My Writing Journey:

Writing isn’t easy but somebody has to do it.

My first fictional story was written in elementary school when our homework assignment was to take the “vocabulary words” we were learning that week and turn them into a story. I wrote about the fourth brother of the three little pigs. His name was Evil Ethan and just like his name implied, he was evil. He plotted to take over the world and I remember my teacher thinking the story was too violent (she saw an early draft) so I revised it so that he was defeated with the power of loud music being played through speakers the size of the moon (the mind of a child is a curious thing.)

Later, when I was a nerdy, overweight middle school student (all positive traits), I used to collaborate with my buddy Tom on stories for our future anime. We each had ideas for our own respective stories and we each had ideas for one we were working on together. Now days I do not remember the particular details of that collaborative effort, but I do remember it was essentially Dragon Ball Z fan fiction. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it was hardly an original story.

I did manage to run with the idea though and take what limited artistic skills I had at the time and turn our story into a comic. My dad even took those pages down to Kinkos (now FedEx Office) and got them put together into a comic book. The title of that comic was Crimson Blood. I vaguely remember working on a sequel and I think my dad had that turned into a comic book too. He was a big fan of Kinkos back then. Not only was I pumping out masterpieces (sarcasm), but he used their services to support his side business.

Skip ahead a few years to college (I did not do much writing in high school; I was too busy unsuccessfully chasing women) I took another stab at writing. This time I was going to write a novel. I was surrounded by a lot of racist clowns in college, so I clung to the Autobiography of Malcolm X and I studied abroad in Europe. These two things got me wondering what the world would be like if slavery had never happened. This evolved into, “what if a person from the future went back in time and armed Africans with modern technology so that when the Europeans showed up, it would be totally one sided – in favor of the Africans.” I was keen on time travel stories, (Back to the Future is still one of my favorite movies) and I was motivated by the racism I was seeing in some of my peers. However, despite these motivations, the story never really manifested. I did, however, get a few chapters written. I just wasn’t feeling the story.  

After graduating college, I still wanted to write a novel and I had gotten a job in Pittsburgh managing a parking garage downtown at the Convention Center which afforded me a lot of free time. Also, needless to say, managing a parking garage was not what I went to college for so rather than rest on my laurels, I wanted to use my free time constructively. So, this inspired my second attempt at writing a novel. This time, rather than write about a future-man arming Africans from centuries ago, I was going to write a more present-day story about my friends. Fun right? Not so much! It ended up being a story about my friends and I fending off the devil and saving the world from the end of days. I honestly do not know what inspired this. Maybe it was some sort of weird coming-of-age story. I don’t know. It was interesting though and it forced me to do a lot of research on religion which I would not have done otherwise. The book was called The Three Wise Men and it was the thing I was most proud of at the time. I had written a completed 90k+ word novel. It was a story that had not existed before and now it existed thanks to me.

Shortly after I finished The Three Wise Men, I was able to get a job much more in line with what I studied in college, but I had to move home to Harrisburg. And though I was now working at a place I enjoyed (PA House of Representatives) I was living at home with my parents (I love my parents, but living at home is not where one sees themself post-college). So, I filled my off-hours with working on a sequel to the Three Wise Men and somehow I must have tapped into my childhood brain, because it felt a whole lot like the comic I came up with, with Tom from middle school. Because of that, I named it Crimson Blood in honor of that comic.

Oh, I should add that I submitted The Three Wise Men to publishers and agents – no bites.

After finishing Crimson Blood, I pivoted away from horror/thriller towards science fiction. As mentioned, I was working for the PA House of Representatives, so I had the government on my mind. I thought it would be cool to take international politics and apply them to the solar system and let the planets be stand-ins for the countries. Mars became the United States, Earth was an amalgamation of Europe, Asia and Africa and Pluto was a play on Middle Eastern Countries but instead of Islam being the religion of choice, it was Christianity. This was to be my most ambitious series yet and I was going to do it with the most simplistic understanding of international politics (working for a state legislature does not make you a UN ambassador). I wrote three 100k+ word novels for this series. Book one was called Titan and as you might guess, it took place on the moon Titan. The sequel was called Meridian Akoni and the Greek Hunter. It took place on Earth but bounced around the solar system. The third was The Pluto Conflict and of course it took place on Pluto. I honestly don’t think the stories were all that bad but could have been pared down. I was trying to do too much, and I didn’t really understand character motivation or how to write it. I had a character driven narrative filled with characters who were there to serve the plot. Of course, that is going to result in a mess. How can you empathize with characters whose functions are in service of the plot? Though this series took place in space, it failed to launch (pun).

I was not done with science fiction though. I would take one more stab at it, but this time I would stay on earth and forget the international politics. I scrapped the space opera and turned my sights on corporate corruption while pulling elements from my original horror/thriller stories. I came up with a story about a detective who was trying to solve the murder of young woman who had uncovered secrets about her employer. Her employer had figured out a way to bring people back to life and was offering insurance policies to the world’s wealthiest and sleeziest. I don’t want to give too much away about this one, because I honestly might revisit it since until my most recent novel, this is the one I was most proud of. The title of this novel was Charon, named after the ferryman of Hades. I queried multiple publishers and agents, but I never got any traction.

After writing Charon, I decided to run for a seat on the school board here in Harrisburg and this consumed a lot of my time so writing took a backseat (it’s hard to change the world on paper when you’re trying to change the world IRL). Many months later and after a lot of work, I won my election in 2019 and took office later that year. It was not by any means won just by my effort alone either. It was the result of a lot hard work by a lot of wonderful people and it was those people that inspired my most recent novel and the one that was finally accepted to be published by a publisher. Near the end of August 2020, after having queried publishers and agents for months, I finally got an ask for the entire manuscript by the publisher Sunbury Press. One week later, I was offered a contract (I cried).

I think that this story gained traction where the others did not, for multiple reasons. First it is much shorter than the others. All my previous stories ranged between 90k words and 110k words. This story is just over 60k words. I think the smaller word count is a benefit because it forced me to focus on creating amazing characters and a purely coherent story. The longer novels had a lot filler because I was going for length over substance. That was not the case this time. Secondly, between my last novel and this one I did a ton of story research. I dug into what makes a good character; what does the three-act structure look like in practice; what is the difference between a passive protagonist and an active one; what does the theme of a story look like in practice; how does a character get the reader to root for them – these were the questions I was asking myself that I had not before. And as a result, I was able to craft a story that resonated with a publisher.  

As of right now, I’m waiting to be assigned an editor by Sunbury so we can start fixing the errors that still exist in the manuscript. I’m also working on how to market this novel when its available. That is why I had this website created that you’re reading this blog post on. I want to be ready for when this thing hits the shelves (Amazon’s shelves at least in the beginning). If there is one person more invested in the success of this novel than Sunbury, it is me.

This whole writing process has been one hell of a journey and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’ve already written a follow up to this most recent novel and I’m working on a threequel as well, each focused on a different character. My plan is to MCU-style bring them all together.

I love writing. It is something I am deeply passionate about and I’ve been honing my craft my whole life. Am I the best in the world? No. Am I the best I’ve ever been? Yes. And I am still improving. It’s rare for people to find something they can commit their entire being to, but when they do find that one thing, its so special and should be cherished. I’m happy to have found meaning in writing and I hope to those reading this, you find whatever that might be for you as well.  

Also, you may have noticed, I did not say what this most recent novel is about. That is because I want you to read the book description when it comes out. 😊