Background

How did I come to write stories? Well, I could say “Idk just cuz.” But that wouldn’t make for a good blog post, now would it?

Growing up, I expressed myself creatively in a number of ways, from drawing comic books to making RPG Maker games (please don’t go searching for those, I beg you). I wasn’t a great artist—not even a good one, to be perfectly honest, and the less said about my attempt at game design the better, but I really loved telling stories.

I’ll never forget how The Unseen came to be. In 2010, I had graduated college and so my student job at Social Security Administration ended. I didn’t go straight to grad school because I just knew I wouldn’t need to. You see, I was going to be a famous screenwriter and nobody could tell me otherwise.

For seven months, I had no job. Somehow, I got the idea to try writing a novel. I mean, what else was there to do? So I bought a bunch of NY Times Best Sellers because, you see, I was going to write The Next Big Thing. It was just going to happen. Before I wrote The Next Big Thing, I needed to know how The Next Big Things were written (if only I had thought to do that when I was screenwriting). So my plan was to read a bunch and then take a stab at writing. But I just couldn’t help myself. I started writing this story called Project: Conner (I couldn’t tell you what the hell it was about). My plan, then, became to read a bunch and practice writing along the way. It was going well. I was writing and reading every single day.

On one December day, I finally received a call for a job interview (I think for a temp job in Hunt Valley). I was so excited. Not because I loved working so much, but because my life would finally have purpose again. That night, though, was a fucking disaster (although in retrospect, it might’ve been the most important night of my life). I called myself going to bed early so that I’d be well-rested for my interview the next day. But my body had different plans. The Unseen’s first incarnation had been a screenplay I wrote for my screenwriting class in college. My professor absolutely loved it, said I had talent and offered to help me anyway he could. I took this and ran with it. I finished it and posted it on a screenplay review website. It was torn to shreds. I mean, the posters there really ripped me a new asshole. It was a horrible experience and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the reason I stopped writing screenplays. So I wrote The Unseen off as yet another shitty screenplay and kept it pushing (I even turned it into a stage play and submitted it to a local contest, can you say misguided?). That night, though, as I lay in bed trying to sleep for my job interview, my brain nagged at me to turn that one shitty screenplay, The Unseen, into a novel. Now it sounds like a terrible idea, but back then I didn’t question it. I opened my laptop and started writing.

I ended up not getting the job (sad face) but that was fine, because I had purpose again. I read novels and wrote The Unseen all day, everyday. After seven months, I had completed a draft (the first of seven at the time of this post). I was so proud of myself, felt so accomplished. I put it aside for six months (like all the internet suggested), and came back to it expecting to do minimal editing because what I had written was surely a masterpiece.

It wasn’t. Not even almost. It was complete, utter trash. In a way, I was very sad. I had spent all day and night writing The Unseen and this was the best I could to do? I wasn’t too discouraged, though. I just wrote it off as my practice novel and moved on (to another project called Total Chaos which I still haven’t finished; it’s been seven years). But shortly after I moved to NYC in 2012, I was hit with this electrifying rush of inspiration! I don’t know where it all came from, but I knew that I couldn’t wait to jump back into The Unseen. I don’t know if this was the second or third draft, but this is the version of The Unseen I pretty much stuck with—at least structurally. The details changed A LOT over the years, lots taken out and added (genders were swapped and names were changed, many times). But the core of what The Unseen is hasn’t changed too much since then, just cleaned up a lot—a whole lot.

I told myself that I would do whatever it took to get The Unseen published, but after seven drafts, I think I’m pretty spent. Is that terrible to say? I mean, I really want it to be my debut, but maybe it isn’t meant to? I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve done all I could with it. I work-shopped it in critique groups (shout out to BSFW!), it was beta read twice, plus I read through it myself about a dozen times. I do have faith it will all work out in the end. Maybe it’s about timing. There are more than a few authors who debuted with something else and had their actual first novel published later. Maybe it’ll happen that way for me. Who knows? I will say that I learned an awful lot writing The Unseen, so in that respect, it accomplished what Project: Conner was meant to. I feel more and more confident as a writer with every project, which I think is supposed to happen?

Today, I’m working on a few things. I read in On Writing by the GOAT Stephen King that it’s better to focus on one project at a time, and I would agree, but sometimes ideas just strike me and I have no choice but to write them down.

Works in progress:

Yours - After his lover is murdered, a professional demon hunter takes it upon himself to investigate his lover’s murder, eventually finding love again—this time, in a demon. Horror/Romance. Male/Male

Goblin - While volunteering at a children’s hospital to win back his ex-girlfriend, a selfish party animal becomes a small town’s only hope when a curse turns children into flesh-eating demons.

Gatekeeper - When his mother is murdered, a resentful government soldier sets out to find her killer since no one else will. Horror/Cyberpunk

Hopefully, I’ll have a draft done for one of these by the end of the year.