I had a dream.
Nothing quite so noble as the late Martin Luther King Jr, but something I felt was important enough I
had to act on it.
I’d fallen into a world with magic, and with the power to do the impossible, I could help people. I could
heal them. I could protect them.
But there was someone who didn’t like what I was doing with my magic. Someone who wanted to stop
me.
Now, I don’t actually have magic – I know, you’re shocked, right? – but I could still take anyone to that
world I visited. I could show them what it was like to escape into a reality where nothing was impossible.
Where there were no problems, only puzzles.
And that was how Jo, my first main character, was born. Her fun-loving, chaos-attracting way of life
keeps things interesting and entertaining while she hides from the skeletons in her closet. And when she
discovers the safest place for her is under the protection of the man who hated her in high school (and
still does), things get tricky. She has some real issues figuring out where it’s safe to place her trust.
I’ve always been a huge fan of fantasy, all the way back to elementary school, when I would disappear
for days into tales of witches, unicorns, and dragons. And now, as an adult with problems that feel three
thousand times more life-altering than being the last one picked for the softball team, escape
sometimes feels even more important. Dropping into a world with solvable issues and happily ever
afters feels like the best way to escape the overwhelming emotions sometimes found in our own.
And… well, I would say it’s a cheaper hobby than drugs, but I’m not sure that’s true with the volume of
pages I consume in a week. Drugs might actually be cheaper than all the paperbacks…
Pounding through all those books has made me realize that no one has the same story. Even stories that
are the same are different. Which means there’s always room for more, right? So I decided all those
characters that had come to life in my head deserved their space on paper.
By the time I published my first book, I had seven rough drafts of other stories, twenty-page outlines for
about thirty tales in six different worlds, and countless ideas scrawled on a word document that has
grown to scary proportions over the last few years. Needless to say; ideas were not my weakness.
As it now stands, Jo has four completed books. I expect two more for her, hopefully wrapping up her
entire journey within a year of her start. But for now, here I am, on Authors’ Lounge – still struggling
with commas, apparently – just hoping to get my book in front of some people, ‘cause I like to think if
you start Jo’s journey, you won’t want it to end.
Still not sure? I don’t blame you, starting a new journey can be intimidating.
But, you know, if you’ve gotten this far through this article, you probably don’t mind my writing style, so
there’s that. And I promise laughs and action too. Oh, and it’s got a super-seggsy, slow-burn, enemies-
to-lovers plot – you know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
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