no longer self-proclaimed

Every different version of Episode I

14 Years - 16 Chapters - 23 Rewrites - 153,014 Words - 848,671 Individual Characters

I've thought of a million ways to start this out but really there is only one thing to say that both starts AND ends the blog.  The rest is just fluff of how, maybe of why, I got to this point.  And that one thing?  Today is the day I make my very first novel, "The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode I" available for purchase.

You can buy it here.

I'm filled with elation and sadness to write that, knowing the journey I have been on for quite literally half of my life is now over.  And I'm crying and laughing because the reality of it is finally sinking in.  I wish I knew more people who had spent so long working on something like this (a passion project like this) so as to know how to identify the feelings I have raging through me.  But I don't (at least not yet) and that's alright.  I've always been more adept at dealing with things on my own than with a collective, so why not this too?  But I am certain there are people out there reading who have attained a dream of theirs, so at the very core, they know how I feel and that's an amazing thing.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I started this blog almost three years ago I thought it would be a funny/witty title to call it "musings of a self-proclaimed author."  Seeing as I was neither an author nor was anyone actually reading the blogs (I can still view my first 10 entries, none of which were ever read more than eight or so times (ouch)) I found it fitting.  I always looked at the profession of "author" or "writer" as someone that was published.  If someone asked me what I did and I said "I'm a writer" and they replied "oh, what do you write?" I would only be able to follow it with "Ummm... three manuscripts that are unpublished and I keep a blog."  That's humiliating in a way, mostly because I am the king at devaluing myself and always taking a bite out of humble pie.  

But time wore on and as I have ALWAYS promised, ever since day one in the very first blog, the story got better.  More people started to read the blogs, the views averaging 60-80 per entry in the first month and then climbing after.  And every now and then comes a special blog a few of you decide to share and the views go much higher.  Maybe like this one, but that's pure speculation.

Below you will find my not-so-brief account of just how I came to be where I am today, a published author.  Bleedin' hell it feels weird to say that.

Did I mention you can buy my book right here?  Just checking.

August 2000

I remember riding my bike over to @klreynol's house and it was maybe two miles away from mine.  I was 14 years old, four months shy of turning 15, and just a few weeks away from beginning my freshman year of high school.  Things were a lot different back then, or for me they were at least.  I had no-idea I was gay, I'd never had a job, I had no idea how I was going to lose weight before first-semester swimming class in Gym (thank the lord for a growth spurt, btw) and I also had no idea what I was going to grow up to be.  But for the moment none of that mattered, I was just riding my bike to my best friend's house.

Now the details are fuzzy as to whether or not we'd decided what we would do that day, but either way we ended up taking her two Greyhounds Bandit and Gypsy for a walk.  This usually started by squealing "Let's go for a walky-walk!" and the dogs would enthusiastically jump up and be ready to hit the road.

Here is where I provide a true testament to how good my memory is regarding certain events.

We were walking in front of Horizons Elementary School and talking about Jurassic Park (the book, not the movie) because @klreynol was reading my copy of it and we were going over certain cool scenes in it.  Conversation gradually turned toward what we would do if WE wrote our own version of the book.  And then, slowly but surely, that turned into what we would do if we were a little older and had, say... magical powers?

With a pep in our step we hurried back to the house, pulling out a book of baby names that @klreynol had.  I remember lying on the floor, sunlight beaming through the two windows in her bedroom, and poking through the book for what her character's name would be and what mine would be.  She chose Bryna Shaw, though I don't believe it was for any specific purpose.  I chose Banning Sol, which meant "blond haired sun child" because I was blond and... y'know, who wouldn't want to be a sun child?

She had a red notebook she was going to start writing her story in, and when I got home that evening, I found an old Mead red notebook to do the same.

(Not actual notebook, dramatic interpretation only)

A few days later we shared our stories with each other and then inevitably we typed them up (on typewriters, not computers, natch.)  Mine was 13 pages long and very very heavily influenced by the X-Men movie that had come out a couple months earlier.  Banning and Bryna were best friends growing up in the Midwest, and after high school they moved to California to be Marine Biologists at a Sea World-esque park where they worked with Great White sharks.  They cast spells like witches and wizards would (albeit without wands) and were telekinetic and pyrokinetic, respectively.

