To your left is the front cover of what might be my final publication as just another failed fiction author wanting to humbly do that for a living. Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease I once heard some witty person claim (I'm not clever enough to think up something like that on my own). Well, the dying part may soon become true for me after life's adversities have only piled up enough in the past few years. I thought (perhaps foolishly) that after my Christian salvation experience of March or April 1997 I was given by God a new professional goal as my calling in life. Never having tried to write fiction prior to 1997 (apart from scenarios for role playing games which was good training to learn narrative story structure), it was an error-filled period that had some starts and stops until finishing my first novel in 2000 (after ten months work - I am currently converting that long horror novel into a trilogy, but may not finish the revision/conversion before my time on Earth ends - almost gotten book two completed as of this date) and three stories that same year (all since published in one form or another since November 2009). Gradually I completed more novels (usually in one to three months each - unlike the first one that took 10 months to finish as a rough draft) and have 11 finished with a few others to finish (now they may never be finished) and more short stories (even a few poems in the last few years in addition to some I wrote for fun back in the 1980s) - my most productive period during a period of formal unemployment benefits during late 2009 - mid 2011.
Now, I cannot afford to continue living in this world. My part-time job is a dead end joke where I only make $7.50 per hour (maybe a fifty-cent raise in two weeks - but again too little too late) but hate rejection with call center work contacts on the telephone that I only worked 20-hour weeks - much as I could stand - and now that I've been forced to work 30 hours this week, I don't have enough money for gasoline to keep a 15-year-old vehicle (getting a crappy 13 MPG now) taking me to work 19 miles each day. My writing doesn't sell much of the time, I don't know how to promote my career any further after embarrassments of imperfect books released too soon needing more editing than I realized or recognized to strangers as free copies. I don't have the time or money to go out and promote my books - and cannot get hardly any feedback from anyone who reads them (say for example writing even a brief few damned words at Amazon.com on any of the pages with my books sold there). And the only feedback I get here is when I write piss-and-moan columns about how much my love life sucks and predictably unhelpful trolls or well-meaning strangers only remind me how much of a loser I already think I am (based on a lifetime of negative experiences I remember far more vividly than any few or far between happy or good moments). Nothing you people say as feedback about my opinions matters any longer! I just realize all I say here as complaint only adds to my difficulties of shining as a writing talent (I know writing is what God called me to do after an experience two weeks ago, but He gives me no sufficient resources to realize this calling of course). This site and blog page are the dark side to my life, while The Many Worlds of John X. Grey is largely ignored as a platform of my writing career's accomplishments in a crowded cyberspace universe where uncounted millions of others do not stand out any more as writers than I've been able after 13-14 years of effort.
I don't know if I could persuade a burning person he/she needed the cold bucket of water I was holding out for dousing the fire. I'm just not a salesman and don't know how to work the writing markets to further my career. Hell, Absolute Write Water Cooler after some troll members complained I wasn't participating enough there and accused me of spamming (LIES - I'm just not much of a networker and will never have anything good to say about that evil echo chamber for some failed authors or pretentious literary authors trapped in academia's English Departments around the world) so I was banned. FUCK THEM ALL AND THOSE STAMPEDING HORSES THEY RODE IN ON! I've been called insane and other similar horrible names by respondents here, even though it may be possible I have had since birth a neurological condition called Asperger's Syndrome. This condition explains why I have few close friends left, only distant acquaintances otherwise, no wife or girlfriend in 27 years as a heterosexual adult, am very clumsy and uncoordinated, have a few narrow interests in life and don't seek out social situations due to extreme awkwardness in such situations. I am not suitable for people person jobs that the world offers me to earn money through, and cannot earn it doing any single thing I love - yes, the world is an imperfect place. So, my first short story collection (13 stories that were rejected three or more times each by various professional rate magazines or anthologies and the editors who believe my fiction work suck sweat off a dead man's testicles and 2 recent-vintage dark poems about my personal loneliness and one major heartbreak from almost 27 years ago) is out there on sale for $11.50 in paperback and will sink faster than a lead balloon among the glut of fiction books existing on the market with a whimper. And to you readers offering me advice - don't tell me I have to be a better businessman in the writing career. I can't do that - years of experience have already taught me I'm only an artist. Now that debts from last year I cannot pay are hounding me to death, life has become too much to suffer any longer. So what difference does it make John X. Grey's writing career will soon die an insignificant death along with the actual man behind it. Don't bother responding to this, folks. I've reached the point where I don't care any longer.
