unknown author, but if I got enough sales from self-publishing, that big publishers would find me!
So that's what I've done, and that is how a professional musician came to write a novel. The story has more to it than you'll find in this first novel. It is really the first installment of a trilogy, which has much more teeth to it than this first part which familiarizes the characters and gets the story started. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. If I get enough responses to it from readers I will finish the next two sequels of the story. Writing a novel is an awful lot of work, and that's the easy part. Getting it sold and generating a following, is far, far more difficult, and is often not a talent that writers are blessed with. So I encourage you to write to me with any comment, questions or criticisms you may have. Hopefully MY saga will have a happy ending where the novel gets to the silver screen, because the whole story of how I came to write a novel has not ended as yet!