The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#46) -- When and Why

When and why did you begin writing?

Like a lot of writers (or just kids in general), I started writing stories in school, fun little meaningless things than were more fantastic in my own mind that good in any real sense. Then I wrote some more in high school and college, mostly poetry (yes, poetry), and scratched the fiction itch during a class on fiction writing I took in college.

After that, I was hooked on fiction, but it was always the "other" that must play second fiddle to my "real" writing -- magazine articles and stringer work for the local paper. But in my other classes I'd feign listening while writing stories longhand in a notebook, and at home, I'd sit diligently in front of my "computer" -- an Amstrad paperweight with two 5.25 floppy drives, no hard drive, and a CGA monitor -- in the mornings, typing away my latest "masterpiece."

I even managed to place third in one writing competition at college, and first in another. Then I had a few stories selected for the O' Georgia collection of books sponsored by an Atlanta bookstore.

But I never considered fiction as anything more than just something fun to do on the side of my real writing until I e-met Frank Fradella at Cyber Age Adventures (now iHero Entertainment). And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.