Back when the internet was relatively new to consumers I registered the name NEVETS.com. Try to register a name that short today and you'll see it's nearly impossible. NEVETS, in case you're wondering, is my middle name STEVEN, spelled backwards.

My name is Thomas Steven Fanslau, or Tom to the few friends I have. If the life expectancy of overweight men goes up to 90, then you could consider me middle aged. I am single, never been married, and I have the best job in the world...taking care of my elderly mother full time.

I am a writer. Now, to clarify, I am a person who writes. I say that because if someone asks me in a social setting what I do for a living and I say I'm a writer, the next question out of their mouth is "what have to written?" They assume I sit around getting royalty checks while thinking about my next book.

In reality, anyone who writes as a hobby can call themselves a writer. Same way anyone that acts can call themselves an actor, although their resume may reflect that their experience is limited to church plays or home videos posted on YouTube. Typically, skilled professions prevent this confusion. If someone says "I'm a doctor", this isn't a person that "docs", this is a skilled professional.

Although, if you start choking in a restaurant and the waiter calls out "Is there a doctor in the house?" You would prefer the person that came to your aide wasn't a doctor because they had a PhD in Education.

Since I have clarified this a bit, let me explain what I mean by being a writer. I have written a novel called "The Genesis Experiment" which I self published in 2005. I love the story. It's about a priest who is sent to investigate a bleeding statue of Christ on the cross and sends a sample of the blood to have it tested. The lab where he sends it runs the tests and also uses the unique specimen in an experiment called "The Genesis Experiment," human cloning. A child is created in the lab using the cloning process and that child is, in the eyes of the church, a clone of Jesus Christ and his creation represents The Second Coming.

As a self published author I have sold a whopping 21 copies of that book in 6 years. Stop, stop, no need to congratulate me.

What I really want to do in the second half of my life (if you accept that I am middle age) is write screenplays for a living. I have been doing this for about 10 years, but it wasn't until the Spring of 2010 that I actually took a class in screen writing and realized just how bad I was at it.

Since taking that course I have written 5 screenplays and they are pretty good...if I do say so myself. My mom read them and she said they're good. Then again, my mom thinks I'm handsome, so she's insane.