My name is David Allan Williams and I am a writer. It kind of sounds like I should be standing in front of a group at a weekly AA—Authors Anonymous—meeting. I guess that’s how I feel about writing now: It’s addictive. Especially when a work is finally released.

I would not recommend being an author to anyone looking for a career choice. It is a journey full of rejection and despair, brief moments of relief and excitement and capped with an overall anticipation that something bigger will happen one day. Of course, I could be describing life in general.

I have only been writing since I turned forty-one. If anyone tries to deny that turning forty is not a perspective-changing milestone, they have denial issues. Outlook, expectations, even dreams change. There is a list as big as a Sears catalog detailing the changes, from physical ailments to work challenges, but most importantly it’s the age I first noticed that I was not invincible, and that life does not last forever. Ergo, writing—aside from children, one's only other real claim to immortality.

If I were asked when I turned forty what I would be doing next year, writing a book would have been the last possible answer I would have ever imagined giving. The last time I had written more than a page, was a report on how to iron out the ebbs and flows of production in a distribution center – boring stuff compared to LIGHT SURFER! Apart from the normal school reports and the occasional love letters of my youth, I had little experience in writing for others' enjoyment. But turning forty was a double-edged sword. I felt as though I either needed to force myself into continue my usual, ho-hum daily routine and swallow the desire to change something, or do the opposite and change everything, risking all I've spent the last twenty years trying to hang on to. So, I started writing, and, to my surprise, authoring.

I consider myself an average Joe (except my name is David). The difference between me and most other Joe's, is that, despite the mid-life crisis, I still carry around "an I-can-do-anything" attitude. When I decided one day to write, not a letter, not a poem or short story, but a book, I ended up writing two LIGHT SURFERS. Of course, it didn't happen in one day; LIGHT SURFER One and Two took two years to write, and the first one is just now hitting the shelves. When I was told an author really should have ten titles under his or her name, I wrote another two LIGHT SURFERS, a romance, and am now working on another science fiction book. Close friends have taken to sarcastically questioning my actions, saying, “You don’t do things in halves, do you?”

I don't. I also don’t know from where the story of LIGHT SURFER originally came; it's certainly not the story of my life. On the other hand, bits and pieces of my life experience appear in it, tied in with my love for technological advancement in all the sciences. When pressed, I tell people LIGHT SURFER was channeled; it’s easier than trying to make up a compelling story about where a fictional piece came from, and, who knows, maybe it really was.

I also don’t know where my ability to write came from either. The hundreds of rejections I had to endure getting to where I am today were constantly trying to tell me I couldn't write, but my dogged determination to get published, along with the bit of slack that God cut me in finding Savant Books and Publications separately confirmed that, maybe, despite all these difficulties, I could write. In life, one ultimately either goes for it, tries it, or doesn't. With only one life to live, it occurred to me that there was no reason not to try. Today, I am glad for having come to that conclusion and diligently acting on it. 

And so, with that, I commend to you the first in what I hope will prove an exciting, "can't-put-it-down" LIGHT SURFER series. It's a pleasure to meet you, world; I look forward to a long and productive literary friendship together.

Sincerely,
David Allan Williams
Author of LIGHT SURFER (Savant 2012)