Like pretty much everyone else on this planet, I day dream. Most of my day dreams involve me reaching some kind of success or getting a bunch of money via a lucky ticket or I just waking up one morning and suddenly I'm a best seller...because me winning the lottery and me becoming a best selling author have about the same likelihood of happening. But, as nice as it is to day dream, there has to be something said about the hard road.
It's the journey, not the destination, right? I look down at my body and I see scars everywhere. I stretch and I feel old injuries that never healed right. All of this reminds me that I didn't just pop into existence. Everything I am and everything I'm ever going to be has and will happen in it's own time with hard work.
My 6 published books didn't just pop into existence. Nor are they the only books I've written. I've been writing since 2003, when I was just 19 years old. I didn't publish my first book, Fatal Retribution, until I was 27 years old. From 19 to 27 I wrote some pretty weird stuff. I found an old binder of mine the other day. I wrote a novel called Herwall of Midgard. It was a play on LOTR, Gondor...as in the Door is Gone but the Wall is Here. *giggle*
Inspired by Tolkien, I created an entire world; mapped out, populated, cultured...I even created my own language with it's own alphabet and syntax and punctuation...it was nuts! I filled a binder with notes and maps and diagrams... The book is lost. Probably saved on a dang floppy disc or some such shit. But, it probably wasn't intelligible anyway. The first draft of Fatal Retribution certainly wasn't reader-friendly.
The second book I wrote was something so random, but there was a lot of strong imagery. ^_^ I remember feeling very empowered while writing it. It was called, Collide. It was about souls living in life, out of life, and in past lives all converging on a single moment in time to defeat a great evil as technology is being used to rip apart the veil between worlds...and then at some point the narrator went from a disembodied 3rd person to an actual character half way through the book and the story got away from me from there...pure craziness.
It was a long road to finding my voice as a writer and teaching myself how to write...It likely doesn't surprise any of you that I've never taken a writing class...Quirky sentence structure, fragment and run on sentences, too many commas, and ending the sentence with a proposition...Me and rules just don't get along, man. But that's not why I didn't study writing in College. It's because I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. Luckily, psychology helps writing. What doesn't help is horrible, horrible dyslexia. LOL
Right now I'm trying my hand at other genres. The Raina Kirkland Series was Urban Fantasy with a touch of Mystery, Romance and Horror. Taking the reader into a world much like our own, but full of myths and monsters made real. As you read the first 2 books you begin to think you understand the world as something close to Laurell K Hamilton or Kim Harrison's works. But by book 3 and 4 it starts to feel very different...Book 4, Deadly Encounters, is my favorite! By the last book you see the whole picture. Toxic Warrior doesn't have any reviews, so I don't know if anyone likes it or what they think of Raina's whole journey just yet.
My plans are to write a Serial Killer Book, a Zombie Book and a Erotic Book.
I've already published the first in the serial series, The Artist. And I've started work on the second book, The Librarian.
The Zombie Book is nearing completion, but I am fully looking forward to the Erotic book. it's going to be so damn smutty. Believe you me, I love writing sex almost as much as I love writing gore and action.
I don't know where my journey will take me. I'm taking every day one step at a time. Making plans and plowing ahead. I so badly want to just wake up tomorrow and have hundreds of reviews for my books and feel a great measure of success, but in all seriousness, this is my journey, this is my road. Every inch gained is hard won. Nothing in my life has been easy; from growing up in poverty surrounded by drugs, hunger and violence, to putting myself through college and buying my first house at the age of 25. Why would writing be any different, and why would I want it to be? It's about the Journey.
It's the journey, not the destination, right? I look down at my body and I see scars everywhere. I stretch and I feel old injuries that never healed right. All of this reminds me that I didn't just pop into existence. Everything I am and everything I'm ever going to be has and will happen in it's own time with hard work.
My 6 published books didn't just pop into existence. Nor are they the only books I've written. I've been writing since 2003, when I was just 19 years old. I didn't publish my first book, Fatal Retribution, until I was 27 years old. From 19 to 27 I wrote some pretty weird stuff. I found an old binder of mine the other day. I wrote a novel called Herwall of Midgard. It was a play on LOTR, Gondor...as in the Door is Gone but the Wall is Here. *giggle*
Inspired by Tolkien, I created an entire world; mapped out, populated, cultured...I even created my own language with it's own alphabet and syntax and punctuation...it was nuts! I filled a binder with notes and maps and diagrams... The book is lost. Probably saved on a dang floppy disc or some such shit. But, it probably wasn't intelligible anyway. The first draft of Fatal Retribution certainly wasn't reader-friendly.
The second book I wrote was something so random, but there was a lot of strong imagery. ^_^ I remember feeling very empowered while writing it. It was called, Collide. It was about souls living in life, out of life, and in past lives all converging on a single moment in time to defeat a great evil as technology is being used to rip apart the veil between worlds...and then at some point the narrator went from a disembodied 3rd person to an actual character half way through the book and the story got away from me from there...pure craziness.
It was a long road to finding my voice as a writer and teaching myself how to write...It likely doesn't surprise any of you that I've never taken a writing class...Quirky sentence structure, fragment and run on sentences, too many commas, and ending the sentence with a proposition...Me and rules just don't get along, man. But that's not why I didn't study writing in College. It's because I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. Luckily, psychology helps writing. What doesn't help is horrible, horrible dyslexia. LOL
Right now I'm trying my hand at other genres. The Raina Kirkland Series was Urban Fantasy with a touch of Mystery, Romance and Horror. Taking the reader into a world much like our own, but full of myths and monsters made real. As you read the first 2 books you begin to think you understand the world as something close to Laurell K Hamilton or Kim Harrison's works. But by book 3 and 4 it starts to feel very different...Book 4, Deadly Encounters, is my favorite! By the last book you see the whole picture. Toxic Warrior doesn't have any reviews, so I don't know if anyone likes it or what they think of Raina's whole journey just yet.
My plans are to write a Serial Killer Book, a Zombie Book and a Erotic Book.
I've already published the first in the serial series, The Artist. And I've started work on the second book, The Librarian.
The Zombie Book is nearing completion, but I am fully looking forward to the Erotic book. it's going to be so damn smutty. Believe you me, I love writing sex almost as much as I love writing gore and action.
I don't know where my journey will take me. I'm taking every day one step at a time. Making plans and plowing ahead. I so badly want to just wake up tomorrow and have hundreds of reviews for my books and feel a great measure of success, but in all seriousness, this is my journey, this is my road. Every inch gained is hard won. Nothing in my life has been easy; from growing up in poverty surrounded by drugs, hunger and violence, to putting myself through college and buying my first house at the age of 25. Why would writing be any different, and why would I want it to be? It's about the Journey.