If that alone doesn't inspire you to see how I fixed the story by buying it here, I don't know what would.

I still have that original treatment, hidden somewhere amongst the folds of pages and pages of derelict versions of the story, bearing the title for several (SEVERAL) years "The Originality."  Barf.  I've got no problem saying the story was not good, because it wasn't, hahaha.  The shear notion I'd made so many people read it with such a big smile of reassurance that what I'd produced was mesmerizing is exhausting.  I even gave out copies of it for Christmas (whaaaaat a gift).  Calling a spade a spade, it was a melodramatic and blatant rip-off of certain movies and ultimately, just not interesting.

When the Christmas holidays ended and we were back in school, that January of 2001 @klreynol and I stopped being friends.  It was a silly fight that went on much longer than it ever should have, but with the fight came my reasoning to re-work my story.  I wanted to turn it far away from everything she knew it as, mostly so she wouldn't have any idea of what "The Originality" was about anymore.  It was dumb and petty, I'm aware (and I was 15) but without doing so, I wouldn't have changed everything from the ground up the way I did.

I can still remember the night I decided to change my book.  It was the very first time I ever sat down and said "I'm go to re-write this."  I was at a white desk that had been my sister's before mine, and maybe my mom's or my great grandma's before hers.  I can't remember.  I had painted it white myself though, and had a fancy gingham blue sheet on it to protect the top.  Probably all sorts of candles as well though I don't recall them being lit. It was at a right angle to the wall, it was dark outside, and I just went to town.  It''s funny that I can remember that.

I added a love interest for Banning in Sydney Becker.  I created a better villain in Damien Fausteu.  Most of all, I got rid of the magic and turned it into human evolution and a bit of technology.  I also created the ring Onyxus.

Then in the spring of 2001 I re-wrote the story again.

In the fall of 2001, I re-wrote it again.  And so on and so forth, you get the picture.  Each version had the story (now resembling a book) growing a little longer and a little more detailed.

Original Banning, Sydney, and Bryna

I started to draw pictures of my three leads (an Armani ad for Banning and two Covergirl ads for the girls) and would hang them above my desk to inspire me.  Yes I can kinda draw.  I made Bryna and Sydney into best friends, severing the connection Bryna had to Banning because with @klreynol out of my life, I didn't want the connection to exist anymore.  Appearances of characters changed.  Locations changed.  At first the story was pushed out of present day and then 200 years into the future.  Then it was pushed another 100 years out.  In short I began to create a lore... a mythos if you will of the time and space these characters occupied.

I would look at those pictures (and others) as I wrote, imagining them coming to life and the things they would have to say.  I made a soundtrack (four discs, hehe, hehe, he...) of what songs would play during certain scenes.  It wouldn't be a stretch to say I became obsessed with my story.  Always on my mind, always something to work on and chip away at.  After that first year of re-writes I stopped letting people read it.  "The Originality" was changing at a pretty constant pace, but not in terms of things people would notice.  To be honest I felt dumb at that point in asking people to read it because it was dialogue I was polishing and fights I was making bigger.  Researching explosions and making sure I had the details right of what would and would not happen.

If you asked me now, I wouldn't know why I felt so dumb in what I was doing.  I just did.  The initial excitement over being an author had melted away and turned into "just a hobby" type of deal.  To be 100% honest I didn't think I would ever get this published, I only ever pictured it being a movie and that was all.  I was creating a good story that would look good on camera and largely that was it.  The first treatment of the story involved a kind of weird ending that I would eventually break off as the sequel.  This sequel took a very rough shape over the years (was not written at all until 2005) and I figured my main book would just be the first of a three part series planned as "Part I: The Beginning," "Part II: The Adventure," and "Part III: The Journey."  Eventually those titles went away in favor of a much more broad "Episode I / II / III" kinda thing.

And Episode IV, but I had no idea it would exist at that point.

January 2004

I was sitting online one day with AOL Instant Messenger open.  I was talking to a couple people, nothing big, and probably surfing the web and thinking I was cool.

As an 18 year old does.

