Robert Lee Beers
Almost 10 years ago now (has it really been that long?) I caught the bug and began working on a fantasy series that eventually took nearly a million words to complete the story. I shopped it around to nearly every agent in the book, literally. Eventually a small publisher in Queensland Australia, Writers Exchange, took a chance and published the first volume, Birthright. A few months later it was listed on Fictionwise as the number 1 fantasy bestseller on that site. It stayed there for 6 weeks. Three more volumes followed with comparable results and the attendant reviews.
However, the dreams of worldwide fame, movie offers and my mountaintop retreat never materialized. My agent fell off the face of the earth and the necessity of actually having a real job continued to dog me. This is a very familiar story to just about every writer out there. I would like all that, but heck, the storytelling is the fun part.