To Inspiration & New Adventures!
The What, the Why, and the Huh?
The beginning - Taco Bell and vampires …
It was 1995, and my shaky hand offered a stack of pages to a close friend of mine across the center console of his crappy-ass Ford Tempo.
(Pictured - a crappy-ass Ford Tempo, though not HIS crappy-ass Ford Tempo)
I was 20 years old, a few months away from my 21st birthday, and I had spent weeks staring at a tiny amber screen on an electronic word processor before finally hitting “print” and watching as page after page of my first short story was jackhammered letter-by-letter automatically onto a stack of off-white paper.
At that moment, I became a writer.
Not because I had a completed short story, mind you, but because I experienced my very first bout of gastrointestinal distress at the thought of someone reading my words for the first time. The badge of honor - I realized at that moment - wasn’t publishing a story, and it wasn’t writing it, either. It was allowing other eyeballs to gaze upon and judge my creation.
Oh, I wrote through high-school, certainly. But those were assignments. One of them was a poem, which started out with the artful phrase, “I stepped on a lizard, and out shot its gizzard.”
That’s me, striking fear into the heart of Robert Frost.
(Robert Frost, no doubt admiring my “gizzard” line…)
This moment was different. This was a story straight from my imagination, to the page.
The story itself was terrible from a craft standpoint but with a few funny moments in there somewhere. It was called “A Vampire in Wawa,” and was basically a version of the movie Clerks, but with vampires working a convenience store during a night shift. One vampire was a curmudgeon, his best buddy was flamboyant (and had a penchant for sticking his fangs into Cadbury Creme Eggs and sucking out the sugar), and they had some oddball adventures with night-time characters in the wee hours of the morning. It was stupid, it was kinda funny, and it was fun to write because it was just me, and my brain.
Yes. I still have that original copy of the story.
No. You cannot read it.
We were in the parking lot of a Taco Bell in South Jersey. I let go of the pages and went inside. I hadn’t eaten yet (the gastrointestinal distress had a culprit, but it wasn’t a soft taco supreme), I just wanted to run and hide while my story was being read.
I remember looking through the windows and to the parking lot, to see when it was safe to return. After about 15 minutes, he rolled down a window (yes, with the hand-crank), and waved me over.
I sat down, nervous as ever, and waited.
And what was the review?
“Dude. That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.”
And I was hooked.
I tell you this because I remember that moment, and here I am, nearly 30 years later, having those same moments and same feelings any time my writing makes its way in front of other eyeballs.
As writers, artists, or creatives we fight a constant battle of authenticity and acceptance. We want to write the stories we want to tell, but we also want them to resonate with others, and it can hurt very much when they don’t. That moment as a young writer was pivotal, and it was a damn good thing my friend had the reaction he did, else I may not have written another word, ever.
As it stands, I barely did anyway, because that nervous anticipation took over, and anxiety kept my creativity in check.
The middle - Japanese whiskey and a voicemail message …
I flirted with writing for years upon years in my 20s, never really establishing anything worthwhile, and being too busy with life to devote the time and energy I needed to it.
My creative energy was spent on MUD/MUX/MOO/MUSH coding, and I found my way into some servers that allowed me to code and create characters, stories, and settings that users could make their way through.
To the uninformed, MUD/MUX/MOO/MUSH refers to a sort of text-based role-playing environment. Remember those old computer games where you’d see a pixellated image and have to type, “Go North” or “Pick Up Item”? Imagine a much fancier version of that, text only, but multiplayer. You’d log in, be greeted by the description of a scene, and other people very well might be there role playing with others in a tavern, or on city streets that were all created and designed by yours truly.
(A fairly typical screen from a MUSH - I did not create this one, just a visual aid to help you see what I’m referring to)
It was a blast, and I worked on it for years. I found solace in creating the structure of stories, and writing little bits and pieces, but never quite finishing anything of substance. The players on the server loved my work, and I loved the creative writing in putting together an active and interactive world that was text-only. My love for the written word was always front-and-center.
Many years go by, and I’m finding myself at a friend’s house, and he is a well-known professional author. By professional I mean stories picked up by streaming services and turned into short films, multiple series published in various languages, an agent, etc. etc.
We were hanging out in his kitchen at 11 AM on a Friday, eating bacon and drinking Japanese whiskey (don’t judge), and I couldn’t stop thinking that his was the career that I’d want. Being able to write full-time, and have that kind of path.