A "bleep" sound rang through the speakers and I wondered who'd just signed on.  It was @klreynol.  In hindsight I don't know why I never deleted her from my buddy list (much like Banning never wants to let go of things, maybe I'm the same (how's THAT for working in a character arc that didn't happen for another 10 years?).  It'd been three years that month since I had spoken to her last, all because of a stupid and ridiculous argument I started and sure as shit finished, effectively ending a once great friendship.  I'd even had a class or two with her in the interim and managed not only to ignore her, but to never even look at her.  No, I'm not proud of that.

I am proud you can buy the book here though.

But there she was, online and a mere message away.  And as evidenced ever since, I tend to feel nostalgic during the shittier months of the year.  I messaged her.  Yes, these were our screen names.

No, she didn't really say that.  We chatted for a little while and then agreed to meet that weekend for lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings to talk and catch up.  I was excited and nervous all at once, coming face-to-face with someone I'd tried very hard to forget about but never really could.  Because of the book... because of Bryna Shaw, a character that somehow never really changed in personality and remained wholly who she had been from the start (a version of @klreynol).

Lunch was great.  We chatted, we got along, and then she dropped the bomb she'd be graduating at the semester and moving down near Milwaukee.  And for some reason I remember being really upset about it even though I had no right to.  In later years I would come to realize that pushing her out of my life is one of, if not the, biggest regrets I've ever had.  Losing three years of time with @klreynol because I was such a brat still breaks my heart.

She asked if I was still writing and I enthusiastically said yes before launching into what I had changed with the story.  Some things never change, as I will still text her in fits of excitement of a new idea or plot twist I've come up with (and to her credit, she always humors me and encourages the ideas).  At that point the book was probably close to 350 pages of work and in my eyes it was pretty good.  I'd worked very hard to move beyond what she had contributed to the story and by then it was entirely my own.  And she wanted to read it.

Over the years to follow our friendship grew stronger and stronger.  I would give her a copy of the book, she would edit it and suggest a few ideas before handing it back, and then I would rewrite it again a year later, implementing those ideas and a million more of my own.  She became my confidant with the book, the one and only person who took the time to know the ins and outs of the story almost if not as well as I myself.  She laughed with them as I did, she cried with them as I did.  Her emotional reactions to my work made me start to realize that maybe I had a talent in this... maybe I could create something better than just a story or a movie and it could stand on its own as a novel.

Maybe I had moved past the point of melodrama and ripped-off ideas of movies and better books and I started thinking much more about one day publishing.  Getting a huge advance and a movie deal, the things I would say in interviews in magazines and on TV, the house I would build with all the cash that would be coming my way.  Nothing like putting the cart before the horse!  But still, it gave me something to work toward and that was all the encouragement I needed.

A few years on I decided in a split-moment decision that I should dedicate the first book to @klreynol.  It was logical both emotionally and mentally to do so and it's a decision I've never thought twice about.  I printed off the ORIGINAL cover of "The Originality" and added a small caption to it:

And yes, she still has the framed picture.

She was floored.  I was floored.  The years continued to move onward and outward, expanding as they did and growing more and more complicated all the time.  After a year or so living near Milwaukee, @klreynol then made the trek to move way far north up to Michigan for college.  I didn't really have a taste any longer for what life was like actually being around her all the time, so it didn't really bother me to see her go because nothing was going to change much.  Instead of south, she'd be north.  And granted things did change once again between us, as we both got involved in actual, real, bonafide relationships that would change us and reshape us in many ways for the rest of our lives (that's not dramatic sounding at all, haha) we eventually found our ways back toward each other.

That's just how soulmates work.

August 2009

I'd been in a relationship with Ken for roughly a year and a half, and towards the latter end of that time period he introduced me to a gal he worked with who owned her own publishing company.  I hadn't even touched the first book since we started dating, he occupied a lot of my time, so the idea of brushing the dust off of it was so exciting to me.  Getting published seemed to be absolutely within reach and if I worked hard enough, there was no reason I could not attain it.

The downside to brushing off "The Originality" however was that I was suddenly looking at it with a much more critical eye.  A very severe, calculating eye.  With superhero movies like Batman Begins, The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, and Watchmen moving toward an increasingly darker tone, I was inspired to do the same with my own here/anti-hero story.

