Where on earth do I start?

So, I finally got my marks back from the creative writing course at UWS Dumfries, and I must admit I was very chuffed, 2 A's and a B1 can't complain about that at all, go me :)

Now it's time to start some real work, where do I start my quest to publish my first e-book using Kindle Direct Publishing.  So firstly, no pens or laptops just thinking, you know that thing you do when your girlfriend and youngest child are out for the day, and your oldest son has locked himself in his room playing his X-Box.

In my mind it's important to have a theme for any anthology of stories, it could be as random as three flavours of Cornetto (thanks @SimonPegg, @NickJFrost), a book of Stories by Scottish authors (you know I had to say that) or the principle antagonist in your series of books, thanks Jim Butcher (@longshotauthor) for the amazing Harry Dresden Stories.

A theme gives you boundaries, so your readers are not wondering where your short stories are going. As an author it also keeps your thought processes focused and gives you an outline to build your anthology within.  As I am going to be writing all the stories in this book, I don't want to use different genres.  So my plan is to write a series of short stories from the world I developed for my novel.  I call it the Wylds.  I'll post more about the Wylds in a few weeks.

Now I have a theme for my anthology it's time to start thinking about the stories.

So it begins...

After successfully completing a University of West Scotland summer course in Creative Writing, spending two years of my life writing my first novel; yes two years.  During which time I was also attending a writers group in my local town of Dumfries, immersing myself into the world of being a writer.

I had some burning questions in my own mind that needed to be answered;

• Where do I go from here?
• Should I try to get interest from a publisher for my novel or my RPG works?
• In reality do I have a chance of getting my work published?
• Is it actually any good?
• Where on earth did those two years go?

I will say now; I am not new to writing, for the past 20 years I have developed and ran RPG (Role-Playing Game) adventures for my friends using Dungeons and Dragons, White Wolf and Savage Worlds game systems. However, I still needed some help to answer these questions.  So I did what most people from my generation do, I Googled it.  Before that one click that lost me several evenings of my life that I would never get back, I had foolishly thought that I had the main questions in hand; How wrong was I.

After much deliberation, RSI in my hand from mouse clicking, and quite probably a change in my spectacles prescription from peering at a computer screen for days on end.  I decided I would attempt to publish a small book of short stories through kindle digital publishing and harness the power of social media services like Facebook and Twitter to market and promote my work.

So, what I propose to do with this blog is document the steps I have to go through, my successes and failures.  Hopefully convincing anybody that happens along with the same questions as I have, that it isn't an impossible dream, if you want to write and publish, with some hard work and conviction, you can do it too.

The chances are if you like your stories then there are other people in the world that will like them, which means you already have a fan base, you just have to find them.