My start into storytelling

When I was about 12 years old, give or take a year, my dad gave me my first glimpse into the world of storytelling and writing. It was one of the greatest things that he has ever done for me, the worlds that I have gotten to know since then have truly been inspiring. My favorite worlds have been Middle Earth and Faerûn. My dad had ended up giving me one of my greatest escapes.

I was by all definitions one of the most unpopular people at my middle school. After my first trimester (my middle school did trimesters instead of semesters) of sixth grade, I was afraid of my Physical Education class, most of my grade made my life hell, and to top it off, a teacher made it his mission to tell me how much he thought of me as a failure, that I would never amount to much, and that I should just do everyone a favor and drop out. To him I was an idiot, everything I did was wrong. My mother had tried to switch me out of his classes, but the middle school said all of the different subgroups (they divided us into 4 subgroups) were full to capacity. The subgroups would go 4 periods with 1 teacher and 2 with another, 2 elective classes. Due to this, I had to endure this for the whole year. I had the horrible teacher for the 4 period block. It only got worst the 3 years I was at that school.

Now that you have a little bit of a background into the time that I got introduced to storytelling and writing, it can better explain to you why I thought it was the greatest escape. It helped me to get through some of the hardest years in my life. Being able to read the stories that were created by others and learning how to create my own, gave me a much needed outlet. It is how I came to create the world I am working on, Draena.

Even if I could only have an hour a day to journey into my infant world, it was enough to survive. It also gave me a chance to learn about something that I hope to one day to turn into a career.

My dad saw me struggling with life and introduced me to the Hobbit and later Lord of the Rings and books that fall into the Forgotten Realms (the books that take place in Faerûn). Those books were a big inspiration to me. A majority of my writing falls into the Fantasy genre.

He would also show me these hand drawn maps he had done when he was a little older than I was at the time that he had done for Dungeons and Dragons. Back then I believe it was during the days of the 2nd edition that he was mostly active.

20 years later, I still love the art of storytelling. I have made it my mission the last 20 years to learn what I can about writing for the fantasy genre, I have even branched out and started learning about the science fiction genre. My hope is that when I am done with my first novel for the lands of Draena, that I will bounce back and forth between Draena and my science fiction world which has yet to be named. I hope to be able to turn out 1-2 novels a year.

I never thought that my dad, introducing me to those worlds all of those years ago, would ever lead to now.