Any way you looked at it, my villain was never anything more dangerous than a Disney villain:  "I'll get you next time!" Damien would shout to Banning, dramatically twirling away in his floor-length leather trench coat through a vortex of fire and vanishing, only to appear a couple chapters later to once again fuck up his attempts to kill the main character and have to come back for more a few chapters later.

The love story between Banning and Sydney was good, but it wasn't great.  My main character shouted at people all the time and for no reason.  Literally.  "I am doing EVERYTHING I CAN TO FIX THIS!  What are you doing?" would appear during a relatively calm moment.

Bryna had evolved away from @klreynol's personality and quite drastically.  The purpose of the character had become lost to me and the result had her acting like a bitch.  And not the "ooooh, she's so sassy!" kind of bitch... she was just a mean and unlikeable bitch, plain and simple.  That was never the intent for her by any means, but with Sydney as the leading lady there wasn't much thought put into the transition of shifting Bryna a smidgen to the sidelines.  I didn't know what to do with her.

I do know she would have bought my book here though.  You're welcome.

So I spoke with the gal who owned the publishing company per Ken's request and told her that I was just beginning to work on a re-write (I was probably in full-panic mode when I told her that).  She was professional to her core though and was quite encouraging and enthusiastic, telling me to submit material as soon as I had it finished.  I decided I would rewrite the prologue (which is a mini-story in itself) and test my hand at "dark stuff" with that.  I submitted it and again, she was enthusiastic and said she couldn't wait for the rest of it.

By this point in time, @klreynol had moved back to Appleton.  I reached out to her with my idea and ever the dutiful comrade, she came over one night to help me with the outline you see above (and technically below as well).

The actual editing process... plus or minus a few multiples.

The outline was broken up by chapters and contained every plot point the book held at that point.  The second board had every character, location, ability, weapon and vehicle written on it.  There was a lot of tiny writing and @klreynol had quite the sore hand after I flipped through the book and she wrote down everything I mumbled.  We created an entire outline (something I'd never done for either of my books) and figured out where things could be moved and what could be changed if not deleted.  In the process, and just maybe by some miracle longshot... I could make it a better book.

And then I started the final re-write.

As the words and pages flowed from my fingers, a fourth main character began to emerge from the mist.  Early in the book, Banning finds a ring with the word "Onyxus" scrawled inside of the band, and this ring gives him certain abilities.  As I added a consciousness to the ring (and subsequently a million other things about Onyxus in the sequels), I realized the story truly revolved around this piece of technology.  I had named it Onyxus in regards to a piece of black Onyx embedded in the ring, and seeing as the ring extends waaaaay before both the start of the book and the end of the series, it was really the central piece of my story.  All great series have a name that resonates... that means something, and suddenly everything became clear to me.

I would never take myself seriously by saying I wrote "The Originality Series."

Calling it "The Onyxus Chronicles" silenced all of my qualms.

As the rewrite evolved, so did my characters.  Damien became a true monster by killing a child the first time we meet him.  Banning became a hero by making even tougher calls and shouldering the consequences of doing so.  Sydney became the prophet by seeing the future, and Bryna became a variable by dawdling in her actions of what was right and what was wrong.  I submitted my work to the publisher, and within days I suddenly had an amazing idea for the "big picture" of my series... and I rescinded my submission.  

I wasn't ready to publish yet, and it was embarrassing to realize it so late in the process, but I just wasn't.

I am now though, I may have mentioned you can buy it here (c:

Props must been given to my brother Josh for his take on the material.  He pointed out several flaws in my story, some of them regarding bad ideas, some of them giving me kudos on great ones.  But still, it made me look at things differently and change them in turn.  Now that it's been five years since the final rewrite, the book is as done as I am willing for it to be.  I say that because it will never truly be done, there will always be something I can change.  I can't remember who said this about movies, but I always loved the quote "Movies aren't released, they escape."  Eventually you have to let go and trust in yourself that you did the best you could.  The rewrite gave the book the edge it needed and after a few edits since then, it has become the gem of my eye.  Here is the official synopsis:

With Episodes II and III in working order (though with rewrites on the way) and Episode IV largely accounted for, I was able to go back into Episode I and lace it with dozens of "blink and you'll miss it" references to the rest of the series.  In real life I am really weird about remembering dates and events from long ago and with that, I've always prided myself on my ability to create the intricacies in this story.  It has been such a treat to hone that skill in my books and tie them all together in a way that would give the reader a COMPLETELY different impression were they to go back and re-read them all after finishing the fourth entry.  Honestly and truly, that is my biggest achievement in these.

