WRITER, businessman, adventurer and former Canberran Christopher Ride has just signed another three-book deal but can't shake the setback a tram driver dealt him.
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As an author, Ride sustained a decade of rejection before breaking into the industry by having enough confidence to become his own publisher.
Still, it didn't harden him up enough for the critics a curious author can find if he goes looking on the internet.
It was after reading the comments posted online by a tram driver that Ride, now living in Melbourne, decided to never again actively search out criticism of his books on the internet.
''He [the tram driver] had read 20 pages and said it was the worst book he'd read in his entire life,'' Ride says.
''I don't think he could have ever estimated how much self doubt that caused.''
Ride continued reading to discover the man had just passed his tram driver's licence exam and, while not wanting to look down on the man's profession, took solace in the fact the damager of his confidence appeared to have no writing credits of his own.
Many readers, Ride figures, assume authors are already toughened by years of criticism and of living with the unforgiving blank page.
''But in reality,'' the father of three says, ''you're not immune to the criticism.
''It's a brutal industry and writers cop a disproportionate amount of criticism.''
Ride's short biography demonstrates he is an A-grade achiever.
A distant relative of Ernest Hemingway, on his mother's side, and Sally Ride, the Challenger astronaut, he attended 13 schools on six continents before dropping out of university and knocking around for close to 10 years.
In his words, the reason he spent his early, mid and later 20s in the wilderness was because he did not understand hard work.
''I was so conscious of trying to assimilate that I focused more on the personal upheaval,'' he says.
''That's why I don't write off kids too early. There's a difference between whether something is beyond you or whether you're just not applying yourself.''
He worked for IBM and later headed up his own multi-million dollar company, Interactive, and even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2005.
Each night after knocking off from work, Ride writes page-turning science fiction thrillers. His latest and third, The Inca Curse, contains a crucifixion, a blood-drinking ceremony and a mission from the future. Some of the geography described in the book is what Ride saw as he travelled the world as the son of an Australian diplomat.
His publisher and champion is Random House, which signed Ride as an author after he sold 10,000 copies of his first book, the one he self published, The Schumann Frequency.
That first book, he says, had been rejected or ignored by every publisher in Australia - twice.
The reason he sent the book to publishers a second time was that he had sent his labour of love to a manuscript appraiser who, apart from advising where he could sharpen it up, which included pruning back the clichés, told him it was a great piece of work.
It was this encouragement which spurred him into self publishing.
His writing process is likened to a gym regimen. The self-confessed night owl arrives home after work, has a nap and writes until he has 1000 words on the page.
Ride does this seven nights a week and after 145 days - and 145,000-odd words - has a first draft, a framework of sorts.
He does not sketch a storyline for the book before he starts. As he writes he only thinks about what happens next.
''If you can be spontaneous, that's where the magic is,'' he said.
The second half of the year is spent rewriting.
One book a year is the mantra.
Since Random House signed him as an author, he has had two more books released at a ratio slightly higher than the one-per-year mark, The First Boxer in 2009, and now his latest effort.
Those first two books, according to Random House, have sold about 30,000 copies in Australia.
Ride says lucrative sales for Australian authors occur in overseas markets and a reliable writer can make a six-figure yearly salary - as long as they have an audience which can be built upon.
The way he explains it, publishers do not sell books these days, they sell authors. And to do this they need a reliable output.
And that means there is always another idea in the pipeline.
''There's no one book wonders any more,'' he says.
For him, his latest deal involves writing one manuscript for each of the books of the Old Testament from the Bible.
This potentially means there are 39 more books to come from this author.