I didn’t grow up reading. Sure, I read a few stories throughout high school, but that was mostly to avoid paying attention to classes I didn’t care about (oh the curse of a creative — Also, I do not recommend this).

After graduation, I stopped reading altogether.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I really caught the bug for fantasy (despite loving video games of that era, and having many mental images that would later develop into books). I began reading Brandon Sanderson’s masterpiece, Mistborn.

And that changed everything. I loved it. The world, the magic, the characters.

I remember the day when I decided to delve into writing myself. I was halfway through The Well of Ascension (book 2 of Mistborn) and was having my mind blown for the fifteenth time when I thought, “I want to do this.”

A month or so later, I had a thought for a story and said, “Someone should write that book.” I paused, then said, “I will write that book.”

It took me nearly 2 years to finish that 240,000 word manuscript.

And it was terrible.

I’d done a lot of things right, and I genuinely think the overall story is good. But the writing was rough, to say it nicely.

But I’d found what made my soul sing. So I wrote another book. This one clocked in at 160,000 words.

And it was terrible.

Again the story had good parts to it. In fact, I have plans to rewrite them one day.

But I’d learned something from each of those books, and most importantly, kept writing. It was around this time that I also began really studying story craft. How to outline, what made a good plot, how to make characters, how to actually write prose. How to edit! (I added the best resources to the Resources page of my website)

10 years of work, including 4 Novels, 3 Novellas, and 2 failed stories and dozens of chapters discarded, and I finally hit the point where I’m crafting stories that I can proudly stand behind.

I hope you enjoy them.

And if you are out there looking at a mountain to your dreams, if you feel like you want to give up, that it’ll never happen. Keep going.

It gets better. YOU get better.

Enjoy the journey, otherwise you’ll never reach the destination.