My first booksigning in February, 1997.  That day, I sold 20 books. 

 MY SUCCESS AS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR COMES FROM GOD

     Welcome to my website.  I want to begin by saying thank you to all of my loyal fans for their support in purchasing and reading my books.  Many of you have submitted endorsements for my most recent novels, some of which have appeared on my website.  I am very encouraged by your continual interest in my writings as I shall, with the help of God, endeavor to spread the gospel of the kingdom with the gift He has bestowed upon me.

      Have you ever wanted to publish a book?  Did you ever have a story that you wanted to tell but just could not find a way to get it into print?  Do you feel that success only comes from the amount of money you earn from a book?  I did, and believe me, I have struggled for more than twenty years to get to where I am. 

           True success does not come from how much money you earn from your books, or being on the New York Times Best Seller list.  It does not come from having your picture splashed across every newspaper or magazine in America.  It comes from using your gift as a writer as a positive way to encourage others to be honest, just and upright in everything that they do.  Many of the books on the best seller list promote profanity, violence and sexual promiscuity, which are bad influences to the readers.  But the book of Joshua chapter 1, verse 8 says, ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth;  but thou shalt meditate theirin day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written theirin:  for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.’  With this webpage, I want to take an opportunity to share with you my success with publishing eleven books, as well as my joy for writing.

 MY EARLY YEARS OF WRITING

      In 1972, I was a first grade student at T.C. Irwin Elementary School in Newport News.  The principal of the school had a parakeet that sat on a bar outside of his office.  My teacher asked us to write a story, and I ended up writing about that parakeet.  A few days later, the principal came to our class and bought the parakeet for all of us to observe and pet.  I was thrilled because I thought he bought the parakeet in because of my story, but it is a possibility that it may have been an assignment for the entire class.

      Two years later, just before I turned nine, my older brother used to draw comic books just to kill time.  He folded a few pieces of notebook paper together and created little squares to put the drawings in, drawing the little bubbles and putting words in them as to cause the characters to speak.  I used to want to always be like him and copy what he did, so, I began drawing little funny books too.  I created a comic book entitled ‘David and the Animals’,  where I was the main character surrounded by these animals that I associated with.  I enjoyed writing the stories and drawing the pictures so much until they became a regular series.  Off and on I created ten or twelve of these booklets over a period of three to four years, and after more than thirty five years, I still have them.

      Although I composed my first novel in 1989, I actually wrote my first book in 1976 as an eleven year old.  I was a student at Riverside Elementary School in Newport News, and the faculty there was going to publish each student’s writings into an anthology that was printed off the old fashioned carbon copy machines.  Some wrote poems, others wrote about things they liked such as television shows, but I wrote a four chapter story entitled 'Growing Pills.'  It was a story about a boy who ingested pills that made him grow, and what was so unusual about it is that all four chapters fit on one page.  The reason that I was so enthused by it is because my story was the only one that had an entire page to it self.  I wish I could find that story.

      A year later, I was a fifth grade student at B.C. Charles Elementary School, and the school held a ‘Write a Book’ contest.  I loved math at that age and was always a grade ahead in the courses, so I wrote a math book.  There were five finalists and I was one of the five, and we were all called into the auditorium during an awards ceremony to hold up our works before the audience.  I won a book entitled ‘The Legend of Bigfoot’ but my mother would not let me read it.

MY HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

     If there were ever a time that I ever earned a passing grade on a book report for being lazy, it was in high school in 1981.  My ninth grade english teacher at Ferguson High School asked the class to pick a book out of the library, read it, and write a book report on it.  I didn’t really feel like doing a report, and I did not select a book in time to prepare a report.  Not wanting to fail the assignment, I decided to make up a story, give it a title, and write a report on a book that did not exist.  The teacher read my report and was so impressed by it that she gave me the highest grade possible: an A+.  (I was only happy that she did not try to find the book in the library.)

      They say that a good reader makes a good writer, and that came about in my junior year at Phoebus High School in Hampton (above).  I read my first complete novel entitled ‘Black Boy’ published by Richard Wright in 1945.  I found it to be serious, hilarious, emotional, adventurous, honest, everything that I could use in my writing (I had to overlook the profanity).  I saw a picture of him sitting at a typewriter working on a book, and I said to myself, ‘I can do that’.  It was through that book that I learned how to set up colloquial style, arrange paragraphs, set chapters and balance the characters. 

      My senior year at Ferguson High School held a double blessing for me, for it was there that I took two courses that would shape and develop me in writing:  Advanced Composition, and Library Science.  My composition teacher made a mandate that we were to keep a journal and write in it every day.  I began writing about anything that came to my mind until it became a habit.  I couldn’t stop writing.  Sometimes I wrote in my journal four to five times a day, and other times every free moment was spent writing.  Even after I graduated from high school, I continued to write in my journals for more than five years before I threw them away, and by then they had developed into several notebooks.

