In August of 2012, we were paying too much for our apartment.
Like stupid expensive in Los Angeles, where everything is stupidly expensive.
Then, one day I went to the office to pick up a package and saw a flier that said we could break our lease FOR FREE if we used a specific realtor to buy a house.
I went and told Karen about it, and we agreed that if we were going to pay stupid money to live in LA, we should at least be building equity as we went.
We had been talking about getting a house for a while, but our lease wasn’t up until the following June, so we figured we were locked in, which meant we might never get a house.
That might seem like hyperbole, but it’s not.
You might remember that 2012 was the bottom of the housing market. In 2013, everything rebounded.
We figured that if we didn’t buy a house before 2013, we would never be able to afford a house in LA (we were right by the way. Our house has gone up in value by $200,000 since then, and the rest of LA has risen similarly).
The problem was, we didn’t have much money. Well, by LA standards at least.
We were approved for $300,000, which in Tuscon is probably a mansion, but in LA buys you next to nothing.
We started looking at condos, but they were super small and came with a $500+ HOA fee minimum.
Plus, some of them were filled with dog poop, which…gross.
So, we started looking at houses, which didn’t have an HOA.
We were pretty picky about location. We wanted to stay somewhat near the beach, which meant that we had a choice of five homes.
Literally, five places in all of Los Angeles met our criteria.
If none of them worked, we would have either had to wait, which would have likely priced us out of the market, move to the Valley or Riverside, which we definitely didn’t want to do, or stay in an apartment, which was not ideal.
The first place we saw was condemned. Literally. I still wanted to see it, but the realtor refused to go inside, so we left.
The next three places were super small. I’m a big human, and it was hard for me to even get inside the house.
That left one place. One place in all of Los Angeles that met our needs.
Luckily, that place was awesome, and we put an offer on it immediately.
Shockingly, our offer was accepted, which was not common. Most of our friends had to put offers on a dozen or more homes to get one, but we only put an offer on one, and it became our home.
This is a story about me, but it’s really a story about you.
Because you only need one home. You only need one publisher. You only need one venture capitalist or one producer. You only need one book series to work out, in order to live the dream.
This isn’t my dream house, but it’s a nice house, we can afford, that we made into a home.
And it only takes one house to do that for you. Even if 99/100 companies reject you, all it takes is one to say yes, and everything can work out.
Currently, we’re out pitching a show based on my series Ichabod Jones.
We’ve been doing meetings for months, and I keep telling myself that they can’t all buy it, It only takes one person to see the vision and say yes. Even if they all say no, it only takes one to say yes.
If a dozen companies want it, that just starts a bidding war, but only one can actually make the show.
My first real option came for my book My Father Didn’t Kill Himself. We pitched it around for YEARS and nobody bit. Then, one person did, and I got paid $4,000 over two years for that book option.
Not a lot, but it was money at a time when I desperately needed money.
All because one person saw the vision and said yes.
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I write cool things, filled with monsters, humor, action, adventure, and generally awesomeness. Then, I sell those things to humans. I am pretty good at it.
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