I want to be Stephen King, I told myself. Oh, get serious! my inner critic snapped back. What are the chances of that? Seventy trillion-to-one?

I didn’t really want to be Stephen King; what I wanted was, like King, to write a good story, to be able to keep writing them year after year. My stories didn’t have to be great Literature. If I could just write the kind of books my mother would enjoy, I could be happy doing that for the rest of my life.

For many years, only a handful of people knew about my secret writing. I always qualified the statement with stammered apologies and a fierce blush. My body language, I’m sure, did not differ significantly from someone admitting to, say, kleptomania or belief in alien abductions.

“I do some writing, just in my spare time,” I would say, unable to look the other person in the eye. “Of course, I’ve never been published. I’m probably not any good.”

Now that I am a published author, I have to stop belittling myself. This is not to say that I’ve “made it” by any stretch of the imagination. While writing, to me, is a sacred thing, the business of books is a hard, cold thing that involves asking total strangers, “Will you buy my book? Please?” My first book signing was a excruciating exercise in humiliation, as people kept coming up to me and asking where they could find John Grisham's new book.

I’ve written five unpublished novels: two are mainstream fiction and three are fantasy. I find short stories far more difficult to write because you are forced to whittle the story down to the most crucial details and throw out bits you’re really attached to. It’s like trying to save a sinking ship; you pitch overboard anything that’s not nailed down and leave only what holds the boat — or the story — together. And I am always torn between spending what little time I have writing or painting. Painting is like eating a chocolate bar, an immediate gratification. Writing, on the other hand, is like going on a diet. It takes time, dedication and discipline, and it may be a long, long time before you see any results.

I am grateful to MediaBay Audio Publishing and the Audio Book Club for taking a chance on an unpublished author, and honored that my story was the one they chose as the winner of their writers’ contest. That audio book got the attention of an agent and a traditional publisher, Cumberland House Press. I certainly don’t plan to quit my day job as a graphic artist any time soon. But whether I find success as an author or not, I am a writer, and I am no longer timid about admitting it.

Now, if only I could find a way to get Small Change to Oprah….