Hello. My name is Kirk Watson, and I’m a writer.

Or at least that’s the dream. I mean, I am a writer, but not professionally. Not yet, anyway. Unless you count writing software. That’s what I currently do for a living. But at night and on weekends, I write fiction.

I’m in the process of finishing my first novel, The Woodlander. What’s it about? I’m glad you asked. I like to describe it as a cross between The Wind in the Willows and The Most Dangerous Game…

That still doesn’t help? Okay, fine. The Woodlander is a fantasy adventure novel for young adults set in Victorian-era Woodland, a mythical place where talking animals live peacefully together. But life in Woodland isn’t a fairy tale. Woodland has a dark side–some of its less desirable citizens have been disappearing, kidnapped from their homes, never to be seen again. When our hero, a squirrel named John Grey, sets out to investigate, he too is kidnapped, and soon finds himself in a fight for his life!

That’s just a quick description and, quite frankly, not a very good synopsis. We’ll work on that later–we’ll need it for the query letter! But don’t worry, I’ll get to it, and when I do, I’ll take you along for the ride.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you why I’m here. The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my quest to get published. Like many of you, I find the whole process to be quite mysterious. I think of all the authors I admire, and I wonder, “How did they get started?”

And I don’t mean in a vague, one-paragraph bio sense. I want to know the nitty-gritty details. Where did the idea first come from? How did they start writing their first book? What is their writing process? How long did it take to finish the first draft? Just how did they get an agent?

And I’ll dive even deeper. For example, I read Stephen King uses a Mac. Well, I want to know what model exactly? What word processing software does he use? What’s his backup solution, and has he ever had to use it?

I’ll be sharing all these tidbits from my own personal experience as I go through this process, sometimes in excruciating detail. And if I leave anything out, feel free to ask.

Why this level of detail? I guess I just find it fascinating, and I hope you do, too!