G.R. Sixbury's Autobiography

G.R. Sixbury started writing back in the day when hand-written letters were the pinnacle of technology when it came to staying in touch economically with your friends. After living at nine different addresses in barely more than two years, he discovered the benefits of capturing life through the written word. After much encouragement of his writing from his friends, he started working on his first novel when he was fifteen. Many written words and years later, he had a degree on the wall from Kansas State University in Electrical and Computer Engineering and was working at Rockwell International on avionics for the Beechcraft Starship.

The writing career was not forgotten but life continued to demand its tribute of time. Sixbury moved back to Kansas and became a faculty member at Kansas State University, eventually rising to associate director of a small department. As the years passed, two children were born and raised, multiple short stories were written and sold, and two novels were finished and shopped to the traditional New York markets, the only option at the time. Sixbury's first novel sale came about as a spec novel for Tor Books. Given just a few months to write the novel, Sixbury completed the novel on time, then waited as it snailed its way through the long publishing process. After losing both parents, switching jobs five times, and switching wives once, Sixbury's writing took a back seat after he became CEO of a software development company. During this stretch, he began to teach writing, helping others the way he had been helped when he was starting out as a young writer.

Throughout all the ups and downs, Sixbury continued to teach writing. He also completed and sold a steady stream of short stories, but he didn't complete and publish his next novel until 2013. He also captured what he had learned over the course of his writing and teaching career, distilled it down into a useful form, and put it into his Write a Great Novel series of books on writing, the first of which was published in 2017.

Sixbury continues to write under various pseudonyms in addition to his own name. He's currently working on several series and one stand-alone novel.