Now, I cannot afford to continue living in this world. My part-time job is a dead end joke where I only make $7.50 per hour (maybe a fifty-cent raise in two weeks - but again too little too late) but hate rejection with call center work contacts on the telephone that I only worked 20-hour weeks - much as I could stand - and now that I've been forced to work 30 hours this week, I don't have enough money for gasoline to keep a 15-year-old vehicle (getting a crappy 13 MPG now) taking me to work 19 miles each day. My writing doesn't sell much of the time, I don't know how to promote my career any further after embarrassments of imperfect books released too soon needing more editing than I realized or recognized to strangers as free copies. I don't have the time or money to go out and promote my books - and cannot get hardly any feedback from anyone who reads them (say for example writing even a brief few damned words at Amazon.com on any of the pages with my books sold there). And the only feedback I get here is when I write piss-and-moan columns about how much my love life sucks and predictably unhelpful trolls or well-meaning strangers only remind me how much of a loser I already think I am (based on a lifetime of negative experiences I remember far more vividly than any few or far between happy or good moments). Nothing you people say as feedback about my opinions matters any longer! I just realize all I say here as complaint only adds to my difficulties of shining as a writing talent (I know writing is what God called me to do after an experience two weeks ago, but He gives me no sufficient resources to realize this calling of course). This site and blog page are the dark side to my life, while The Many Worlds of John X. Grey is largely ignored as a platform of my writing career's accomplishments in a crowded cyberspace universe where uncounted millions of others do not stand out any more as writers than I've been able after 13-14 years of effort.
I don't know if I could persuade a burning person he/she needed the cold bucket of water I was holding out for dousing the fire. I'm just not a salesman and don't know how to work the writing markets to further my career. Hell, Absolute Write Water Cooler after some troll members complained I wasn't participating enough there and accused me of spamming (LIES - I'm just not much of a networker and will never have anything good to say about that evil echo chamber for some failed authors or pretentious literary authors trapped in academia's English Departments around the world) so I was banned. FUCK THEM ALL AND THOSE STAMPEDING HORSES THEY RODE IN ON! I've been called insane and other similar horrible names by respondents here, even though it may be possible I have had since birth a neurological condition called Asperger's Syndrome. This condition explains why I have few close friends left, only distant acquaintances otherwise, no wife or girlfriend in 27 years as a heterosexual adult, am very clumsy and uncoordinated, have a few narrow interests in life and don't seek out social situations due to extreme awkwardness in such situations. I am not suitable for people person jobs that the world offers me to earn money through, and cannot earn it doing any single thing I love - yes, the world is an imperfect place. So, my first short story collection (13 stories that were rejected three or more times each by various professional rate magazines or anthologies and the editors who believe my fiction work suck sweat off a dead man's testicles and 2 recent-vintage dark poems about my personal loneliness and one major heartbreak from almost 27 years ago) is out there on sale for $11.50 in paperback and will sink faster than a lead balloon among the glut of fiction books existing on the market with a whimper. And to you readers offering me advice - don't tell me I have to be a better businessman in the writing career. I can't do that - years of experience have already taught me I'm only an artist. Now that debts from last year I cannot pay are hounding me to death, life has become too much to suffer any longer. So what difference does it make John X. Grey's writing career will soon die an insignificant death along with the actual man behind it. Don't bother responding to this, folks. I've reached the point where I don't care any longer.