So, What Do You Write?

It’s usually the first question I get asked.  Grant it, I get asked quite a few things when people find out I write, such as:

Have you been published?

Where do you get your ideas?

Can you write a story about me?

Do you walk around the house in your boxers all day?

However, the first question is almost always about what I write.  My answer isn’t exactly satisfying to the inquisitive.  “I write a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

To be honest, that’s the truth.  I really don’t think in terms of genre, so I don’t write that way.  If I get an idea that I think would be a great mystery, then that is what I write.  If a love story comes to mind, I’ll start typing it up.  I tend to read quite a bit of fantasy, so I have tons of storylines that would work better with elves than humans.  I enjoy making fun of my past, so I also have a collection of autobiographical essays almost completed.  I tackle my writing the same way I go about my reading.  I don’t get hung up on the type of novel I’m putting together as much as the story itself.  Let others classify it what they want.

It’s also about characters.  Sometimes I just can’t get one out of my head and I’m forced to write a story just for that character.  Or in the case of Circle of Justice, it was an object with an idea behind it.  I knew how I wanted it to end, so every little story in the middle had to bring the gun back around.

“Do you write fiction or nonfiction?” 

That’s usually the second question and the answer is both.  While I started out writing fiction in high school to keep me from going crazy in Algebra class, my first sale was an article for Decision Magazine.  For the next few years that’s what I mainly focused on, getting my words into magazines and pushing my thoughts onto unsuspecting paying subscribers.  I turned that into creative nonfiction and started writing humorous essays about growing up as a scrawny, four-eyed kid that got laughed at a lot.

However, crazy characters and stories never left my imagination and I finally had to take them from my spiral notebooks to the typewriter.  More stories came and even crazier characters crept out of my gray matter begging for their own spotlight.  Still, as I look at my white board of projects, I see fantasy, mystery, erotica and literary.  Well, that’s not true.  What I really see are stories that happen to fall under certain labels.

Reaping the Harvest, which will be coming out soon, is a story about Richard Bartlett who wishes he had not stopped his truck when he heard someone screaming and is now forced to battle the evil of the Void while protecting his hometown.  He is surrounded by elves, fairies, and other creatures he wishes would simply go away.

Losing Faith is about a couple exploring their more sensual side and getting entangled in the emotions that seem to come with their sexual exploits.

Hey, Four Eyes! is a collection of essays that make you laugh at my life as well as ponder the lives we all lived growing up.

And there are more on the board, about ten more actually, and those don’t include what’s in the idea book.  None of them follow a certain theme or genre and I’m okay with that.  They’re good stories that need telling with deeper thoughts behind them.  I have never been a person fascinated with just one thing.  I enjoy variety.  And just for clarification, I don't walk around in my boxers all day.

So, what do I write?  A little bit of this and a little bit of that.  What do you write?

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