Mike Addington

Georgia boy now living the good life in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Love the sun and ocean and stimulating ambience of our little town. Conversing with caring, intelligent friends makes my day.

While in the Air Force, I worked in a classified (since declassified) unit in Italy with eyes on the Soviet Union looking for any hanky-panky that might lead to our demise. Later in life, I thought the experience could be the basis for a novel, so, adding the Red Brigade terrorist group and an unwilling Soviet Air Force colonel who was forced to become an agent, I wrote my first novel (unpublished) "Treviso: The First Terrorist." Title subject to change. After writing the book and hiring a professional editor, who taught me many things, I studied my technique and read other authors with an analytical approach. Feeling ready to write a book of substance, I began The Home Place, the Roman a clef story of the suspicious deaths of two men in 1956. Having sent 200 queries to agents for the first book, I decided to publish The Home Place myself to see how it was received and whether, by the feedback, whether I had any real skill as a writer. The Atlanta PBS/NPR radio station book program "Between the Lines" selected The Home Place for their 2007 Suggested Reading List, which I feel is a real honor. Guests on Between the Lines include Toni Morrison and Jimmy Carter, so to be selected by the producer of a program of that caliber puffed my chest. Well, to be truthful, being an avid reader all my life, I thought I could tell good writing and thought I had done that in The Home Place but one can never really be sure how well they relate what they intend to relate to readers. Readers are the ultimate critics, after all. The Home Place was not written for the casual reader but for those who can insert themselves into the book. I call those people "sophisticated readers." If anyone knows a better description, please feel free to pass it along. I was very fortunate that the Barnes & Noble stores in north metro Atlanta were kind enough to host solo book signings for me and I did very well at those book signing, usually selling out the 20-25 copies each store ordered for the signing. Some outlets asked me back. I did three for the Barnes & Noble at the Mall of Georgia, which is the largest mall in Georgia. After a few book reviews by significant publications, I made a packet and sent queries to about 10 agents and Cynthia Neeseman of CS Literary and I began working together. She sent The Home Place to, the best of my knowledge, four or five editors, with good feedback. Most liked the book but felt it wasn't for them. Well, the trail grew cold as I began writing another novel, again based on a true event, which was the robbery of a rural African-American church by five white men in the mid-60s, in which two of the choir girls were taken hostage. I am currently working on that along with a science fiction book based on altered DNA in which . . . well better not tell too much. I am a professional copy editor for medical research papers, which allows me to work and write according to a schedule I can control, to a degree.