I've been writing stories all my life, but strangely I didn't really notice that until I hit college. I think it's because I was always the "math wiz" in the family that I didn't think too seriously about creative writing through my formative years. But when I look back, I do see several writing projects that I toyed with--perhaps as a break to my math homework.
To give you a hint of how, what, and why I write, I've provided a sampling of writings through the years. For some of them, I don't think I was even into my teens yet, so you'll have to excuse some of the lame jokes and what-not. You may appreciate taking a gander at some of the early works, just to see how I have developed. Of course, you may think I have not improved at all, or that I've even gotten worse. Regardless, I give you...
When I was a youngin' back at St. Paschal Baylon Elementary School, Mrs. Johnson had us write short stories for an English class. Now of course, most of us lacked experience in the area. But even at 12 years of age, I was able to create a thriller to rival any Tom Clancy tome with Criminal Insults. I followed that a year later with a christmas drama featuring the same character of Zeke Johnson. And if I ever find that one in my desk, I'll be sure to put it out here.
After such classics as those, I went off to high school at St. Ignatius, where I wrote a few more Zeke stories. All of these were just preparing me for the novel I started writing when I was 15. I had spent my spring break touring Germany and Austria with a group of fellow students. Upon my return, I thought it would be fun to write about my travels, but under the guise of a spy story--No, I wasn't going to Germany as part of a class field trip. I was going as a top secret undercover agent. Sadly, I never finished the novel, but I did complete almost two chapters of The Rhine Agenda before something else grabbed my interest.
High school also brought with it an assignment to write an essay about a slang term. I decided to choose a term that I helped create. Thus, The History of Ham Up was created.
At Ohio State, I enrolled in a creative writing class for the fun of it (I was a psychology major thinking of adding an English minor or even a major) and one of the first assignments was something to the effect of "Write a one page story using only dialogue; you may use 'He said' or 'She said' but no more than once each--all else should be dialogue." The remaining weeks of the quarter required two short stories. My first was Slack and Me and the Quest for Kim Deal, a buddy story following two teens as they search for their rock n roll goddess. It was well received by everyone in the class except the instructor, prompting me to pen Writer’s Block, the tale of a man whose well received novel is not so appreciated by his publisher.
Enjoying the class as I did, the next year I tackled another creative writing class, which brought the world Think About It, the story of what happens when a lovelorn teen decides its finally time to show his interest to a close friend, and Doughnut Discovery, what you write when you have a brother that loves doughnuts (dedicated to him, of course).
NOTE: I have deleted several other stories previously found here due to copyright restrictions. More on that as we go along…
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