My Birthday Wish

Tomorrow is my birthday. For the second year in a row -- coincidently -- I am spending my birthday away from my family at a writing conference in Chicago.

“What do you want for your birthday,” is the repeated question from family and friends. And for the second year in a row -- not so coincidently -- my answer is more or less the same. “I don't need anything, really.

My wife, children, family and friends are healthy and happy. I make my living as a writer, which was my goal since early childhood. We have all have what we need and most of what we want. We're fortunate and thankful for that.

So my follow-up answer is the same as it has been for years: if I could have my true birthday wish -- anything I wanted -- it would be to get a book deal for my fiction.

I've dreamed of being a published novelist for 25 years, ever since that third grade writing assignment turned me on to the craft a quarter of a century ago.

The agents and publishers have had good things to say about my novel-length fiction, but no firm bites yet. The closest I've come to that elusive book contract is when I became a semi-finalist in the Gather First Chapters Writing Competition.

So now, I can give a more specific answer to what I want for my birthday this year: I want to win this standard book contract with Simon and Schuster.

You can make my birthday wish come true. Voting ends tomorrow, on my birthday, April 25. Help me make it to round two -- read and rate chapter two of TRACKS now.

Guess what I'll be wishing for when I blow out my candles? Here’s the link to TRACKS:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976948471

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Eric D. Goodman is a full-time writer and editor. His work has appeared in local, national, and international publications, including a story in the current issue of The Baltimore Review. Eric’s novel in stories, TRACKS, is a finalist in round two of the First Chapters Writing Competition. Read and rate chapter two here.