So I tried it. I tried writing how he would write. I tried entering the same competitions for writing retreats that he had, and I attempted following his success and hoping to push through with my own.
Failure.
And I realized later why that was.
I wasn’t being me. I was trying to be someone else.
At that time I was also running a martial arts school, and a particular martial arts magazine held an open call for articles and written pieces. So I thought to myself, “What the hell. I can write. Let me try to pitch an article.”
And I did. The article was on the philosophy of my successful dojo, and how we integrated that philosophy of personal achievement and hard work into everything we did.
The editor (John Corcoran, who has since passed away - long time editor of Black Belt magazine as well as author of multiple books and a decades-long writing industry veteran), informed me that normally they don’t accept articles written by school owners, they instead set up one of their writers to interview you, and write the piece. “That’s fine,” I replied, “I’ll write something up as a starting point.”
I wrote it, submitted it to John, and a week later received an email. “I ran your pitch by our writers, and we all agreed that we’d like you to write it.”
So I did. And submitted it. And waited.
For two months.
Then came a voicemail:"
“Hi David, it’s John Corcoran. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, I’m having health issues and I was in the hospital. I left a note on my desk to call you first as soon as I got back into the office.
I just finished reading your article. David, I’m blown away. I have been in this industry for nearly forty years. God gave you a gift. You are meant to write.”
Shortly after that, my article was in print.
Mind. Blown.
A month after the article was published, John passed away. I didn’t know him for long, but I will never forget his words, or the faith he had that I was meant to write.
The recent past - Personal tragedy and the written word …
So I started writing my first novel, birthed from a writing prompt in a cafe in Northern New Hampshire. A simple writing prompt turned into an entire world of ideas and stories in my mind, and it was from those stories that I started forming my debut novel, “The Caretaker.”
I was about five-thousand words into the story when I was on a phone call with my big brother, Joe, and started telling him about it.
(Hanging out with my brother Joe in awesome New Hampshire)
“Hey,” he said, “I have to get into work, but call me when you get back from vacation, I want to hear all about it!”
I was leaving for Las Vegas a day or two later.
While I was sitting in a Tilted Kilt restaurant at 1PM waiting on a big plate of nachos, I got the call.
My brother was dead.
A routine laproscopic shoulder surgery turned into an hours-long effort to revive his heart coming out of anesthesia, and finally a doctor who made the call that even if he was to survive, he would’ve been brain dead. It was best to let him slip away.
I finished “The Caretaker” though the vision for that book changed drastically from that day forward. I poured my heart and hurt into those pages, writing an Urban Fantasy novel about love, loss, identity, and death.
(Currently sitting on Amazon with stellar reviews - and getting ready to re-publish this one with an expanded 5-chapter epilogue!)
In retrospect, focusing on that work allowed me to keep writing as a way to cope.
When it was done, I fell apart. Grief took over. Depression took over. Anger at his loss, anxiety, panic attacks, you name it. I experienced it all.
I lost my brother, and while I didn’t lose my love of writing, I lost the ability to put down words under the weight of grief, and my family being torn apart by the loss of such a loved person.
And that brings us to now …
Here we are. You and I on a substack hanging out and wondering why.
Well I am happy to say that my love of storytelling has always been present, and my love of creating - be it graphics, images, characters, worlds, short stories or novels - is as strong as it has always been.
Because I have realized something deep down that’s critical for my creative process.
I need to help.
And that’s why this substack exists, and why I’ll be using it to focus on my own creative endeavors - warts and all - in the hopes that it will lift up those who have been through something similar.
If anxiety has taken over and you are having a hard time putting words down - I’ve been there.
If tragedy has happened, and your creative fountain is dry as can be - I’ve been there.
If you haven’t quite found your voice - I’ve been there.
If you have felt lost, not knowing which direction to go in order to publish your work - I’ve been there.
If you’ve wanted to create MORE - video content, podcasts, marketing and more - I’ve been there.
We are all creators in some way or another, I’ve just chosen the written word. And it’s my belief that at this moment in our history, the world needs fresh voices, fresh stories, and creators unafraid to be themselves and make their stories known.
That’s why I’ve created the Chaos Collective. All of that manic energy ready to burst out of your skull needs an outlet. The gatekeepers holding you back need to be banished, and the anxiety preventing you from realizing your dreams needs a stern talking-to. So I’m hoping you’ll join me and we’ll find our way through this insanity together.
‘til next time,
-David