NOTE FROM DANI: Readers, I've sent out emails to a number of authors I've had the pleasure of paneling with asking them all the same question: Would you mind giving my readers some insight into what life was like in your first year of being an author? Below is Kage Baker's response. (PS - I added all the links).

I would also add that of all the well-known writers I've met this year Kage Baker was without question the most accommodating, graceful and patient of the lot. It's easy to feel like an idiot in your first few months as a newly minted author, Kage ameliorated that feeling with open arms, great advice and rapier wit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kage_Baker

http://www.kagebaker.com/

From Kage:

It was, in many ways, terrifically anticlimactic after all the years I'd put in trying to get In the Garden of Iden published. Also humbling. There's nothing like going to your first con and giving a reading with only three listeners in the room, and they're your agent, your editor and your sister. You may be Published At Last but nobody knows who the heck you are, and they're too preoccupied with their masquerade costumes and anime marathons to bother with mere writers anyway. Fans Are Slans, my ass! The principal reaction I got from the rest of my immediate family was: "Great, you've got money now-- can I have eight hundred dollars to pay my traffic tickets so I don't go to jail?" They were affronted to learn that I'd only got a $7,000 advance and most of it had already been spent on selfish stuff like rent, groceries and car repairs.

On the other hand, there are moments to be savored: the first time you walk into a bookstore and THERE IT IS-- your baby, all shiny and glossy and with your name spelled right and everything. The first good review. The first time a real writer whom you respect shakes your hand and tells you your stuff is worth reading. I walked into the first con I ever attended and the fans were buying plastic action figures in the dealer rooms or playing with their lightsabers in the lobby, but over in the dark, quiet bar the writers were sitting. I thought: that's my tribe, all those faintly shabby, desperate-looking people with martinis. Yeah. I'm a writer now.

Kage
www.kagebaker.com