The perfect continuity will blow your fucking mind.

I made the decision to publish now because this month, August of 2014, marks the 14th anniversary since I started this journey.  That means I am now twice as old as I was when I started, and since I'm such a fan of finding meaning in everything, it made perfect sense to achieve this goal on said anniversary.

I chose Amazon.com to publish for a few reasons: it's free, I retain all copyright, I have complete control over my story, and I don't have to deal with rejection of a major publishing house.  I'm a control freak and doing this on my own terms just makes sense to me.  If a major publisher were to come to me at some point and say "Hey, we wanna get into bed with you (so to speak)" then we'll cross that bridge at that time.  But for now I am perfectly content with just getting myself out there.

I don't really worry about whether or not my book is any good.  Is that weird?  It's just not something that crosses my mind often anymore.  A small amount of paranoia is there, sure, and I certainly know there will be plenty of people that don't like it.  Maybe a few of them will stop reading it 30 pages in because they hate it, but the days of me explaining "the prologue is nothing like the rest of the book, don't worry!" are long behind me.  If you don't want to read it, don't read it.  I'm not going to make excuses for the story that I love, because in the end I didn't write my story about Banning for anyone but me.

I can't describe how happy seeing this makes me feel.

I wrote it because when I was 14 years old, I dreamed of a world that could never exist anywhere but inside my own mind.  I dreamed of a reality that was so fantastic and so special that it got me through the dog days of summer before high school and subsequently the hardest parts of my life in the 14 years to follow.  I wrote it because over time it just became second nature to think about the life of this man named Banning and eventually the lives of the women he joined forces with.  As the story evolved and the sequels were born, it became not just characters to me but people in a universe of fantastic places filled with fantastic creatures.

In a lot of ways it became real to me and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

This is why I'm here.  It's the purpose I've found for myself, it's the thing that I can come back to whenever I lose sight of what I'm supposed to be doing in the world.  If I'm lost, this finds me, and there is something beautiful about that.  I love being able to escape for however short a time to a world where I make the rules and things are only as unfair as I make them.  It is a tremendous gift to have.

So you see why to worry about someone not liking this piece of work is just futile, because it's not for them.  It's for me, and that being said, I know full-well you can't win everyone over.  I learned that lesson throughout my life time and time again.  And just when I think I've learned enough, I'm slapped in the face with another lesson.

What I want now is for you to buy this, either as a paperback copy or in the Kindle format (also available at Barnes&Noble.com).  If not to read it, then to just own it and know that with it, you own a piece of me.  I think over the last few years you've gotten to know me and my life.  The trials and tribulations that make me who I am, and "The Onyxus Chronicles" is a big part of it.  If you read it, write a review on Amazon, whether you liked it or not, please please please review it.  Share it with a friend.  Buy it for a friend.  Buy a copy for me to sign and one for you to flip through over and over again until the cover falls off and you're so embedded in this world that you just can't wait another second for the sequel in six months or so.

Looking back on that day 14 years ago in August of 2000, I realize that the bike trip bringing me to @klreynol's house was also bringing me toward a greater calling.  I guess in more than a few ways it was bringing me toward my eventual destiny.  I never would've thought while pedaling that green mountain bike across the Telulah Bridge over highway 441 that I would grow up to be a writer.  And now... well now here we are... and I'm an author.

And no longer just a "self-proclaimed" one at that; I am a genuine, living, breathing, and sure as shit published author.

My story keeps getting better, indeed (c:

Like what you saw?  Follow me on Facebook!  I can always use another fan (c:

Purchase "The Onyxus Chronicles: Episode I" HERE!

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