No Longer Lurking!

Hi Everyone,

I’m glad to finally take the next step on this wonderful site and start contributing. For over a year I have visited these great pages for everything from writing advice to query sampling and have never been disappointed. I have used your many listings to help cull my considerable line up of potential literary agents down to the precise few I finally submitted to.

I now find myself on the other side of those submissions; 20 form rejections in hand, wondering if my 110K word novel should be re-written for the fourth time, or, if I should just finally take the leap and start anew.

Perhaps one of the reasons I didn’t fare so well my first go around was because I didn’t embrace the community, a community of quirky, odd, lovable, facetious, and ultimately very intelligent people that, through my lurking, have repeatedly proven to me to want nothing more than success for everyone.

My quick bio:
English Lit Bachelor’s from St Joseph’s College
I currently work on the management side of consumer cosmetics, marketing and space planning (Read: about as far away from the written word as an aspiring author can find himself).
I am very ready for a career change, and would love for my new destination to reside somewhere in writing’s sphere of influence. Unfortunately I fear, at times, this will no longer be possible given my success in other fields. I also work/commute roughly 65 hours a week and have a growing family, so I find my time to write shrink more with every passing month (I know, not an excuse!!).

My aforementioned novel is entitled On the Button and is a contemporary crime piece set in modern day Atlantic City. It is completed, and polished, and apparently, very hard to get a first reading for.

I have also recently launched a crime-fiction/webcomic themed website. www.thisdesperatecity.com
My hope here is to find an outlet for my creative energies, while still pursuing actually being paid for a gig at some point before I die. The site is home to my main webcomic story, aptly named This Desperate City but it also has a prose section, under the stories header, that follows the exploits of a private detective exclusive to the mob named Stuart Hardwell.

Shameless plugs aside, I am very happy to join this board and, while my posts may be late at night and only filled with my limited knowledge of this art, I hope on some level I can connect with all of the great people here.

Thanks for reading!

Thank you all for the warm welcome!
Duncable: you're right, a year was way too long to lurk. I've never been much of a message board person, and didn't think I had much to add. Trying to get over that fear now.

MaureenA: Yes, I do all of the webcomic and content by myself. I've recently downgraded from two comic updates a week to just one to reduce some of the workload. Thank you for the kind words here, I really enjoy doing it.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to read my intro. Can't wait to start giving back to this great site.