I just got some new business cards and it makes me think of the journey my first book traveled. This first solid draft was finished in 2006. I then spent a couple years sending it to publishers and agents accumulating the stereotypical drawer full of rejections. My break happened at a gallery show of my wife's art in Ballard. The gallery owner had a friend in the publishing business- Harry Kirchner. He asked to see the book, liked it and asked if he could show it to some friends (basically acting as an unpaid agent). A couple years later I was deployed with my Battalion in Mississippi getting ready for Afghanistan when I got an email from Jarret and Aaron at Dark Coast Press. They wanted to publish it and it came out in the fall of 2013. Unfortunately Dark Coast has since gone out of business. I got the rights back and put out an electronic version. It was a long road before I held my own book in my hands.