Well, here we are. I never though I would end up writing a Blog or doing anything like this but I figure there is no reason not to, and this might be the best way to let everyone that cares to know what I've been up to and what I am working on. After finishing the newest short story I am making for my collection "Sorcery, Saints, and Saloons: Tales from Sol Rojo," I took a quick break and ended up finishing a bunch of games while trying to put applications in for different jobs. If it was hard to find work before, a bachelor degree in Creative Writing hasn't made it much easier. So I figured since I ain't got the money for a computer that will let me stream or create content for YouTube or such, I would just do what I've always done: write.
So, a little about me before we start getting into all the things I want to do but will more than likely need to be scaled back a bit. I used my G.I. Bill starting in 2020 when I didn't reenlist with the Marines to get a degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Literature and Linguistics. It was nice getting to return to Texas permanently with my wife, Ruth, and our beagle, Apollo. Things were rough at times but nothing happened that kept us from being able to bounce back. While going to college, I ended up getting a job with the tutoring center on campus. Helping people with their papers made me realized if I never ended up being an author and just became apart of the publishing process by proofreading/editing, I'd be more than happy to do that.
Fast-forward some-odd years, and here we are. I am currently trying to get a collection together to be self-published on Amazon. When I was first writing short stories, I messed around with a bunch of different short-stories that I may edit and put up on here. First fiction piece I did was about a superhero capturing a supervillain, and instead of putting him in jail, he decided to take him somewhere else and "talk" to him about their work relationship. From there I did a fantasy story about a man who wakes up from a dream, and made fun of the whole trope since it was one that both my professor and myself hated. What got me writing stories about wizard-cowboys ended up being because we had a semester where all the stories we were sharing with each other were just absolutely tragic.
Class meant we had to write two short stories and a flash piece, but the majority of class was spent sending those stories out to everyone and we would have a round table discussion for whichever three stories were slated to be talked about (gut response, what's working, what needs work, that kind of thing). This meant that every week, I would get three stories that had me feeling like "Alright, time to get sad." He died, she died, they divorced, everyone died, just absolute tragedy. So decided nah, we have had to much sad stuff, I'm going to write something fun. Up to this point I had come to the conclusion that comedy is harder than tragedy. Everyone knows when something is supposed to be sad, and so even if it doesn't elicited those feelings everyone knows when something accomplished being sad enough. Comedy is the exact opposite, where personal biases and writing compelling stories that have their comedic beats can be complicated at best and impossible at worst. Just look at how people talk about comedians and you know what I'm talking about. Some people can't stand Jim Carrey, think old Eddie Murphey was too much, and Larry the Cable Guy is the pinnacle of comedy. I think they all do what they do well enough at what their subject is, but I'm just the guy writing a blog.
I had been toying with this idea of adding elements from one genre to another. I promised myself I would never write a Western, since I read a couple that just didn't seem that great to me. Since then, I took classes that had me read stories that have made me realize that Westerns aren't bad, I just kept reading really formulaic, repetitive Westerns. So with all this sad stuff I was reading, I decided to write my first wizard-cowboy story "Lost and Found Henry" which you can read here. For my D&D nerds, think Spelljammer mixed with Jonah Hex as a character. I figured if the story was fun enough, than that would be a good way to practice my writing in a way that wouldn't hurt too much if it ended up not being any good. Turns out the class loved it! The idea of a cowboy fighting ghost with a wand and a revolver over a pearl necklace seemed to go over so well, that started being my thing. I figured I would keep writing this stuff and eventually when I was a better writer, I would write something else when I'm ready to move on from Sol Rojo. I was the wizard-cowboy writer, and I never even planned to be write a Western. In fact my thesis was the first book I hope to release one day "In the Company of the Foolhardy: Death waits in the Desert" and followed the same ideology of adding magic and sci-fi elements to a typical posse hunts some kidnappers story. Its a typical western town with their beliefs and morals thrown into a world were magic, eldritch abominations, and flying iron clads are now a reality.
So now here we are, the point to all this. The plans I have for this blog and my writing in the future is to post on here every Friday as a check in and also as a place to flex writing about different things like my love-hate relationship with weightlifting, or a post I plan to write next week where I talk about how fighting games helped me enjoy playing games online again. At the end of all these post I will write an update about how future books are coming along and whether or not I start trying out other things such as streaming or creating videos which are basically essays like this with my voice instead of written words. Right now I am working on a collection of short stories, and possibly a book that is already written, just got to mess with it until I'm ready to drop it. An idea I've been having for a while is a book or series of books that are my personal love letter to Dark Souls, Bloodbourne, and all those kinds of games that have story telling and gameplay that I adore. If you made it this far, then thank you so much for reading to the end. I have a Facebook and Instagram if you want to follow me there, and I will be posting there for when I have new blog post up.
No comments:
Post a Comment