A significant milestone reared its shaggy head recently. As of October 2, I’ve been retired from the Federal Aviation Administration for 15 years, long enough that I’m likely forgotten there except for a few of my younger employees and contractors.

I’ve told the story before. I retired from federal service because I wanted to write my stories for me, not Uncle Sam. Don’t get me wrong. The magazine articles, technical studies, white papers, policy and regulatory documents, congressional testimonies, and other bureaucratic treatises were far more interesting and challenging to produce than they might sound.

And my last couple of positions in the FAA were ones I truly loved, but I also loved writing fiction. Residing on my home computers were dozens of story and novel beginnings. I’d come up with an idea, spend my free time writing some scenes, developing some characters, but something significant aviation-wise would happen. I’d have to set those stories aside because I had duties for what I considered a higher calling.

As my retirement eligibility approached, I realized I wasn’t getting any younger (though I retired at 57), and that if I wanted to be a novelist, I needed to get after it. My 30-year anniversary fell on July 23, 2009, and, lucky me, the end of the pay period was two days later. Perfect. I initiated the paperwork and informed my boss.

Who begged me to stay through September for a project he was working on and to be his “aide de camp” at the FAA’s annual presence at the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in August.

So, let me preface that with the info that he was relatively new to his job as Director of a large portion of the FAA. Though he’d been the previous Director’s deputy, it was a far cry from what he was accustomed to. He was also a newly minted brigadier general in a branch of the U.S. military’s reserves. He had a bevy of lower ranks at the Pentagon to do almost everything for him. It was a bit different in a civilian organization.

He’d seen how I supported the previous Director both in technical matters and in administrative ones, and he expected me to do the same for him. Well, duh. That went without saying. So, I saw him through those two big events after amending my retirement date to October 2, 2009. That one, I explained, was not negotiable. That did give me time however to train my replacement. (BTW, I later learned he replaced me with five people because it was too much for one person. Funny how no one realizes that when an overachiever is doing the work. But I digress.)

October 1 was my last day at the FAA. The retirement party was great, but it was a bittersweet parting. I truly loved my work there, but I also knew the work I was going to do–writing fiction–would be as fulfilling. The day after the party, I did a mini-move to an apartment in a small, Shenandoah Valley town. I set up the second of the two bedrooms as my writing room, put my laptop and a desk there, and I was ready.

Barely a month later, National Novel Writing Month rolled around, and I pulled up a manuscript I’d started in early 2001 and decided it would be my first project to finish. By November 30, I had a completed rough draft, and the cycle of critique group, edit, critique group, edit, submit to agents, rewrite, submit to small publishers, rewrite, and frustration with the whole process began.

I persisted, however, and in 2017, yes, eight years later, my first novel, A War of Deception, was published. By me. And before you hit me with “agents and acquisition editors are gatekeepers of literature,” let me advise you I was an editor and a publisher for 11 years in the FAA. I knew the business. I knew what it took to look and to be professionally published.

While A War of Deception was going through this almost unending process, I picked a manuscript I’d started in 1997. I realized I had, like, 300 pages of disjointed scenes with no transitions and that in the 12 years since I’d started it, a lot had happened concerning the event I’d written about and its aftermath. So, I started again from scratch. That single disjointed manuscript, enhanced by painstaking research, became four books, a series titled, A Perfect Hatred, published 2018 through 2020.

At the same time, I was going through the same process with what became a trilogy about a presidential election in the Balkans in 2000, Self-Inflicted Wounds. And throughout these 15 years, each November, I’ve produced a manuscript for NaNoWriMo. Some of them have been those neglected, unfinished manuscripts; some have been totally new material.

So, that has essentially been my writing life for the past 15 years: find half- (or less) finished manuscripts on old hard drives and develop them into something worth reading. In that 15 years, I’ve published five short story collections, eight novelettes, six novellas, five standalone novels, 11 novels in three series, three eBook box sets, and one mystery novel. Fifteen years, 30+ books.

Ah, so, you’re a hack, you say.

Oh, sweetie, far from it. Most of those unfinished manuscripts had been dozing on hard drives for more than 20 years. In the past 15 years, I’ve had the inclination, the time, and the drive to finish them and turn them into decent works, works I’m proud to have out into the world.

Remember, this is what I left the greatest job in the world to do: to write, to live the writing life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Well, maybe for hitting no. 1 on a best-seller list. Maybe.