Welcome to my first official blog post!

I’ve been toying with the idea of running my “official” writer’s site for a while now and letting a few ideas roll around before I actually landed on anything. With three novels under my belt – arguably, I think that only one of them is any good – and being a quarter of the way through number four, I decided it was finally time (maybe past time) to pull this proverbial trigger. And on my actual birthday no less!

Part of what had been tripping me up for so long is that I couldn’t land on a single idea for a blog. I don’t feel confident giving other people writing advice on a continual basis as I’m just as likely to abuse the comma (used to use it like a Band-Aid) than anyone else. I also over think my tweets and have never been good at Facebook posts, so the thought of a published journal of my day to day life didn’t sound compelling to me either. So that left some of my other interests: Comic books, book books and video games. I like all of them, but I’m rarely an authority anymore as most of my time has been spent getting our lives ready for the birth of our first children: Twins! Wait, that’s ANOTHER thing I could write about! See where I’m going with this?

So instead of focusing on just one thing, you’re going to get it all. One day it might be a plot issue I’m tackling, the next it’ll be about a half marathon I ran. Oh, and I’m putting new tile in my kitchen floor in a couple weeks. You’ll definitely be hearing about that one. Whether you’re here with me at the beginning – which might only be my mom and my wife. Hi guys! – or if you’re reading from the future, consider this a manifesto of sorts.

For years I’d always – still do, actually – wanted to be a comic book writer. I spent a long time wrangling other people into drawing my dreams. It finally hit me that I didn’t always need another person to translate the images in my head. I love telling stories and I love crafting them. Why can’t I do both? Thus, I wrote my first novel, A Binder’s Oath. Needless to say it’s sitting safely in a digital trunk right now. I’ll probably pick its corpse like a carrion bird for a few good ideas later, but I’m not thrilled with it enough to fix it into a real boy. Working full time at Indiana University only leaves me with so much extra time to write, so time management is incredibly important. And once those babies are born you better believe that it’s going to become even more so. Anyway, I say all of this to illustrate a point. I’m so happy I wrote that book because it taught me so much about the novel writing process, but more than anything it showed me that I’m a novelist at heart. Even if nothing I write ever gets published, I’m not going to stop. I’ll crank these suckers out. My pace is about one a year right now. I hear that’s not too shabby.

At this point, you might be thinking, “What does this have to do with a blog?” That’s a good question. I’m glad you asked.

Stories. I come from a family of born story tellers and I’ve been fascinated with the concept of stories for as long as I can remember. I’m becoming more confident thinking of myself as a writer, but I’m definitely new to the writing community. I’ve done a lot of lurking and not so much posting and I don’t meet with a writer’s group. Although, I would definitely like to. Anyone in Indiana? So I have some tips and advice, sure, but more than that, I have stories that I want to share. I think they’re interesting, hopefully you will too.