Stories leak into my head…and I collect them for you. I’ve shared my head with stories for so long, that I don’t remember when it all started. The first time I sat down to write a story, I was seven or eight years old. My mother, tired of me pestering her and whining about how I was bored, suggested I go write a story. My father had a typewriter in his study, so off I went. I can still remember the funny texture of the typing paper, thin and slippery. I can remember wrestling with what the words in my head actually looked like on paper: is it “should of” or “should have”? Ah, the mysteries of grammar!

My first story? Since I was a big fan of detective series on television, I wrote what I thought was a hardboiled gumshoe mystery. That’s how it began.

Putting words on “paper” and letting them loose has a kind of magic, which frees you, which gives you power. Other people shove words at us — news, blogs, instructions manuals, political screeds – and that gives them power. We give birth to words, push them out of the nest, and watch their wings beat off into the distance. What could be more magical than that?

From childhood to this day, I have always made up stories when I couldn’t fall asleep, lying in bed while twisting plots and shaping characters. I suppose I would get more sleep if I didn’t want to find out what happens next to the dramas playing on my closed eyelids.

I’ve gone for long periods without writing anything but the bland technical prose of research papers or grant proposals. But then… bubbles of stories form in the ooze of my unconscious mind and rise slowly to break on the surface.

One of those explosions of words happened when I discovered the fun of fanfiction. [If you don’t know what fanfiction is, immerse yourself in it at one of the oldest sites: fanfiction.net.] Many years ago, I started writing fanfiction in the Harry Potter genre, after beginning to read the books to my children. I couldn’t get some of the characters out of my head; I wanted to know what became of them or what happened before.

Fanfiction was a wonderful sandbox in which to play. The exhilaration of getting near-instant feedback (positive and negative) on your work is truly addictive. And, even better, I met wonderful new friends, fellow dreamers and writers. I collaborated with some of these writers. Out of these collaborations came a desire to take the fantasy stories and move them beyond fanfiction. So, a novel was born.

Very few people have read my novel, fewer than those who read my fanfiction, for sure. But I love the process of writing too much to stop. Immersing myself in characters and plotting their peril is a joy. Novel No. 2 is coming along nicely. In the mean time, I will occasionally post here thoughts that occur to me about writing or some knotty problem that currently vexes me.

Stay tuned! Leave a comment or make a recommendation. Interesting thoughts are welcome.