Only to get up and go to my shitty job.
To be fair, the sleep deprivation was probably not helping my attitude toward work.
I’d wanted to be a novelist ever since I was a kid. I almost majored in English, but my dad, ever a practical man, talked me into getting a computer science degree in case the writing thing didn’t work out. The problem is, that practical degree led to a practical career, which led to the soul-sucking existence I was wallowing in.
I didn’t see a way out. My job sucked. I was divorced, after a very brief and tumultuous marriage. My relationship status was basically I love women but I’m not interested in commitment. All I had was my writing.
But as much as I enjoyed the process, I knew deep down that it was more of a hobby than a career, at least the way I was doing it. Even if the finished product—if I ever finished it—turned out to be the best sci-fi epic ever written, it would take a stroke of luck to get it published and make enough money to quit my job. And considering I’d been working on it for years already, with no end in sight, it didn’t seem like I was going to write my way to a better life.
Until my sister, Kendra, said something that altered the course of my life forever.