Write For Your Life

Hello, just your friendly neighborhood former practitioner of the dark literary arts, come back from the dead, to help others in the creative community bring the ferocity and fun back to storytelling.

Five years ago, I fell ill with a mysterious illness that the doctors could only describe to me as, "my body trying to kill me and they wouldn't know why, until I was no longer in it." As the illness drew on, I found myself after battling it for three years, nearly 300lbs, covered in skin ulcers, and bald. Eventually, it all ended up with a severe nervous breakdown that caused my death. Or, as I like to call it, thanks to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens," Inconvenient Discorporation.

Upon my return, I felt lost and unsure of what to do next, because they don't make instruction manuals for how to get closure or start over after coming back from that kind of situation. An issue I may take upon myself to fix at some point. However, a few days into my wander through the fog, I was reminded of my love of storytelling; thanks to the two aforementioned authors. When I came across "Good Omens", once again, just like I had when I was younger, and it was given to me by an Angel of a librarian who swapped out the dust jacket for me so I could take it home without being interrogated about its content. It brought back all of the memories, from when I used to camp out under my bed, or in the closet, with my book and contraband Queen mixtapes. There I would sit with Freddie, Neil, and Terry, as I waited to see if monsters really did use the closet or under the bed as portals into the real world. Sadly, I discovered that was not the case. Yet, what I did find there more than made up for that disappointment. My love for storytelling! The ability to transcend any human boundary, take people to places, introduce them to people, and teach them things they otherwise wouldn't know without your perspective. The power to, not only, ask "what if?" but answer it. And, the purpose that comes with the responsibility of being able to give people hope that anything is possible.

These were just a few of the things which inspired me to become a storyteller, all those years ago, and renewed my purpose to return to storytelling once again. So, I went back to my first love. Writing. I set out to get back into the swing of things and write for my life, for a whole year. I made a goal of writing only 24 novels throughout the whole year. However, I am happy to say, I overshot my goal by writing 33 novels in only 11 months. Not to mention, I grew most of my hair back and lost almost a 100 pounds, at the same time.

After being so abundantly blessed, I was inspired, yet again. Inspired to give the same opportunities I had been given early on in my career to other writers and those in the creative community, who feel like they are just playing games in the dark. So I invented the #writeforyourlifechallenge as my first step to swashbuckling publishing and getting readers more involved in the process of pushing writers forward to reaching their goals. By giving them the opportunity to earn while they are learning from publishing veterans and gaining exposure at the sametime.

Just a few of the goals I have for this year and beyond. The first step in my new adventure and life round 2.

As we all know, adventures are better with friends, and I can't wait to see where this journey is going to take all of us!