Let's get started!

It sure is neat how things can work out. One night you're playing on the computer, shooting bad guys in the head with a sawed-off shotgun, then before you know it you're changing diapers at three in the morning. What the heck just happened here? Where did the last six years go?

I'm sure everybody goes through this seemingly cliche moment in their lives. For me, it was when my wife and I had our third child. It started to dawn on me (finally) that perhaps I needed to change my "hobby" to something else. So I retired my PC - much to the delight of my wife - and bought a couple laptops for us.

Then something very unusual happened to me. It was like a part of my brain was lying dormant, paralyzed from the mind-numbing hacking and slashing and shooting that had been part of my recreation time for so long. And it woke up. Big time.

If you were to ask any of my family members or loved ones about me, they might politely say that I have a unique sense of humor or imagination. Now suddenly this mind of mine needed to focus its thoughts on something new. Enter book writing. To borrow a line from the movie "Pulp Fiction", I had "what alcoholics commonly refer to as a moment of clarity". Suddenly I had all these ideas for stories popping into my head that I had to start writing them down so as not to forget. Granted, I'm in the infancy stage of writing, but the process so far has been so freeing and exciting.

Here's the funny part. I'm not even a reader really. I'm going on 34, and in my entire lifetime, I've read maybe 20 books from front to back. That's it! And J.K. Rowling was responsible for seven of those by herself, yikes. So how am I supposed to write anything? I think that's irrelevant really. If you have a great story, just find a great editor, that's what I say.

So you can imagine how happy and encouraged I was when I starting my research for young-adult fiction writing. I was assaulted with terms like "chick-lit" and covers of books with high-heeled shoes, and lipstick, and bikinis, and pink stuff, and frilly things, and teddy bears, and flowers, and puppies, and lipstick (did I already say lipstick?), and ponies, and Barbie dolls. O.k., maybe not Barbie dolls, but I think you get my point.

So this is my mission: to write books for girls and boys to enjoy equally. Can it be done? I think it can. Harry Potter everyone. Our boys are out there, I know it. I'm raising three myself. Video games are always getting better and faster and gorier, books need to keep our boys attention and get better too. So let's get started. Help me maybe not squash the "chick-lit" trend, but to at least give it a run. Let's come up with a quick phrase for boys literature (and not boys-lit, o.k.).

I know that I'll keep writing my stories until they're done, and hopefully I'll be able to share them with everyone one day. That's my dream. Sorry, that last part was really sappy.... CURSE YOU CHICK-LIT!