“Is he . . . writing?”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
I heard my nurses saying this, the ones who’d been taking care of me for over the month of May as I was getting treated for acute myeloid leukemia. Now let me just say, chemotherapy is a real bitch. It’s straight-up poison they pump directly into your veins, killing every last ounce of viable blood in your system. It’s a wonder anyone survives the process when they flush all your cells to near-zero on every count. This made strolling to the bathroom, not five feet from my bed, a real ordeal, like taking my bike out for twenty miles. I was forced to watch TV in ten-minute segments because a full twenty-five-minute Seinfeld episode was just too much work. So, as you can imagine, my nurses were stupefied to find me bent over my tiny desk, tapping away at my laptop. But hey, the need to write is more powerful than chemo. I also spent more than a few sleepless nights dwelling on my mortality while outlining future chapters using my iPhone’s notepad app.
While I am ashamed to pull out my C-Card—I am not looking for sympathy here—my battle to get noticed in the publishing world makes for quite a remarkable story. It seems the god or author in the sky or whoever is running this shitshow is a cruel prankster, and all the jokes are at my expense. I’ve thought of nothing but becoming a famous author since before I was old enough to spell my name. I was plotting scenarios in my head as my first-grade teacher called me out for not paying attention and “always being in another world.” That world being Aenya, apparently, or some semblance of it. Despite my talents and ambitions, however, my parents pushed me into the family pizza business, and I only managed to escape after thirty years of misery and my father’s passing. Then, in an ironic twist of fate, less than a year after quitting my job, I was hit with cancer, and the book I’d been working on, The Magiq of Aenya, stagnated, lingering on my electronic devices.
OK. Enough of the pity party. Shit happens. But as Gandalf so eloquently told Frodo, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” And I am deciding to forge ahead because, well . . . what other choice is there? Hell, maybe this ordeal will make me a better writer, because the best fiction, IMO, is born from life.
This leads me to the core problem I have with Sci-Fi/fantasy these days. Nothing on the new releases shelf resonates with me because the author rarely has anything to say about the human condition. The Lord of the Rings feels sincere because Tolkien based it on his experiences as a soldier in the First World War. My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service have won the hearts and minds of fans worldwide because Miyazaki drew heavily from his childhood. And yet I find, too often, modern writers doing little but making copies of copies of copies. They read the latest bestsellers, toss what they read into the blender, hit puree, and regurgitate a cinderblock of pages they call a novel. And the big-name agents love them for it! Because nobody wants to take risks for art’s sake anymore.
Me? Stubbornly, perhaps stupidly, publishers be damned, I aim to rise above all that. It’s tempting to throw in a romantic subplot, to jump onto the ever-growing “romantasy” bandwagon, when it isn’t warranted. My niece reads nothing but enemies-to-lovers + dragons stories and couldn’t have cared less for The Princess of Aenya, dropping her uncle for the latest BookTok trend, the one with the cute boy crying silver tears on the cover. My wife implores me to make at least one of my characters gay, but again, a good book isn’t a sandwich. Done correctly and with meaning, romance can make for some pretty powerful storytelling (Cold Mountain comes to mind), as can an LGBTQ-focused story, but cynically adding these ingredients is how we get contrived, formulaic storytelling, and I respect my readers enough not to go that route.
My goal has forever been to produce lasting art, to speak to readers on a deeper level, and to leave them with a lasting impression. Some of my fans have told me they like buying my books for their friends and family because the series so greatly resonated with them. And that’s what I aim to do with The Magiq of Aenya. So far, the kids and wife are loving it, and so are my other beta readers. My daughter pesters me about working faster, and that’s a good sign. Barring any tragic accidents, the book is on pace to be completed this year. I’ll keep you updated with more diaries, wherein I will go deeper into detail regarding the overarching plot tying all FOUR novels together.
Stay tuned!!!
The Art of Storytelling 
I too love that Gandalph quote. It has always resonated with me.
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Agreed. It only goes to show what powerful writing can be — and it’s what I aim to achieve with the Aenya Series. Someone out there, someday, quoting a line I wrote or finding strength in it.
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