Publishing First Books
A literay aquaintance received copies of his first novel and turned 30 at the same time -- he blogs about it here. His excitement in this double milestone moment (first book, turning 30) reminded me of some things...things in the past now...and made me think...my first novel came out when I was 27: The Naughty Yard (San Francisco: Permeable Press, 1994). 
I felt it was somewhat late for a first novel, that I should have done that at aorund age 19-23 (and came close a few times), but stopped writing for a few years when I was playing in a band, and then only writing poetry and stories because I didn't have the time or focus for a novel. Actually, my first novel was really a 25,000 word novella, and I had submitted it to Puck Magazine, run by an old friend, to excerpt, and he decided to issue it as a book -- it was the third book his press had put out (the second was Lance Olsen's Tonguiing the Zeitgeist, published at the same time as mine) and this old friend was still green at being a publihser, and possibly disapponted in the realities of small press obscurity. The fact is, if he had not been an old friend, whom I knew back when I was 18-19 and a small press zine publisher myself, I doubt anyone would have publioshed this novella, altough it did get some attention and was reprinted in full in Maxim Jakubowki's The Mammoth Book of International Erotica, where it has been read by many more people than those who bought/got the little paperback).
I published three more books before I reached 30. It wasn't much, but better than nothing. I wasn't making any real money from them -- I didn't start making a living wage from the books until 1999.
Will I ever catch that feeling of the first novel again? I doubt it. It was close with my first commercial novel, Wild Turkey (Forge, 2001) and maybe if it had not flopped commercially (tho did have 3 movie options) it would have lasted longer...the feeling came close with my first prioduced full length play and my first feature film...
It also has occurred to me that during each of these milestones, I either had no one in my life to share it with, or they were writers and were jealous, or they were non-writers and didn't think much of it. Such things are left to be a solitary experience, I suppose.
I felt it was somewhat late for a first novel, that I should have done that at aorund age 19-23 (and came close a few times), but stopped writing for a few years when I was playing in a band, and then only writing poetry and stories because I didn't have the time or focus for a novel. Actually, my first novel was really a 25,000 word novella, and I had submitted it to Puck Magazine, run by an old friend, to excerpt, and he decided to issue it as a book -- it was the third book his press had put out (the second was Lance Olsen's Tonguiing the Zeitgeist, published at the same time as mine) and this old friend was still green at being a publihser, and possibly disapponted in the realities of small press obscurity. The fact is, if he had not been an old friend, whom I knew back when I was 18-19 and a small press zine publisher myself, I doubt anyone would have publioshed this novella, altough it did get some attention and was reprinted in full in Maxim Jakubowki's The Mammoth Book of International Erotica, where it has been read by many more people than those who bought/got the little paperback).
I published three more books before I reached 30. It wasn't much, but better than nothing. I wasn't making any real money from them -- I didn't start making a living wage from the books until 1999.
Will I ever catch that feeling of the first novel again? I doubt it. It was close with my first commercial novel, Wild Turkey (Forge, 2001) and maybe if it had not flopped commercially (tho did have 3 movie options) it would have lasted longer...the feeling came close with my first prioduced full length play and my first feature film...
It also has occurred to me that during each of these milestones, I either had no one in my life to share it with, or they were writers and were jealous, or they were non-writers and didn't think much of it. Such things are left to be a solitary experience, I suppose.