In my 20s, while researching how to becoming a novelist, I read the memoirs of Steven King and Kurt Vonnegut. They laid out a path that doesn't thrive as it used to -- successfully publishing small pieces in literary magazines until you build the cred for an agent to take a risk on your novel.
C.S. Lewis and John Gardner presented another path, that of academics who also happen to write books while teaching. This aparently had worked for the lecturers of my 2007 creative writing graduate program. They ended the final term by bringing in agents and publishers who told us their clients needed day jobs.
But the self-publishing boom was just around the corner. These newly minted authors could sometimes even put their children through college -- maybe with monster-lover novels. So, with my background in self-produced podcasts, student theater, and writing professionally for marketing and admin, I decided the best way to share my stories was to carve out my own path.
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