      In addition to the journals, my composition teacher gave us an assignment to write a short story.  I loved westerns back then, and I wrote a story entitled, ‘The Vendetta of Norma Tate,’ which was the story of a female gunfighter avenging the death of her husband (I destroyed the story years later because I was ashamed of it).  I drew a picture and put it on the front of it, and the students in my class lined up to read it.  My teacher was so impressed that she gave me an ‘A’ and wrote, ‘I want to see you write more fictional biographies like this in the future.’  That is the day that I knew in my heart that I wanted to be an author.

      As for my Library Science course, one month before I graduated, my library science teacher referred me to the Mariners’ Museum Research Library, an institution where I will always treasure my experience.  I only earned minimum wage which was $3.35 at that time, but it was there that I learned how to research for publication.  I worked with pulling library information authors such as the late Robert Burgess who published several books on steamships, and the late Park Rouse, the newspaper columnist.  But I will never forget my experience with Jeffery L. Rodengen who published a book entitled ‘The Legend of Chris Craft.’  I assisted Mr. Rodengen and his staff in gathering materials for his research for a whole year, and seven months after he left, a copy of his book was sent to our library.  I said to myself ‘I can do that,’ and I retained my employment there for four and a half years until I was laid off for library renovations.

READY FOR THE CHALLENGE

      It was around the time of my layoff that San Francisco had a major earthquake.  I remember it as if it was yesterday:  October 17, 1989 at 5:04 P.M.  It was a major event, so I decided to research it, using the skills that I had learned at the Mariners’ Museum.  Being out of work gave me more time to do so.  But because I did not have a typewriter, I had to schedule typewriter use between two Newport News libraries, Pearl Bailey Library and West Avenue Library, researching and typing as I went along.  Within the space of three weeks, I had created a 120 page manuscript entitled ‘The Beginning of Sorrows’, and I sent it out to publishers.  After several rejections, I destroyed it out of frustration, but it was rewritten a year later into a 176 page manuscript, and I continued to solicit publishers again for six more years.

      Things began to look up in 1996.  A member of my church organization published a book and I inquired how she did it.  She subsidized it, or paid to have it published through Morris Publishing of Nebraska.  I took down her information, and within 60 days, ‘The Beginning of Sorrows’ was 1500 copies in print with a price tag of $3800.00. The copies arrived on my birthday, and although it had a lot of grammar errors and needed serious editing, 90% of my readers enjoyed the story and wanted a sequel (which I did publish three years later and it turned out to be a flop).  In February of 1997, I held my first book signing at The Peddlers Village in Newport News.  I hired a group of six young people from my church, and we sold twenty books within a three hour period.

MY BIG BREAK

      Subsidy publishing was very expensive, so I did not publish any books for six years after the failure of my sequel, an anthology entitled, ‘The Beginning of Sorrows II and Other Selected Works.’ I continued to write two more novels entitled ‘Tonya Baldwin’ and ‘Predetermined Legacy’.  To my surprise, in 2005, I won a publishing contract through Publish America to publish my books at no cost to me.  It took eight months to complete publication, but the company was charging a price for the books that was far more than what I wanted customers to pay.

      In 2008, one of my fellow employees at a previous company introduced me to www.lulu.com, which is my current publisher.  If your work is formatted on Microsoft Word document according to their page layout and specifications, you can upload it, get a custom cover made, free ISBN number, and have a copy sent to you for examination. If you like it and approve, you can have the finished product sent to you within five days! No waiting eight months to two years for a publisher to finish your work!  No bulk copies shelling out thousands of dollars, because www.lulu.com  is print on demand! That means that you can purchase as little as one copy or as many as 10,000 copies! And they look as professional as the copies I have on line!  With this arrangement, I was able to publish 3 books in one year.  Since 2008 I have published seven books through www.lulu.com.

IN CONCLUSION...

      I am the published author of several books, books that are enjoyed by readers of all ages. In addition to these works, I am also an ordained minister with the Gospel Spreading Church of God in the Commonwealth of Virginia and I will be sharing with you encouraging sermons inspired by God that will motivate you in the right direction. After serving as assistant pastor and radio evangelist for the Gospel Spreading Churches of God in Hampton and Newport News Virginia, I reside in Hampton Virginia where I continue to write for pleasure and encouragement.

              If you are searching for quality reading, then

these are the books to add to your collection.  I am

certain that you will enjoy them.  Tell all of your friends

and acquaintances about them and feel free to contact

me at my email address with any questions.  May God

Bless You.

