We all must start somewhere, be it your first breath, be it the first time you hold a child, be it the first time you love a sister, or even if its the first time you write a story, or be it the first WordPress site for a dumping ground for posts, thoughts, essays and to document the Publishing process- or at least, what I have gone through to get this far (which isn’t far). This is where we begin, whereupon we stand this day to become something different, and where I stand this day, more or less.
My first story was written in 1989, and never published. I wrote three more that are now lost, but not to worry, they were awful. Realizing this, I got a book by Orson Scott Card called, “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.” After reading it my father, assessing my skill and realizing where I was at, suggested that I have a plan A, a plan that would make money that is, and recommended I pursue college. Naturally being a wizened 18 years old I took his recommendation and promptly did nothing that he suggested, and moved exactly 800 miles away, because this plan was sound. It would take me another 28 years of hardships, a business, college education, 2 wives and 3 children to come back to writing again.
So here I stand, and why do I stand here? Because writing, to me, is a disease of the mind, where characters, ideas, and situations are clawing at my scull, clamoring to get out. For 28 years a man who could control animals, and a woman who could control water begged for me to release them. A dragon who learned not to kill old men, because obviously they were wizards, told me how they wanted to live. An entire world was about to be destroyed by an entire apocalypse, and one man knew that it was over, but decided to save it, and learned how to predict the future through weather.
But there was one idea, one problem, one character that brought me back. Even after all of the space captains fighting astro terrorists begged to be let go, and the little girl who was angry about her fathers death (but had his mind transferred into a robot) and she had to deal with her alive/dead dad and how to let it go, and the slush pile reader in heaven who has to reject the likes of Heinlein, Wells, and now (unfortunately) Le Guin, and more like this, there was one person that burned in my mind so strong that I could not think of anything else. This one person, a healer- no, a religious healer named Payne would not let me go. He seized a hold of me and pushed himself into all of my ideas, consumed my daydreams, wrote in my dreams, interjected himself into my conversation, and sat with me while I ate my meals and chatted with my children. He was there when my wife and I were alone! He has driven me to the brink of insanity, and will not let me go.
