the publishing industry sucked right now for new writers.  (So what's new huh?) 

"right now"...? LOL

I vaguely remember reading that a lot of publishers aren't looking for trilogies from new writers. Of course, it's been six or seven years since I was last involved with the publishing business, though I'm sure some things don't change all that much. (see above )

I've also heard to go 'by the word' rather than 'by the page' since pagination can be vastly different between word processors. (MS Word breaks one file down to 220 pages, while Pages has it at 230. That's pulled from an RTF of the project from Scrivener, and the word count is the same.)

Rob, I put a follow on your blog, why isn't it under your name?  And I start from the back right?  I think mine is under meg_evonne, but I don't post there, I just post once in awhile. 

Yes, the beginning of the tale is at the end of the blog, with the newest installment towards the "top."

[Charles Barkley] "Hey guys, can I play, too?" [/Charles Barkley]

“'Beth' is a normal name,” he said. “Don’t you like it? Would you rather be called ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lizzie’? I don’t know about ‘Lizzie’… it sounds like something green and scaly.”

Beth sighed, then flopped over on her back. “I would love to be an ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lisa’… I’d even settle for a green, scaly ‘Lizzie’ but thats not what I was named for.”

Jack thought for several moments, but couldn’t come up with any other amalgamations of names he’d ever heard that would yield up a shorter ‘Beth.’

“You won’t think of any others,” she said. “I told you, it isn’t normal.”

“Then why did you tell me to guess?”

She sat up, and her green eyes held Jack for a very long moment. “If you’d gotten it on the first or second guess, then I’d know that you weren’t normal,” she finally said.

“Great,” he muttered. “So I’m normal. What of it?”

She smiled. “Normal is good. I don’t get nearly enough of it.”

“You look normal to me,” Jack said. “Even if you do dress kind of funny.”

“This is all we have unpacked right now. The rest of my stuff is all boxed up and buried.”

They sat in silence, the girl staring at the sky, which was going from blue to deeper blue of late evening. The boy stared at the girl, the fine lines of her face starting to stand out in the deeper light of evening, the lashes drinking in the shadows, making her eyes seem wider, larger than they had in the afternoon.

“So if I’m never going to guess it, are you going to tell me?” Jack said, still turning names over in his head. Lizbeth, maybe. That was strange.

“They say that knowing something’s name gives you power over it,” she murmured.

“What kind of power?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. Power. Like…” her voice trailed off as she thought. “Like.. When you’re in trouble and your mom calls you by your full name.”

Jack shuddered. “Yeah,” he said. “That's power, all right.”

I'd ask ya'll to be gentle... but will settle for only half-rotten tomatos being thrown my way

I don't know that I consider myself an author, as much as I do a writer. In my brain, authors write with publishing in mind -- I just write to write, and have been doing so ever since I can remember.

In school, I wrote mainly for my D&D campaign, adventures, adventure logs, bits and pieces of "history," that sort of stuff. I wrote a few other things in my later high school years, and my senior year English teacher strongly advised that I attend a summer writing workshop, which I did, and have not regretted.

When I reached college, I studied journalism and creative writing, and wrote what I think is my most powerful short story ever -- I finally screwed up the courage to post it online on AOL back in the day, and it was the most downloaded story in the Writers Club's file libraries. Ahh, the good ol' days.... Sadly, when my HD got reformatted some years ago, I lost the manuscript.

I recently got back into writing after a long dry spell, busy with living life, buying a house, losing a great job and having to find another. The stories have percolated in the ol' head for five or six years, and finally found a couple outlets. I don't know if I should hug my sister or not for her nagging me, once a month or so, to "post the next section!"

There are links to the two stories I've been picking away at down there in the sig.

And if anyone downloaded a story called "Darkest Road Yet Travelled" an age and a half ago from an AOL file library, please send me a copy!

Thinking on the "Go team Dresden!" idea...

I'd like to see that, with "Dresden" crossed out, and "Murphy" scrawled in above or below.

"Murphy, you rock! Go team Dresden!"
"Hey, I'm the one who rocks. Go team Murphy."