Maybe some writers can dash out a book with the speed of summer lightning. That’s not me. I’ve spent years writing my books. I started writing THE JOURNALIST more than thirty years ago—which may be some kind of record.

I was at a conference when I heard a speaker who had been a soldier in Vietnam talk about his new book. I thought: my late brother was a journalist in Vietnam… I’m pretty sure my sister-in-law, his widow, has kept all his papers.

My brother, Jerry Rose, had left behind an enormous amount of material–journals, letters, published articles, two published books, drafts of a novel, unpublished articles….

My sister-in-law and I spent days at the local Kinkos copying page after page.

I took off part-time from my research job, for a few months, and I did all sorts of research and I drafted a biography. But the book needed a lot of work and I needed to get back to my paid job.

The book draft and all the papers sat in the dark in a filing cabinet for almost 25 years.

Then I started working on the book again. And with the speed of a racing turtle—only eight years later—having written at least one hundred different versions—this book is about to be published!

So—the next time you’re sitting comfortably in an easy chair reading a good book, think about the toil, tears and years that filled those pages!