One evening, I was reading a novel by one of my favorite authors when something felt…off.
The plot was engaging. The familiar protagonist was there. But the book lacked the spark I’d come to expect. At the time, I couldn’t identify what was missing. Now I know—it wasn’t the author’s voice.
A writer’s voice is the unique combination of tone, vocabulary, rhythm, and style that makes every page unmistakably theirs. Later, I discovered the novel had been co-written with another author. Perhaps the original author edited the manuscript while the co-author did most of the writing. Whatever the arrangement, it didn’t sound like the writer I admired.
I closed the book and thought, I can write better than this.
That moment started everything.
When coworkers asked what I planned to do after retiring, most assumed I’d become a consultant. Instead, I told them I was going to write a novel. The looks on their faces said it all.
One of my favorite authors at the time was Nelson DeMille, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 81. I loved his protagonist, John Corey—a tough, wisecracking investigator whose humor was as sharp as his instincts. That became my inspiration for creating my own protagonist, Jake Palmer.
After spending thirty years in pharmaceutical research and development, I was comfortable with facts, data, and statistics—not creative writing. When I sat down to write my first novel, Libido’s Twist, I quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing.
Everyone says, “Write what you know.” That sounded simple enough. But what tense should I use? Should I write in first person or third person? How do you create believable characters? What exactly is “head-hopping”? What does “show, don’t tell” really mean?
So I became a student again.
I read more than twenty books on the craft of writing and attended writers’ conferences whenever I could. Some conferences paired aspiring authors with agents or published writers who critiqued the first ten pages of a manuscript and then met one-on-one to discuss what worked—and what didn’t. Those experiences proved invaluable.
If there’s one lesson I learned, it’s this: you don’t need an English degree or a lifelong background in creative writing to become a novelist. You simply need the willingness to learn, improve, and keep writing.
In my next post, I’ll share what happened after I typed those first words of Libido’s Twist—and the lessons I learned from turning an idea into my first novel.