Yours in Christ,

David A. Green

Author

My Writing Life In Pictures 

        Publishing a book is not an easy job.  Writing the book is easy, but getting it into print is the challenge.  Did you know that 98% of all manuscripts are rejected by publishers?  Not that there are any flaws in it.  Not that it is not good material.  But because publishing houses receive an abundance of manuscripts on a daily basis,  that they just do not have the time to read through them all nor fit them into their publishing schedule. 

     For example, if a publishing house produces only fifty titles a year, and their editors receive 500 manuscripts from different writers, 450 of them are going to be automatically rejected.  Then the fifty that did get selected are going to spend from six months to two years to come into print.  That means extensive editing, promotions, etc., that you may not agree with, and the publishers set the price on the book with or without your consent. 

     And should your book become a best seller, your publishing company will own you and you will do what they tell you to do to keep the profits coming in.  You will write what they tell you to write and it is not your book because the publishers want to be able to break even on the expenses of publishing and promoting your book.

     Writing Is For

The Birds 

      This is T.C. Irwin Elementary School on 16th street in Newport News, where I was a first grader almost 40 years ago.   I never thought that a parakeet in the principal's office would jumpstart my writing experience.

 My 

Very Own Comic Book Series 

      These are covers of my "funny books" that was part of a series that I began in 1974 when I was eight or nine.  I composed about twelve of these over a period of four years, and  I still have them today.   

  I Did Not Always Look Like A Writer 

     This is a picture of me when I was fourteen years old, a year  before I entered  ninth grade at Ferguson High School in Newport News in 1981.  In high school I almost always received A's on my term papers and research papers because I liked how professional my work looked.

The High School

That

I Will

Never Forget 

    One of my favorite high school experiences was at Phoebus High School on Ireland Street   in Hampton, VA during second semester in 1984 (left).  It was there that I read my first complete novel entitled 'Black Boy' by Richard Wright, which taught me how to develope sentence structure, colloquial style, paragraphs, chapters, etc. So many positive things happened to me at Phoebus (I became an honor roll student there) that I hated to leave at the end of my junior year.   As a lasting memorial to my time there, I used Phoebus High School as a backdrop in my sixth novel entitled 'The Young and The Foolish'.   

And I

Kept Writing, And Writing, And Writing... 

      The brown journal in the front was the same journal that I wrote in for my composition class at Ferguson in 1984.  As I continued to write, I could not stop.  Everyday I found myself writing about something, and five years after I graduated from high school, I was still writing in these journals.  This picture was taken about 1988 of all of my journals that I had produced during that time.  In 1991 I had disposed of them because of my frustration at not being able to get my first novel published, but now I wish I had kept them. 

      The bottom part of the picture is a closeup of my journals open displaying a future writer hard at work. 

I 

Graduated To

Six Years Of Library Training  

     I graduated from Ferguson High School on June 16, 1985, but I was not financially able to go to college.  So I spent the next six years working at two libraries part time, which has had a great impact on my ability to research.

 'On The Job Training' As A Writer

       Right is the former Mariners' Museum Research Library in Newport News, where I worked as a library clerk from 1985 to 1989.  I will never forget this place.  I met a few famous writers here and I even assisted one in researching for a book that he published only seven months after he left.  It was a great privilege working there, because this put me on the path to what I needed to do to publish my first novel.  Today, the library is closed, and the books and archives have been moved to the Paul Trible Library at Christopher Newport University less than a mile away. 

     The picture below is the front entrance of the Mariners' Museum that was renovated in 1989 just as I was leaving the library.

I 

Typed My First Novel 

At 

These Two

Libraries 

      From 1990 to 1991 I worked for the Newport News Public Library System as a Library Page.  That job was not as interesting as the Mariners' Museum Library, but it did have it's benefits.  Before I began working there, I used to travel between the Pearl Bailey Branch (right top) and the West Avenue Branch Library (picture below it) and reserve their typewriters in two hour increments daily for three weeks, wherewith I typed my first novel.  The librarian and the staff there saw me on a regular basis and knew that I had library experience, so they hired me.  I was employed there for only sixteen months , but I did acknowldege them in my first novel for allowing me to use their facility.

  My Very First Book-Signing Fifteen Years Ago

Was

Truly

Amazing

   The young people in the picture above and on the following two pictures on the right were  a part of my church organization at one time and they assited me with setting up and promoting my very first book signing fifteen years ago.  Although the pictures are a little faded, the memories are like yesterday.  I was thirty one at the time, and they were in their late teens and early twenties.             

  I

Finally Earned

A Publishing Contract, But

I Did Not Like

The

Terms

     Fifteen years after writing  my first novel and nine years after publishing it, Publish America agreed to publish my third and fourth books, both at the same time.  They sent me a $1.00 advancement for each book which I thought was great.  However, the publisher had too much control over the price of the book, and I did not like it.  But I was locked in a contract with them and there was nothing that I could do about it.

 My Last Seven Books Published