Thursday, June 18, 2015

You Have to Start Somewhere




The need to create stories, characters in situations, seems to be a part of my makeup. However, had I not taken a certain class during my 9th year in school, – I won’t mention how long ago that was – my novels might have existed only in my imagination.

As it turned out, typing was a required subject in those days. Otherwise, I would never have enrolled in such a class. And had it not been for Mr. Brown, who was in the habit of giving his budding typists a qualified free-time during the last ten to fifteen minutes, it still might not have clicked. I say qualified because we couldn’t leave the classroom, talk amongst ourselves, or cause any disturbances, but other than that it was ours. We could use the time to practice the day’s assignment, do our homework, or sit quietly. I did none of these things. I began typing short stories.

I truthfully don’t know where this came from. I grew up in a blue-collar family in every sense of the word.  I was taught a very no-nonsense style of life. And, quite frankly, reading, much less writing, was never discussed. I was never told it was a waste of time, but it was pretty much inferred.

Nevertheless, there I was, alone with my typewriter, and short stories, featuring a bungling superhero began spilling out. I didn’t take the stories home and I didn’t dare tell anyone I was writing them. I just left them on my desk, hoping someone would read them. As it turned out, I developed quite a following, as it didn’t take the students long to figure out who was creating the comical series.

Unfortunately, or not, depending on how you look at it, after the class was over I went back to being who I was before; a shy boy who avoided attention. Many years later, the dormant but never extinguished desire fought its way out again.  

Click the link below to read a sample of Beneath a Buried House:






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