Started from the bottom, headed to the top

This is a journey 28 years in the making. Cliché, yes, but sometimes it's what rings true the most. I've been a dedicated student of history and writing for a long time, ever since I was young. It's right here, at this point, where I've decided to take a step, a risk, and push myself to pursue a lifetime dream of becoming a published author. I could list a thousand excuses and doubts that held me back, stopped me from taking the plunge, but none of it would matter except frame a story that nearly every author I know has experienced and told time and again.

This dream started taking shape back in the summer of 2016. I was working at the Bangor Historical Society as an Archivist Intern part time, trying to figure out what life would hold for me now that I'd graduated from the University of Maine with a Master's Degree in History. I'd written plenty of books before, all unpublished, I'd started dozens more, written lots of short stories, but nothing that really held any kind of special place in my heart, at least not one I wanted to then take and put before an audience.

Sitting in my single-room, one bath apartment (with no kitchen, no sink aside from the one in the bathroom, and no dishwasher), the itch to write started to grow. It was a desire to start writing in a genre that I hadn't touched before: horror. I'd written a few stories that edged into the arena of thriller, but I never felt compelled to write a horror story. Up until that point I'd only read anything like Lovecraft tangentially, a little bit here or there but I didn't seek out any cosmic horror intentionally. But as I sat down and began writing, sketching out the beginnings of this story, I found myself exploring something psychological, more other-worldly, than a traditional horror tale. And that's where the short story "Sins of Twilight" came into being.

Over the course of the next three years I dabbled in writing here and there, but didn't get fully back into writing until 2018. I made it a personal goal to try and write as many short stories as I could, aside from attempting the National Novel Writing Month challenge (NaNoWriMo). I've participated off and on since 2010, but it was a big confidence boost to not only pursue it but finish, writing just a little over 50,000 words in the month of November in a short novel called "The Waywalker." Between 2016 and 2019 I even sent in some of the stories I'd written to contests and publications, but received rejections from all of them, and unfortunately, no helpful feedback.

When I was attending undergrad and then eventually graduate school, writing was a huge part of what I wanted to do with my life. That's a big part of what history is, and nearly every step of the way I found myself developing and growing my abilities, affirming that this was a good choice. Unfortunately, like most of my generation, I ran into a wall I never expected: the burnout. I spent six years of nearly continuous schooling taking every class I possibly could, going during the summer, winter, any time classes were offered. With school as my primary focus and nearly no time devoted to learning practical job searching skills, networking, or anything that might help me land a job outside academia, I short circuited.

I've done what I can. I'm applying the skills I learned in a job that can be fulfilling, but taxing, but it hasn't provided me the satisfaction I crave and need. And that is why back in October of 2019 I decided to bring together a collection of six stories and hire an editor to turn them into a real professional collection. I wouldn't wait or rely on someone else to determine whether or not my writing was suitable for their publication, or worthy of an award, I'd do it myself. You might be asking yourself, "Six stories? But this collection only has five. . ." And that's because in the process of creating and cobbling everything together, I decided it was more worth it to have five well written and polished stories than six moderately well done ones. The sixth may appear in another issue or on its own as a stand alone, but I believe it's for the best.

And here we are, nearly at the end of an era, a journey spanning decades of my life leading up to a triumph. Perhaps that's too bold. A horse put before the cart. Confidence is everything, and I'm not going to downplay my abilities or the choices I've made knowing that I have the skills and the talent necessary to make a quality book worthy of being read. I'll continue posting blog updates and other literary morsels on this blog, so keep checking back for new content and news related to the upcoming Kickstarter for "Whispers in the Mist: The Horror Compendium Number One."