Thank you for your support

I just wanted to start this out by thanking everyone who has bought or read one or both of my books. For the rest of you: What's taking you?

Both books are offered on Amazon, and the first one is available in other formats at just about all online book sellers. And because of the ease of self-publishing, now even you can feel like a movie mogul. I say this because I've become obsessed with my numbers. At least three time a day, I'll log onto Amazon and see how many people have bought my books. Now I know how Speilberg must feel on an opening weekend. Well, maybe it's not the same, but I do get a bit of an ego boost when I see I've moved some books.

I'd share those numbers with you, but one of the things I've learned about talking with other writer friends is to never reveal how your books are doing. I'm not sure why, but in comparison to someone like Stephen King or Dan Brown, my sales are very modest. In terms of my own expectations, it's still modest, but I should be able to make back the cash I've put into getting my own book out there. (Not counting the time I spent, I'll never get that time back.)

What I'm getting though, is much better. I've been getting a lot of support, words of kindness and sometimes exclamations of surprise. I'll get astonished “This is really good!” from some folks who expected something crappy. You might be saying to yourself, “Rory, they're lying to you.” Well, folks, I can tell when someone is lying. After years as a journalist, I can pretty much tell when someone is giving me the business. That was a skill developed over my years as an actor.

Friends would come back stage after seeing me in a play to tell me how wonderful I was. I could tell though – as an actor, I was marginal at best. This isn't to say I'm now this wonderful writer – I know I'm not. But I'm working at it and I appreciate those of you offering your words of support and spending your hard earned money on my books.

I've got two out now, and hope to have a collection of the columns I've written for the newspaper over the years to be out later this year. I anticipate that my third novel, which I'm working on right now, will be completed by the end of the year. I'm debating whether to go down the traditional publishing path with it or just self-publish again. I've finished a rough draft and it's a pretty decent story, with lots of potential. We'll see when its ready for some first readers.

Speaking of which, I will be looking for people who are interested in helping on a first reading, to give their impression on what works and what doesn't. Yeah, I know, I should just join a writers group for that kind of thing. Those groups are fine but usually find myself cast in a self-imposed editor role and get little of my own stuff done.

Again, thank you everyone for your support.