What Happens When You Discover Storytelling is In Your Blood
What are you to do if your family values are murder, theft, mayhem, deceit and lies, assault and deception (to name a few)? Well, in the case of my family you… write books… I guess.
I have carried around a couple of books written by my great uncle, Sterling Noel, for nearly twenty years. I don’t remember how I got them. I’m pretty sure my dad found them and gave me the tattered and faded pocket books. Despite their condition I took care of them. Wrapped them in plastic and kept them out of the sun. But I thought of them more as novelties than anything else. I admired the old school art work, the yellowing pages and that all too familiar used book store smell (mmmm!).
It wasn’t until my father wrote a novel, yes it had all the same aforementioned family values that I started to pay a little more attention to those old books. I paid even more attention as I started to eek my way towards writing my own books. But when my oldest son started to show a real interest, not to mention a real talent for storytelling did I start putting it all together. This writing thing, maybe it runs in the family.
Maybe, just maybe one of our family’s strongest value is storytelling. Our stories just happened to have a bunch of those less than upstanding elements to them (most, even the best stories have at least a little bit!).
As far back as I can remember I loved a good story. Most people do right? But I also had that stinging feeling that I wanted more than to just listen (or read). I wanted to be able to tell a good, even a great story, myself. My medium of interest, growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s was comic books. And I took more to the art than the written word. I liked visual storytelling. The words, not as much. So I went the way of the artist. That was my dream, to become a prolific comic book artist. Jack Kirby incarnate.
It wasn’t until many years later that I came to realize that without a great story a comic book, graphic novel, movie or play would never see the light of day. And there was a good chance very few people would enjoy the tale without the words, energy and thought that went into creating and writing a good story.
So, here I am staring at my families work, realizing that the storytelling gene has been there the whole time, wanting so desperately to get out and run rampant (and commit murder and mayhem and such!). As I started to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and the ideas flew from me, I recognized that despite any level of success my great uncle may or may not have had due to writing… his greatest success I am sure was to fulfill what must have been an overwhelming desire to tell a story. To be a storyteller.
Book One – Waves of Deception – is set to release in early September. Read it (please) and let me know if I did a good job of holding up the FAMILY VALUES.
Thanks for reading!