On my fiftieth birthday, I had a few beers and wondered what to do after I quit my job as a sales manager in Manhattan. I know it was only a matter of time until my employer told me to take a walk so I could give my office to a younger person. So now was the time to do a little planning.

I decided to become a fiction writer. I had always liked to write, so this seemed like a good option. To prepare for my new career, I began writing stories on the bus while traveling to Manhattan. At that point in my writing career, I didn’t realize I knew shit about writing fiction (I have an engineering degree), but that didn’t stop me from writing things on the bus that turned out to be almost illegible due to the terrible conditions. . of New Jersey and New York highways.

My writing at the time was unfocused and didn’t really belong to any one genre and was often mixes of various genres. In addition to writing on the bus, I bought several books on writing. Most of the material in the books was incomprehensible to me at the time. Later, the books began to make sense.

Over time, several turning points occurred that influenced my new career. The first was the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Once I read that, I knew what I wanted to write: humorous and satirical science fiction stories, later expanded to include fantasy. The second big turning point came when a web search turned up an online review group called Critters. i joined Critters allowed a story of mine to be critiqued after I had critiqued a certain number of other members’ stories. Both criticizing and being criticized was a revelation. As an example of my sorry state of ignorance at the time, one reviewer pointed out that my current story had POV violations. To which I replied, “What is a POV?”

One day a few years later, my corporation came up with an early retirement plan. I qualified and the offer was quite lucrative in my case. I jumped on it and started writing in my new home office instead of on buses.

After writing and reviewing many science fiction and fantasy stories, I sold my first story. The magazine was a mess: a hand-drawn cover, photocopied and stapled pages. On the other hand, my story was just as bad, a fact I didn’t realize until several years later. So the publisher and I ended up even.

The Critters experience allowed me to eventually sell over 40 short stories on paid markets. But then something strange happened. A short story was turned into a novel and I couldn’t figure out how it happened. My next story became an even longer novel. After reflecting on what was going on, I realized that my characters had become more complex and my plots more convoluted, making the stories unsuitable for the short story format. My next story attempt was long enough to qualify as a novella. It was then that I realized that my career as a short story writer was over: I was a novelist, for better or for worse.

Soon, I sold a novel to a small independent publisher. That was followed by an anthology of short stories from the same publisher. Publishing a book was another turning point as big as reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide. It led to a decision to self-publish. But that’s a story for another day.

I have been writing fiction for over twenty years and have enjoyed it immensely. The reason I keep writing humorous and satirical genre stories is because I love inventing weird plots and characters. And I love to entertain people with my shops.