It's official...

This past Friday, May 14, 2021, I made an exciting declaration. From now on, I am a novelist.

Not an advertising creative Mad Man. (Like I've primarily been since the beginning of my career in 1985.) Not a marketer. (Which goes along with being an ad man, especially if you're not just in it to create art-for-art's-sake, which was never my game.) Not a poet. (Although I'll continue to write lots of poetry and song lyrics, and still hope to sell some of those someday -- but there was never any money in poetry so it's no big deal to give this up as an occupational title.)

No, from now on, I'm a novelist. And I couldn't be happier.

As a novelist, I will:

* FOCUS my time and energy on writing & polishing several books that I've already started, including "They Don't Know Me From Adam," another Adam Gallagher novel; "Copies," a story about a D.C. serial killer who is a twin brother of a previous serial killer who was caught and executed; and now "The Man of Irrelevant Age," my newest novel that I posted about here in recent days.

* FOCUS on signing with an excellent literary agent, to sell my finished novel, "The Fall of Adam," completed in 2017. I still have great faith in this book and believe it will be a commercial and literary success. This title might not turn out to be my best seller or even first published -- it often happens that authors' first written, pet book comes out after they are established with books they write later on -- but I'm still convinced "The Fall of Adam" will reach and please a wide audience; practically everyone I tell the synopsis to loves this book and says "I'd read that."

At least several times per week, from now on, I'm committing to spending six or more hours working on these tasks. (I've never been an everyday, regimented, scheduled fiction writer...that doesn't work for me...instead, there are days I don't write original material at all, and others when I do it for 10 or 12 hours on a tear.)

That's more disciplined than I normally am or like to be -- especially in recent years when I've been tempted to say I'm "semi-retired." I'm mighty grateful that I don't HAVE to earn much income lately just to make ends meet; but I don't want to use that as excuse to not get the work done. Publishing is a brutal, tedious, often exasperating pursuit. The only way "The Fall of Adam" gets published -- not to mention books number 2, 3, 4 -- is to keep working it hard.

Thanks for your support, friends and colleagues. The good vibes I've always felt and heard from so many of you over the years fuel my hope and enthusiasm. I can't wait for the day you can go to Amazon or B&N or your local bookseller, buy my novels, get me to sign them for you with a personal note, and say, "I knew the guy when..."