My beginning along this long path of writing started back at the age of seventeen, possibly even sooner. Back then I’d read a number of science fiction/fantasy books by any number of authors (swords and sorcery were my favorite) and, though entralled, I discovered a familiar trend. The trend is based on standard storylines within trilogies – book 1 – good guys win, book 2 – bad guy wins, book 3 - good guy defeats evil. The worst part of this trend was that the good guy could do no wrong whereas the bad guy was simply vicious and cruel. In my view, these characters did not reflect true human nature and, in my own way, I decided I wanted to break this trend with some writing of my own. This is where I began.
Along those same lines, I began crafting a character I’d like to focus some writing around, possibly even a world. As my fixation with this character grew, I crafted other characters and a city in which they all lived. All these characters were neither good nor evil, but rather based around the hard choices people must make every day. This was my way of grey’ing the lines between good and evil. Soon these characters took to paper in a 42-page draft. This was to be the beginning of my own 1-book attempt at writing with the goal of creating characters which everyone could relate to, despite the setting.
Over the next 15 years, my one book turned into 3 with no chance of ending soon. As I continued to write, within 3 more years, I was halfway through book 5 and had formulated an ending. That ending, however, was a long ways off. Within the next 2 years I finished the series at seven books and began to re-read them. The problem that occurred over the past 20-plus years was my writing style had changed severely. This meant book 1 and 2 needed complete re-writes.
After numerous re-writes, edits passed on by friends who’d read the book, and my own changes in view-points, I found two things out. First, the books were good, but they were too long. By re-reading them I was able to cut them into 9 reasonalby-sized books instead of the 7 I’d originally created. The second problem I ran into was the first 50-pages are slow and don’t grab the reader like I need them too. This problem I have yet to solve, but beyond those 50 pages the books move very quickly. This original series of mine is currently called ‘Shadow Gods’, though it was originally named the ‘Council of Nineteen’.
The character that began all of this is Dohan (once Johan), a wizard from a thousand years past. He sees himself as good, but good in the sense that he’ll knowingly sacrifice a hundred to save a thousand, as he has done countless times. To most, this hard decision sounds like the reasonable choice, but a truly good man would try to save all 1100 without sacrificing any. That is the difference between my character and those of the books I’ve read.
Since writing those 9 books, I decided to write a more traditional trilogy, which has become the Stone Vengeance series. Like Dohan, Jeremiah Stone is a complicated man, though this series takes place within the setting of New York City. The story surrounding Jeremiah takes a stab at the ‘Book of Job’ from the Bible. The context concerns a single man and the choices of his life if he were given a single gift from each; God and the Devil. Imagine the possibilities of what those two ‘gifts’ could be.
Now back to the real reason I put in the effort I do, besides the escape it provides. My goal is to get both series of books published. My underlying goal, however, is to simply be able, at some point in time in my life , to point to a shelf and say, ‘I wrote those.’
I hope you enjoy my characters and my worlds.
