My First Novel - How it came about

Someone posted a link to this Living Color song yesterday:
Type - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HbF3EAt3ck

Actually, two people did. It was in response to someone's post, I think it was on FaceBook, but it might have been on one of the writer's blogs that I follow. I tried to find where it was this morning, but couldn't.

I had to go watch it of course, I haven't seen that video in a very long time, and except for on my own stereo, that song hasn't been played on a radio in an even longer time. For some reason the song 'Cult of Personality', which is not as good, or as deep IMHO, eclipsed 'Type' which was the early hit from the album.

Now this song means a lot to me, for numerous reasons, you see, it was the inspiration for my first novel: Children of Steel. In fact, after hearing the song only a couple of times, I sat down and wrote Children of Steel​, or rather started it. The first draft took me close to a year, and it was re-written several times over the years, and a few things added. If you listen to the song, really listen, you might understand some of the underlying themes and ideas of the book (and that 'universe'), which even the folks on 'my' page at TV Tropes, completely missed. The song really does have a lot to do with the novel, even the music video (which I only saw once back then) had some impact on the story.

That also gives you an idea of how old that novel really is (First draft - 1990). I couldn't sell it, and I tried, so I just gave up on selling on it, and sat on it, for twenty-one years, until I published it as an ebook in 2011 on Amazon. I was both happy and surprised that it sold, as well as by the reviews I got being mostly positive.  So while it may have taken me twenty years, that song is a big part of what launched my writing career. I wrote quite a few short stories and a few other novels before I got published in 2011. I discovered 'furry fandom' in the 90s, something I had no idea even existed, and started writing for one of the bigger fanzines in it, under both my real name, and a pen name.

I would like to take a moment to give my thanks to Gerald Perkins, one of the editors at Yarf! who helped me when I was getting started. I have received almost zero help in my writing career, my sister is probably the only person who has read everything I've written, prior to it being published, and my former gf Lisanne also gave me some pointers on one of the short stories I wrote (odds are if you've read my anthro stories, you've read all of her novels, she's way more famous than me). But Gerald is really the only person that ever made a serious contribution to my actual writing abilities, he taught me a lot, and did it quickly and painlessly. I wish he was still around, because I would love to thank him once again for his help. He helped me a lot with the actual mechanics of writing a story, things like 'sayisms' which are a lot more important than you might realize, as well as the actual mechanics of short stories.

The next biggest influence was probably Orson Scott Card, for his book 'How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy' (I loaned my copy out to someone who never returned it, no idea where it is now). Most of it was worth reading, but the section on the 'MICE' bit is what really helped me straighten out what my problem with writing novels was. I read that book in 1990, and I think I had my 'aha' moment around the same time the song Type captured my imagination, and off I went writing a huge five hundred plus page novel with no prior experience.

So, everything does come from somewhere, and now you know where Children of Steel came from.
Danger Money came from the album by the same name by the band U.K. If you liked that book, listen to that album sometime and you'll get some insights as to what's going on in the background as well.