Welcome to My World
I wrote my first short story in fourth grade. It was called “The Lost Puppy,” and told the story of a puppy who felt displaced when a kitten joins the household. By the end of the two-page tale, the two became fast friends and everyone lived happily ever after. Judging from the enthusiastic reaction of my teacher and classmates, I thought from that moment on that writing just might be my thing.
By eleven years old, I also considered myself a filmmaker, and decided That Was What I Wanted To Do. I studied filmmaking in college, and set off on a career focused primarily on non-fiction media – producing or editing documentaries, promotional and educational programming.
But I still considered myself a writer. I worked in a creative field, after all, and everything I did was related to storytelling. I still wrote as a hobby, though, creating screenplays and short stories over the years. I won a few awards and recognition for several of my screenplays, and even adapted one or two into short films. The first book in the Alexander Adventure series, MY LIFE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN first came to life as an award-winning screenplay in 2005. It even won best comedy in a scriptwriting competition.
You might assume that I would take that success, and others like it, as motivation to shop the screenplay around Hollywood for a couple of years, just to see what would happen. I didn’t though. As much as I enjoyed writing, the idea of spending years working on a project, and then years more shopping it around, hoping that a publisher or producer might find value, simply held no appeal . I loved my characters, and wanted to get them directly into the hands of readers.
MY LIFE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN, OWN THE SCRAWNY and MY EPIC LIFE aren’t exactly autobiographical, but they reflect a time in my life that was at once funny, emotional, awkward and adventurous. If you’ve been twelve or thirteen, you know what I mean. I think Alexander and his friends have something to say about getting through that journey with sanity and sense of humor intact.
