I started dreaming of becoming a novelist in 1972, I think, just about the time I realized I was never going to be a rock star.

The first novel I wrote was called The Deadfish Drinking Cup. It was a hippy novel. It was horrible and nobody wanted it. Then I wrote a novel called Cool Hooting about a guy who always wanted to be a jazz clarinet player but ran the family grocery store instead. Nobody wanted that.

Then I took ten years and wrote a fantasy novel about ants called Winter Away. Nobody wanted it. I rewrote it and renamed it (The Spider Stone) and nobody wanted it. Then I wrote three screenplays that nobody wanted.

Then I wrote a fantasy called Tendril that nobody wanted. Then I wrote a fantasy called The Emerald Eunuch that nobody wanted followed by a fantasy called Teasel that nobody wanted (although I did get an agent with it).

Then I wrote a coming-of-age novel called Going To Chicago. It sold. It was July 1996. It would not be published for 18 months. Those 18 months seemed like 18 years.

I held my first-ever book signing ten years ago this Thursday, on January 31, 1998. It was at The Village Booksmith, a small independent bookstore in Medina.

My second signing was in March of that year, at a Borders in Akron. They asked me for the names and addresses of people in the area that might come. One of the names I gave them was for an old friend named Carol Biliczky. We’d worked together back in the ‘70s. I hadn’t seen her for 20 years. All I knew was that she was a reporter at the Akron Beacon Journal.

She came to my signing. She bought a book. We talked a bit. We found out that neither of us was married. Me, no longer. She, never.

And so I left that afternoon thinking, gee, I’d like to see her again. But how was I going to make that happen? I couldn’t exactly call her and say, “How’d you like my book?” Could I? Without sounding like an egomaniac?

While I thought about it, Carol took action. She checked me out on the Internet to make sure I was really divorced, or if I’d ever been in prison. Relieved, she sent me a letter. She told me she liked my novel and that she was looking forward to the next one. I read between the lines and called her. At some point in the conversation I apparently asked her if she wanted to have coffee or something, because a few days later we were in a booth at a coffee shop, staring at each other like a couple of nervous bunnies. We’ve been having a lot coffee every since.

(By the way, it was in this same coffee shop almost six years later — same booth, too — that we finalized our intention to get married.)

Anyway, by the end of 1998, I had a second novel ready for my agent and I was splendidly in love.

So, this Thursday marks the official kick-off of my year-long Decennial Celebration of Absolute Bliss — Blissapalooza ‘08 for short.

I think I’m going to send myself flowers.