Hi Action-Adventure fans! If your reading this you now know this is my first blog on my new website. Been needing to create this platform page for a long time now. I have been using my author FaceBook page as my blog to track my progress in becoming a published successful author. Notice how I put "successful" in front of author. Because to me, this is a powerful dream to make my creative writing something that pays as a full-time business. Yes, it is a business. All successful authors are successful business people. They have learned to make their passion, their living. That is what I have always pushed for myself and now my girls. I have been in the Powersports business now for over 35 years. Overall I have been successful, it has been my passion and has paid well over the years allowing us to live and travel the way we wanted to. "But", I have always longed for more. Wanting to use my creative juices into something that could give me residual income and allow me to travel even more with my beautiful wife and girls so we could all continue to experience the world.
As I learn more and more about this business the more I want to do it. The freedom to work from anywhere in the world and use my travels as my influence in my writing compels me to push even harder to make this work. So just getting published, while nice for the ego, is not the endgame. Successfully making an income from it is the key. If I could start to bring in real income from this endeavor, then I could back off more from the hourly job and spend more time writing. I know that if I had more time to write my amount of writing would be incredible. I have an abundance of ideas for stories in my head and want to share them all with the world. As a pantser, I write letting the story take me where it wants to. I love the research side of the story, and hope one day to share my journey of success by telling anyone interested in the great art of storytelling and putting it on paper, to just do it. Don't listen to anyone but yourself. Put in the time, don't put up excuses, If I can work 55-60 hrs per week, and still find the time to write and research the craft, you can too.
If you're interested in my past trials and tribulations before I got to this point, just go onto my author facebook page found @KRDunnAction. The link is also
on my homepage. I have been using it as my blog up until this point. Now I hope to put it here first and then share it onto my FB page. All the experts say how critical it is that every author who wants success to have an author platform. In other words a website and social media presence. Well, I have the social media presence on both FB and Twitter, but I needed a website that now I finally have created here. I hope to share inspiration and influences here on my site that I learn along the way, and those challenges any new author faces. No sugar coating it, just honesty.
Looking past the dream I understand it takes a lot of work to become a successful author. Already I am now nearing 2 years from when I first started writing my first novel. The first draft was the easy part really (I was lucky, for many, it is the hardest part), but being a newbie, the rest became the work. Attending numerous critique groups, sometimes several each month after work or on Sundays when I was off, finding Beta Readers who genuinely cared enough to read sections and offer honest opinions, and learning a tremendous amount during my line editing time both on my own and with my editor. I learned how I sucked with point of view and was notorious for info-dumping and in so losing the reader. Many times after numerous edits I felt confident going into a critique only to have your heart wrenched out when it was marked up from beginning to end with things they didn't like. You pour your heart and soul into your writing, especially your first novel, so you have to have thick skin when getting it critiques and just think of it all as an education. I have now finished my 11th draft as I write this, and all the chapters have been handed over to my fantastic editor Marrisa Stevens. One could not find a more diligent editor who has the patience to explain and educate at the same time. I hope to one day write her a big fat check if "we" get published in my appreciation. Her encouragement and information have been invaluable to me.
So I hope my website and this blog bring you comfort and that you will take the journey with me to becoming a successful author. Thank you for reading and I hope this inspires you to go after your dream!