Welcome!

A story fit for a King!

Hey there folks! What’s going on? Man – I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I published my first novel, the epic/cozy fantasy hybrid, “Where All Roads Lead”. (Available everywhere, including to order in finer bookstores) What a journey!

My “single steps” in that journey started when I was quite young, and wrote short stories in English class that the rest of my class wanted read aloud every time we were assigned them. Noting this talent, my parents got me a kid-sized typewriter, the only useful gift they ever got me. (Don’t get me started on that side of things. A CPTSD kid will blather on endlessly about the damage done to them, in lieu of getting an actual therapist.) Utilizing my new tool, I typed a whole pile of utter nonsense, having had zero experience to draw from. I actually wrote a lengthy novella based on the Duran Duran song “Wild Boys”, in which the guys in the band were cast as mercenaries who took on tough, deadly and double-crossing assignments for big money. Since it was the ‘80’s, I even threw in a ninja for good measure. Aaah, to be a teenager again.

So here we are, after 2 script submissions to “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, a dump truck worth of screenplay submissions, 1 TV series optioned by people who didn’t know what they were doing,  2 optioned feature scripts in Hollywood, multiple screenwriting contest laurels and more completed screenplays in multiple genres than any Ent could ever shake a stick at. That, and more joe-jobs than an entire semester of college students could ever work. Why keep going, you say? Why persist, when a lot of this sounds like a life-long resume of near-misses? Simple – The inspirations never stopped. I’ve had fully fleshed-out stories pop into my head, not only when awake but also in my dreams, since I was a child. And quitting was never going to make that stop. Quitting would only let them get log-jammed in my mind, until I lost said mind. I had a choice – A life of hanging on by my very nails until somebody, anybody, noticed I had talent and whipped out their chequebook, or a regular work-a-day life wherein I made no efforts to attain accolades for my creativity, but was also bored to the point of madness. Ask yourself – Which would you choose?

Another question that comes up about the creative life, especially one wherein the stories flow so freely, is where my ideas come from. I couldn’t honestly say. The ether, the muses, from the trilling harp of Bragi – who knows? I do know this - they never seem to stop. Part of the juggling act that is my writing is picking the things to move forward with, and making extensive notes on a maybe concept and then filing them away, potentially to never be looked at again. The many short stories in my prose file might never have seen the light of day if I hadn’t been inspired to write my book. Now many of them are published as well. Grab a couple – there’s horror, noir, fantasy – a little something for everybody.

The skinny on all the book arriving is simple. One April I got inspired to write a Dungeons and Dragons type story that veers off the beaten path to address the lives of aging warriors, and what their next moves might be if they realized that their adventuring days were done. Initially, it was a short piece. A single amusing tale that went no further. And for the next couple of months, it continually nagged at me – What happens next? Being unemployed at the time, I was able to sit down and write the next chapter and the next and next, allotting several hours of my day to just sit and write this wistful adventure tale. At first, I had no idea where it was going, I was “pantsing” the whole thing as the multitudinous “plotters” of the writing world say, through embittered gritted teeth. Then, near the opening of one chapter, I wrote a particular incident, and it was the key that unlocked the whole thing. I finally knew what the book was all about. (You would too if you read it. Go on – the eBook isn’t that expensive.) From then on, the process was a breeze, with only the Sword of Damocles of needing to go back to work soon looming over my head.

I’ll forego the usual “anatomy of publishing” lecture, saying only that things didn’t go perfectly smoothly, but the book still sold well for the first couple of months, reaching the heights of the Fantasy Action charts and the Wishlist charts on Amazon. After that initial period, however, figuring out how maintain people’s interest in the book was somewhat of an uphill slog. I tried Facebook and Instagram ads, Fivver internet boosters, you name it. While I was writing the book, I thought that Russell Crowe would be the perfect actor to play the main character, Arnath, were the book ever to become a streaming series. So, I sent him a copy. No response. (It’s not like I sent an unsolicited script. As a Canadian writer, my government-enforced copyright on the book is written in stone. Woe-be-tide anyone who messes with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.)

One thing I thought might give the book a boost was having other famous people read the book, and at the time of that notion struck me the most famous person in the world was the soon-to-be crowned King of England. I have no idea if Charles the III enjoys the fantasy genre, but one thing I have known from being a PBS watcher since early childhood is that King Charles lifelong field of study is historical architecture, and the middle section of my book deals with a colossal building project in a fantasy town. Maybe he’d like it. Maybe he’d tell people he liked it. And maybe my journey of rolling the same stone up the same hill for my whole damned life would end and I could rent Ian Fleming’s old house in Jamaica and do some writing without screaming homeless people outside my window for once. One can dream.  So, I figured out how to send things to the palace and wrote a nice letter stating that even a King needs an escape every now and then and put it in the post.

I thought nothing else of it as life led me down other paths in the intervening months – another producer took a shine to one of oldest screenplays, I started working at a fairly comfortable Joe-job near my apartment (One near my local hangout, The Grand Trunk). Life carried on.

Then the other day I got a letter, one with no return address. The envelope itself was made of expensive, heavy gauge paper, so were the letter and card inside. Lo and behold it was a letter from his Majesty’s head of communications, thanking me for my book. No form letter this – It specifically mentioned my book. Amazing. Does it mean the King had read my book? Who knows? Does it mean the King might read my book? I certainly hope so.  All I know is this, I, a little know author from Canada, made a bold move to make one of the most famous people on Earth aware of my writing, and now they are. And I got a nice letter to frame.

You keep pushing that stone, and every now and then some semblance of reward comes your way. Every now and then.

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I took this pic with me holding it in front of my greenscreen. Feel free to photoshop me into any background to you like – Buckingham Palace, A Space Station, the offices of Zero Gravity Management in LA... Or maybe, just maybe, near the writing desk in Ian Fleming’s old house in Jamaica

.Find my book here!