Publishing books, says Dale Mattheis, is a lot like selling bread:

“It better look good, and it damn well better taste good.”

Mattheis, whose first novel, “Exile to the Stars,” was released in 2002, should know. The longtime islander ran a wholesale bakery on Bainbridge for 13 years before closing up shop in 1993 and devoting himself full-time to writing science fiction.

“I started writing to see if I could,” he said. “Could I really write a life-like book, which had meaning, substance, that people could relate to?”

With his three kids out of high school, Mattheis left Bainbridge in 1996, to return to his home state of Minnesota.

“What I left with was what I could carry,” he said.

After working with his daughter, a professional editor, to polish his massive draft – what would become the first three in the planned five-book series, “The Alarai Chronicles” – Mattheis starting knocking on doors.

“I must have polled 250 publishers, talked to six or seven agents. Everyone told me it was almost impossible (to get into print),” he said. “It was a time when everyone had their hand out.”

Mattheis, who had taken a job as a computer technician to pay the bills, applied his new skills to the problem: designing and releasing “Exile” under his own imprint, Ardent Publishing, and expanding the content through his website.

While he acknowledges that surviving as a self-published writer has been a struggle, Mattheis sees the fight as fuel for his fiction.

“(The fight to survive is) where the real fabric of personality and character comes out,” he said. “If you can get your readers there, then you’ve really succeeded.”

“This is my last big venture,” he added. “This one has to succeed.”

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Dale Mattheis’ first novel, “Exile to the Stars,” is available at Eagle Harbor Book Company, and at his website, www.ardentpublishing.com.