Five years ago today, Ever The Hero came out.

How has it been five years? Nearly a decade passed from when I first had the idea for the book to when it finally hit the shelves. For a long time, I never thought I’d finish it.

I never thought I’d write a book again.

It is 2010. I am a supervisor in a call center for a major mortgage company. It is the depths of the housing crisis. It is the absolute pits for me. I sold my first novel in 2006. The expectation was it would appear in 2007 or 2008. 2011 arrived before I did to the realization the book was never coming out. The experience utterly paralyzed me. I desperately tried to write, but I couldn’t finish anything. I read an article in 2010 or 2011 in which firefighters stand idly by and watch a man’s home burn. Instantly, this idea occurred to me.

What if you didn’t pay your superhero bill?

Years passed trying to craft the story, beset by paralysis in my life and writing. A lot happened in between. My father died. I left my job. I moved to Ireland. There, I finally finished a book, and that unlocked what would be Ever The Hero. It was still a long road to publishing the book in 2020. It’s been a long road since.

Ever The Hero has changed my life.

Its success has allowed me to meet wonderful people, do interviews on podcasts and YouTube channels, exhibit at cons, and do panels and workshops. I am thankful. I am grateful. And I am keenly aware that even in the darkest moments, you can’t know how things will turn out.

Thank you all for helping make this book and my dreams come true.

To celebrate the anniversary, I am planning a deluxe collector’s edition of the book with some nice bells and whistles. This will be a Kickstarter campaign hopefully later in the year. In the meantime, please follow my upcoming campaign for a new, standalone novel!