How I got here, Part 1: The Birth of Jimmy Fincher

My story began on November 26th, 1972 in a small town west of Atlanta called Austell. There, on a frigid night, the humid air biting like razor-tipped icicles....

Wait. Maybe that's starting too far back along the old Dashner Dude timeline. After all, I couldn't even speak or utilize the toilet facilities back then, let alone write stories. Let's jump ahead about twenty-five years.

Toward the end of my college days at BYU, where for some inexplicable reason I studied accounting, I had a sudden and overwhelming urge to write stories. I'd always loved to read, obsessively, and had dabbled in writing here and there. But in 1998, the bug bit me like a constipated hornet on crack. I started writing with a fever, and after a few gosh-diddly-awful short stories popped out, I stumbled upon the tale of a kid named Jimmy Fincher.

At first, the story was a horrible attempt at Mark Twain meets R.L. Stine, with this dorky southern kid running around the woods with no clue that an evil door lay nearby, under which was something that would change the world forever. Problem: I didn't know what lay under the door, and I kept stalling with more and more of the ridiculous (not in a good way) antics of poor Jimmy Fincher.

I finally gave up and sat down to write a simple outline. This turned into a five book map (later it would be sheared down to four), and I could finally write a somewhat coherent story. I did just that, though it took me a couple of years because it was a very on-and-off-again sort of thing. And let me be the first to admit this to the world: it wasn't very well written. It was, after all, my very first book, and I still had a lot to learn. But I loved the story. I loved it with a passion, and I wanted others to read it.

It was the summer of 2001. I had never been to a writing conference or seminar. I had never met another author (unless you count my accounting professors, who wrote mind-numbing discourses on the world-changing potential of Balance Sheet ratios and got published in academic periodicals which were probably used as toilet paper more often than reading material). I was, simply put, an idiot when it came to the world of publishing.

I sent absolutely horrendous query letters to the very biggest publishers and agents I found on a list somewhere, then waited patiently while they, one by one, sent back little cards that had the words "Dear Author", "regrettably", "unfortunately" and other such niceties. I was shocked and mortified.

Okay, not really. I was smart enough to realize my chances of getting published were about as good as the Falcons winning the Super Bowl.

Once my options ran out, I was one hair short of being done with my illustrious author career. But then I did one last thing on a whim. I sent it to three small publishers: Deseret Book, Covenant and Cedar Fort. All three of them were almost exclusively religion-oriented publishers (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints a.k.a. LDS Church a.k.a. Mormons a.k.a. Stephenie Meyer's Church). The first two sent me back nice letters saying thanks, like your story, but it's, uh, a fantasy kid's book, take a hike, psyche.

Then I opened the one from Cedar Fort, and the very first, tiny little spark of a writing future ignited in my heart when I read the letter. Lee Nelson, their acquisitions editor, said he'd taken the manuscript home to his eleven-year-old son, who proceeded to read it in one sitting and loved it. I spoke with Chad Daybell, their Managing Editor, on the phone, and he expressed interest as well. I was elated, ecstatic, bombasticallydiscombombulatedly slap-happy cheeky thrilled.

But then it all crashed and burned when I heard The Catch. The inevitable, evil, blood-thirsty Catch that always creeps into our hopes and dreams, laying waste to everything in its path.

If they were to publish it, they wanted me to help pay for some things.

Now, although this ended up not being as horrible as it sounds, I want it to sound horrible enough that you have a sick tummy until my next post, where the story will continue.

(The picture above is an illustration by Michael Phipps from my fourth book, WAR OF THE BLACK CURTAIN.)