My Path to Publication

Just a Girl
April 27, 2012

My Path to Publication
hosted by Heidi Ruby Miller

The book Fire Men started as nothing more than wanting to record some of the experiences that my father and I had in the fire service and which my son Michael was starting to have. Writing of one incident often brought back memories of others and the list of individual stories of calls grew. After I had a hundred plus pages, it became clear that there was more than a pile of vignettes—there was a book there trying to get out. The writing was cathartic as well. It made me smile and laugh and took me back to less pleasant experiences—some still painful to recall even with the passage of time.

Eventually, a so-called first draft was complete and some friends encouraged me to try to obtain an agent and the querying process began. Lightning struck with surprising quickness and a young agent from a large New York City firm agreed to work with me. I know now this was an incredible stroke of luck as the manuscript wasn’t remotely ready. She provided great feedback and suggestions as I worked my way through a second draft. This revision much improved the book and she offered more suggestions to help fine tune the work.

The manuscript was one final pass from the point at which she was planning to send it to some editors she believed would be interested when calamity, at least for me, struck hard. My agent accepted a position as an editor at a big six house, which orphaned me. Yes, she passed the manuscript to another agent at her firm, but he wasn’t interested, and so two years after the start, the query roller coaster began running again. This time I decided to widen my view and include some of the fine small publishers in the business as well.

After a period of ups and downs with manuscript requests and rejections, a yes came in the door from a wonderful publisher, Nicole Langan of Tribute Books (www.tribute-books.com). Her assistance and guidance through the final edits was invaluable. The cover and artwork she and her staff designed was beyond my wildest expectations. At the release and continuing now, she has been a great cheerleader; helping to push the book in conventional and unconventional ways. With a huge social media presence, she has been a tremendous teacher in how to use this medium.

Doing events and book signings has resulted in new friends and opportunities to re-connect with old ones. As much fun as the whole experience has been, I will never forget holding that first printed copy in my hand.

--Gary Ryman
April 2012

Gary Ryman is the middle of three generations of firefighters or the center of the Oreo. His book Fire Men: Stories from Three Generations of a Firefighting Family is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com in paperback as well as in all eBook formats. Visit www.fire-men-book for more information.


Buy Fire Men online at these links:

- http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Men-Stories-Generations-Firefighting/dp/0982256590/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

- http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fire-men-gary-r-ryman/1100719030?ean=9780982256596&itm=1&usri=gary+ryman

Heidi Ruby Miller reviews "Fire Men"

GoodReads
November 7, 2011

Fire Men review
by Heidi Ruby Miller



This fast-paced memoir reads like a novel. Gary Ryman draws in his readers with storytelling that is as captivating as a five-alarm blaze. His attention to historical facts and details makes you feel like a member of his family and his company. There were moments of fist-clenching tension countered by misty-eyed sadness and heart-warming anecdotes. I not only learned something from Fire Men: Stories from Three Generations of a Firefighting Family, I felt something, too.

http://www.fire-men-book.com

Heidi's Pick Six with Gary Ryman

Heidi Ruby Miller: Just a Girl
September 6, 2011

Heidi's Pick Six: Gary Ryman
by Heidi Ruby Miller

HEIDI'S PICK SIX

Gary Ryman

1. Which of your characters is your favorite?
2. Tell me about your travels.
3. Coffee, tea, or milk?

4. What else can you do besides write? I can go into burning buildings. It’s a skill most people don’t have—or want to have—but they do seem to be glad there are people around who can do it, particularly when their house is on fire. That and fish; I like to fish.

5. Who are you reading right now?
I read a lot of history as I’m about three quarters of the way through the course work for a Masters Degree in American History. Right now I’m reading Brothers, Rivals, Victors by Jonathan W. Jordan. It is one of the best books of narrative history I’ve read in a long time. While scrupulously sourced, the book reads like a novel; the best of both worlds. Another good writer in this vein is Rick Atkinson. I’m looking forward to the final book of his World War II trilogy which will hopefully be out in the next year or two.

6. Pop culture or academia?

7. What is the toughest scene you ever wrote?
The most difficult one was a story in my book about the death of a father and his step-son. The step-son drowned after rescuing a young girl who had fallen into an icy pond, succumbing to the cold water. The father had a heart attack and died on the ice while attempting to reach his step-son. Just about all of us on the call knew them both so writing about the rescue attempts by the divers and the emotions the incident brought out in the emergency responders was hard but cathartic at the same time. The opposite of that was the story in which I had the opportunity to take my son Michael inside on his first real fire. He had the nozzle and there was fire in portions of two rooms. It was a fairly-tale experience and flowed onto the paper.

8. Where do you find your inspirations to write?
I find inspiration all around me. The stories in my book represent only a percentage of the total experiences of the three generations. I hear about both hysterical and tragic incidents from other firefighters on a regular basis. Generation three, Michael, is now a live-in firefighter in Montgomery County, MD where he attends the University of Maryland (as I did) and I love hearing his stories, only some of which we share with Mom.

9. Food you could eat everyday.
Pizza, definitely pizza.

10. Are you into sports or other physical activities?
11. What kind of music speaks to you?
12. Do you outline your stories or do they just take you along for the ride?
13. Celebrity crush.
14. Who are the biggest influences on your work?

15. Do you still watch cartoons?
I’m a Bugs Bunny fan.

Gary Ryman is the second of three generations of firefighters, or the middle of the Oreo. He has a bachelor’s degree in Fire Science from the University of Maryland and has been employed as a fire protection engineer for over twenty-five years, and is married with a son and daughter. His son comprises the third generation of firefighters in the family making him feel both old and young and the same time.

You can visit Gary online at www.fire-men-book.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter @GaryRyman.

His book Fire Men: Stories from Three Generations of a Firefighting Family is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and is also available in Kindle, Nook, Ibook, and Google E-book versions.