I started telling stories as soon as I could put sentences together.
In one of my oldest memories, I’m six years old, and standing in front of my parents. They were seated, and I’d just finished telling them a story. It had everything: a heroic main character, a sequence of supernatural events, and a twist ending. When I finished, I stepped back to see how my audience was going to react. My mother stared silently while my father put his head in his hands. I stood there waiting.
My father finally took a deep breath and said, “I just want to know what happened to your sister’s hair?”
In the end, my parents rejected my story, citing numerous inaccuracies; my butt was reddened, and I was sent to bed early. I learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t try to jazz up non-fiction. People get angry.
In the four decades since, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve helped raise a few kids of my own, went back to school, and worked a number of different jobs. Life’s been good.
But something was missing. That something is creating things to share with the world. And so here I am.
The plan for 2025 is to put out a short story collection and finish a draft of my first novel.
I’m glad you’re here. I wouldn’t try to write stories if I didn’t think they’d be read.
-Lucas