The front page on my site tells you about several novels I have in progress. The good news, they are on the way. The bad news, while one may be published in 2020, the others might be further down the road.
Such is the writing game. It’s hyper-competitive. I recommend that if you want to be a writer, make the decision at the age of six, then commit to it in full and get your first draft out at age nine. If it’s a novel with a nine-point arc, and characters who are consistent throughout, whoever you sent your query package to will be completely glad to publish whatever drivel you came up with between Chapter One and the The End.
Other than that, if you do it any older, you need to accept that no matter how good you are at your craft, no matter how much editors, critics, and your fellow writers love your work, someone way up above has a different agenda at hand, and while your story fits a certain premise, it likely doesn’t follow the day’s trendiest stereotypes and biases. You know, those things the media is supposedly tearing down on our behalf, but are surely doubling down on them when it comes to a project making money……yay!
To that end, I have start writing a series of short stories, prose, and even opinion pieces for a yet to named title of my own, which is intended to provide much needed to support to C.O.P.S. For those that don’t know, C.O.P.S. stands for Concerns Of Police Survivors, it’s an organization that supports those that have lost loved ones to line of duty deaths, by assisting them with paperwork for funerals, benefits, estate law, as well as trauma counseling. They also do a fair bit of lobbying for the same topics, and then some. And still, that’s not all that they do.
I’m probably not doing enough to describe how great a cause this organization is, so check them out here: Concerns Of Police Survivors
You may hate law enforcement, you may think that there are officers not held accountable for poor behavior and performance. Regardless of them, the officers that have died deserve our recognition, for they were performing the job on our behalf, and they paid a dear price for doing so. However, what is rarely discussed is that families of these officers lost pay a dear price as well. And it is through COPS, that many resources are directed at helping these families through their most difficult time.
I will keep you updated as this project comes together, it’s very beginning stages, and while I wait out the clock on my novels, I figure it’s time to keep my pen hand moving.
Matthew Ballantyne 