“Would you like to have Santa come down your filthy chimney?” That was the heading on a flyer I made for my company “The Flue Bug Chimney Sweep” in 1982. It became the thought that prompted my writing of The Climbing Boy.

As tedious as writing, re-writing and self-editing may be I found these to be the simple, the fun, the enjoyable parts of writing.

In 1984, after finishing the rewriting and self-editing, I began the task of finding an agent or a publisher for The Climbing Boy and The Writer’s Market became my bible

After hundreds upon hundreds of queries, each including a "SASE", a self -addressed, stamped envelope (this was before my time with computers), and after receiving hundreds upon hundreds of rejections, I discovered the 'Catch-22' of the publishing industry: agents will not look at a new writer unless he/she has been published, and publishers will not look at a new writer unless he/she has an agent.

But I had discovered that writing had become a very enjoyable and important part of my life. So as I continued to look for an agent or a publisher for The Climbing Boy, in 1986 I began Captain Midnight and the Toothpaste Thief, which I later renamed Becoming.

Lo and behold, after twenty-two years of trying and never giving up The Climbing Boy was published in 2004. Four years later, Becoming was published and two years afterwards, For Better or Worse was published in 2010.

To further add to the rewards of "never giving up," a option contract was drawn and signed between, Mechnology, a Burbank, California production company and myself in November of 2009 for a film production of The Climbing Boy with the thought of making my novel into an everlasting, ongoing Christmas classic.