Guest Post: Justin Edison - My Journey as an Author

Welcome Justin Edison to the site today. He’s a fellow Booktrope author, re-releasing his second novel The Churning.

In Justin Edison’s second novel, Persian-American soccer star Arman Hessabi wakes in chains in a house of enemies. Driven in part by an abusive older brother, the hero feels his life is complete with the glory, women and riches afforded by a Premier League striker’s lifestyle. But he meets his match in Fat Man, Captain, Huck and Kay—men who hold him in thrall somewhere in Europe. Through trials, Hessabi comes to question his own ego and position in life. But is it too late for a soccer star with no apparent power over his own fate?

Justin, tell us how you got here.

Justin Edison

I started writing stories when I was pretty young, maybe 10 or 11. They were, you know, the kinds of stories kids write at that age—war, science fiction, stuff about Transformers. At the time, I was naturally convinced that my material was pretty original. I don’t think I’d gotten to the point, yet, of questioning whether anyone would read them. I was writing just for me. Then I went through several years of writing fantasy stuff—fun, but basically cinema put into prose. By then I was firmly convinced I could make a living as a writer of such books, and I was in no mood to have my dreams crushed! Fortunately, sometime in college, I started writing scenes that people were actually interested in reading. I’m still not a skilled short-fiction writer, but at least I was getting somewhere. I was feeling both foolish and confident enough to pursue an MFA and a college teaching career. I dealt with a lot of delusions in those days. Even though the teaching idea fell flat, I churned out a decent novel draft for my thesis. That seemed to be the big convincing argument that I could, in fact, do this kind of work. Then, on the morning of my defense, the seed idea for “Watching the World Fall” came to me. I got some positive feedback on the idea from my defense committee, and that was a huge boost.

“Watching,” my first, took almost ten years of bumbling and mistakes and growth. At one point, I must’ve had 150k words, but the story had gotten too far away from the original idea. Once I was finally done with the thing, I spent six months waiting on agents’ responses. No green light. In fact, a lot of them didn’t respond at all. I got tired of waiting—after 11 years of work—and decided to self-publish with Amazon. It was the right decision.

It took me three years to write “The Churning.” It seems like I tried to find an agent then, too, but quickly turned back to the self-publishing route. About a year ago, my wife’s aunt used her connection and submitted the book to Booktrope. I’m very grateful for that—I know I’m lucky—and the team is super-excited about the launch. People tell me they really enjoyed reading the first version, as it were. This version is tighter and (surprisingly) nastier and shows a bit more growth for the hero. I think I was being too subtle the first time around.

Author Bio

Justin A. Edison has been writing fiction and stories for twenty-odd years. A graduate of the Evansville and Hamline writing programs, he counts among his adventures a rocking semester at Harlaxton (in the British Midlands) and a tour of the Czech Republic. His pursuits include hiking, Web site design, trying to fix the world (in too many ways) and playing soccer (rather poorly). He lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two energetic kids and a vocal cat.

The Churning is his second novel.