Hey all,
I have a slightly different story...about the writing bug at least. I had written my first story I believe in the third grade, but the only one I can really remember is the tale my '4th' grade teacher read aloud (in which I had hid in the coat room until he had finished...), about the epic events of me, my best friend, a boat, and some weird alternate world complete with running and screaming from beasties every time we came across them. The tag line of my 'novel' was "and we screamed and screamed." Best seller...yeah.
Anyway, I was a big horror nut and my best friend (no, not the one from my little 4th grade novel; she had moved away by then and I never saw her again), and I traded 'dreams" back and forth through junior high (ah...middle school now is it? LOL) about Freddy Kruger and all the people we hated. Though, when I think about that now, if one of those 'dreams' had been intercepted (especially nowadays)--our butts would have been expelled. We were nasty...and descriptive.
Then came high school and my first Creative Writing class (which I found out the next year you could only take once since the teacher merely regurgitated the lesson over and over again), and I did pretty well in that. The teacher (whom I can't spell his last name to save my life...it starts with M), could choose one student to go to some seminar, and he chose me to go. Yes, whoo hoo, but by then I had other ideas that consisted of artwork and illustrating professionally--and figured writing would get me no where. So, I didn't go.
Now I'm kicking myself in the rear for not going, since I have finally, after 12-13 years of not writing a thing--decided to start up again. Been back on the wheel for two years now, and yes, it has been cutting into my drawing. Yet, I strangely don't mind.
I carry two jobs on top of artwork--and writing, so I'm a pretty busy person. I normally cannot write small scale things...they must be epic and complex...LOL. And also, to hone my skills a bit, I write fanfic. Yes, I will admit I write fanfic. Not of the Dresden Files...I know better than that
--but of other fandoms not book orientated. Either way, I have many fandom readers nudging me toward publishing my original stuff, but right now, I'm concentrating on my 'practice until I square things with my style.
That said however, I do have something in the works...a new take on Vampires...and elves, and magic, etc. and will share a little excerpt. I've been told it's a bit heavy-handed, but hey, it's a dream sequence, I'm allowed some surreal, flowy descriptions.
The figure levitated as he drew near, bare feet several inches from the ground, toes curled inward and gnarled. He was clothed in black robes that billowed around him, frayed tendrils reaching for the sky. His skin was gray as ash, hands wizened like his feet. A dark aura churned and rolled behind, lagging like a moldering wedding train. Long white hair snaked from his back like ivory weeds--floating, as if this being approached from beneath the sea. Moths, huge and gray silently fluttered around the head of this creature, their dust settling onto the shoulders of his black robes. There were about three dozen of the insects, flying possessively close as if this being was their only source of light and heat.
Even as the man hovered, the ground that he passed rotted away, white sand dissolving and falling into darkness, bodies that he floated over crumbling into dust--and then the dust into wind. Even the mighty pillars dissolved in his presence, faces screaming no more. The earth opened beneath his feet, a yawning chasm of darkness that spread wider with each step forward. Nathan could not move, could not draw breath into his lungs as he stood mute and transfixed in horror. The space twisted around them, between him and this being--energy crackling with a cold hiss. Nathan sucked in a lungful of tainted air, gathering the courage to peer into the creature’s face-- Ahem...will go back to lurking now...
