My name is Everett Powers and I’m a writer.

That terrifying scream you hear? Me being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital era.

I’m the guy who resisted getting a cell phone for years because, well, I don’t like talking on the phone. Now I have an iPhone 4. I still don’t like talking on the phone, but that damn thing has all but replaced my laptop. I’d rather use Hootsuite on it than on my desktop; no distracting columns cluttering up the screen.

Now I’m on Facebook and I’m Tweeting. “God help us!” screams my dinosaur DNA.

I started my first novel, The Healer, fifteen years ago. Wrote about two hundred pages. I saw it last month, in a box in the storage room. I thought, I should check this out. Maybe I can do a quick edit and, you know, publish it. I read three pages and put it back in the storage room. May it never see the light of day again.

Then I wrote Canals seven years ago. It weighed in at 200,000 words; who did I think I was, Stephen King? It published at 135,000 words. I filled a green garbage toter with unnecessary sentences, paragraphs, and pages. (Canals is a horror novel.)

I finished The Mighty T—a thriller—two years ago: Coming soon to Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Smashwords, etc. Paperback later.

Self-publishing

A pile of rejection letters and emails from agents and print publishers on my desk, I summoned my friend Google.

I said, “Google, can I publish my own novels?” 

Google paused for a nanosecond, then spit out a couple million links. One of the first was Smashwords. Alarms clanged and birds chirped and a squad of cheerleaders... cheered. Really. (It was that sadist Mark Coker who told me I had to use Twitter and start a blog! [Get his excellent free marketing guide.])

Then I found Joe Konrath’s blog, then a ton of great people on Twitter, some very good blogs written by some very good writers...

And here I am. Writing. Something I love doing. On a blog, on Twitter, on a forum... Writing is writing.

My biggest fear? Boring people. 

Someone hack into Google and delete my account if I ever get boring. Please.

I’m running solo with the blog and Twitter (My wife is doing the Facebook thing for me; come on, learn Twitter AND Facebook at the same time? Liquefied brains would ooze from my ears.) so any suggestions for widgets and... stuff, are greatly appreciated. 

I figured out how to add a page to my blog—amazing—and have uploaded (correct term?) the cover for The Mighty T with a brief but exciting excerpt. Check it out.

And follow my blog, if you please. Twitter, too. You follow me, I follow you—we shall promise not to bore each other. 

See you on the cloud!