Halloween Week: Guest Blogger David B. Coe

UPDATE: The winner of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE by David B. Coe is Kate Pearce!

This week we're celebrating Halloween with an awesome line-up of guest bloggers, including David B. Coe, Chloe Neill, Marilyn Brant, Robin Owens and P.N. Elrod. As part of the celebration the authors are giving away signed copies of their books and TKA is hosting a special scavenger hunt! Who says you have to be a 9 year old dressed up as a G.I. Joe or "Balloon Boy" to have a good time?

There are TWO ways to win. Each day this week (Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30th) a guest blogger will give away a signed book to one person randomly chosen from the comment section. Also, at the bottom of the post there will be a scavenger hunt question. The answer can be located somewhere on the author's website. Send in all 5 correct answers* to the scavenger hunt questions, and you will be entered in a drawing to win a $50 Visa gift card!!! We're sure that will come in handy as the holidays approach. Without further ado, welcome our first guest blogger, author David B. Coe!
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Halloween. We think of ghouls, of jack-o-lanterns, of ghost stories. But there’s another side to dressing up and taking on a different persona for a few hours.

I remember how, as a kid, I used to get so excited about my costume (and, yes, about the prospect of gobs and gobs of candy). I’d spend a couple of weeks trying to come up with a costume idea; I’d consider different possibilities, and talk to my friends about what they were going to be. I’m a Dad now, and I’ve seen my daughters do the same thing. I usually wound up with costumes like “baseball player” or “astronaut” or “fireman”, just as my kids have been “dancers” and “soccer players”. And watching my girls this time of year, I’ve come to realize that these can be more than just identities taken on for a night -- sometimes they represent dreams of possible futures. Certainly they did for me.

The thing is, though, I never dressed up as “a professional writer.” Few kids do. First of all, I’m not sure what that costume would look like. Sweats and a t-shirt? Pajamas and slippers? Jeans and a flannel shirt (my personal favorite)? But more to the point, writing isn’t a career about which most kids dream. Adults, on the other hand, are another story. I know lots of people who would give all that they own to be published authors. I recall feeling the same way when I was starting out. And I remember some advice from my father-in-law that has stayed with me for the past fifteen years.
He’s a farmer, and has been pretty successful at it over the years. But when he first decided to buy a farm, after a long career as a Navy pilot, he wasn’t sure he could make a living working the land. His friends told him he was nuts even to try. “So I bought a cow,” he told me. “I bought a cow because that’s what farmers did. And then I started to think of myself as a farmer. Once I did that, it didn’t matter what other people thought or said. I was a farmer.”

After speaking with him, I tried to do the same thing, and it worked for me, too. No, I didn’t buy a cow. I got myself some reference books, set up my office the way I thought a writer should, and I put my butt in the chair every day and began to write short stories about the characters I intended to use in my first novel. Because that’s what writers do: They write. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t sold my first book yet. It didn’t matter that many in my family and some of my friends thought I was crazy to give up my academic career to write fantasy. What did matter was that I had started to think of myself as a writer; I had started to believe that I could fulfill my dream of being published.

Okay, at this point maybe you’re thinking that it’s a long way from a baseball player costume to a cow to a writing career. But really, it’s not as far as you think. Just as my father-in-law’s cow got him to start farming, thinking of myself as a writer made me sit down at my computer each morning and write; the short stories I produced that first summer gave me the confidence to begin my novel; two years later that novel was published by Tor Books. And ten books later, I’ve got the career of which I dreamed and I’m still sitting down to write every morning.

It’s often said that dreams are powerful things. In my experience, belief is even stronger. So if you want to write, stop dreaming and start believing. Put on your writing costume, whatever that might be, get whatever props will make you feel more like an author, and write. I can’t guarantee that it will get you published, but it’s worth a try, right?

Oh, and one more thing about costumes. Several years back, when my younger daughter was in kindergarten, her school had a dress-up day: Come as your favorite book character or author. She put on jeans and a flannel shirt, used burnt cork to give herself a beard, borrowed an old pair of glasses (with the lenses removed, of course). And she went as me. To this day, it might well be the proudest moment of my career.

Coming in February 2010:

THE DARK-EYES' WAR, Book III of Blood of the Southlands (Tor Books)
THE HORSEMAN'S GAMBIT, Book II of Blood of the Southlands (Tor Books -- mass market reissue)

http://www.DavidBCoe.com
http://DavidBCoe.livejournal.com
http://MagicalWords.net


SCAVENGER HUNT QUESTION (1 of 5): What is the opening line of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE by David B. Coe?

Also remember that you can win twice! Collect the scavenger hunt answers, and also leave a comment to enter a random drawing for a signed copy of THE SORCERERS' PLAGUE, Book One in the BLOOD OF THE SOUTHLANDS series! The winner of David's book will be announced in this post tomorrow morning.

*Please note, that the correct answers to the scavenger hunt questions must be sent in at one time. You must collect all 5 answers and send them in one email. Entries for the scavenger hunt will be accepted from Friday, October 30th thru Sunday, November 1st at midnight. The winner will be announed on this blog Monday, November 2nd, 2009. If you have any questions about this contest, please contact contests(AT)knightagency.net.