A moment of reflective self-indulgence.

“I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That’s always been my reason for writing.” - C.S. Lewis

I first saw those words on a poster hanging (via magnets) on the white board in my 5th grade classroom. It was raining outside, so we had one of our rare “indoor recesses” (in hindsight, I find it amusing that rain was literally the only thing that kept us inside for recess. It could be well below freezing and the teachers would still ship us outside for 15 minutes of goddamn peace and quiet). I was ten years old and, while it might be a tad dramatic to say, I had an epiphany. I wanted to write stories. It’s wild to think that at the tender age of ten I had discovered my life’s calling, or something like that.

So I did what any kid my age would do and I roped my best friend Cameron (who now serves as my primary beta reader and editor) into these endeavors. Together we drew comics about such illustrious characters as V-Man and his nemesis X-Man, Spido the Spider, Sluggy the Slug, and Jelly-Jam the… sentient ball of jelly and/or jam. Then of course there were the Kirby Kids (legally distinct from the OG, of course), and a plethora of other characters including at least three fellows whose powers involved being able to stretch super far. In middle school Cameron and I were separated thanks to different class schedules, so I convinced some new friends (who also remain in my life) to write more comics - upgrading my protagonist to Dash, a young person will vaguely defined powers including the ability to transform into some kind of demon and also a Super Saiyan character (Toonami was the shit when I was 11-13 so I watched a lot of anime).

But it wasn’t until 8th grade when I tried to write a good and proper story. I had just gotten turned on to R.A. Salvatore’s Legend of Drizzt series and had completed The Lord of the Rings, so fantasy epics were fresh in my brain. So when most kids were engaging in sports or playing video games, my buddy Grant and I began writing our own fantasy epic about an elf named Aeylik and a dwarf named Bergon trying to free their homes from hordes of orcs and goblins and other typical fantasy baddies. It was terrible, of course, as we were thirteen years old, but it confirmed what I had first discovered staring at that C.S. Lewis quote three years prior - I wanted to write.

Different projects came and went as I made my way through high school and early college. Most of them were attempted fantasy epics involving unlikely alliances, peasants-turned-heroes, Dark Lords in faraway fortresses, and armies of faceless mooks. I wrote what I knew, and I knew about The Lord of the Rings and all the books inspired by it. Then in college I finally played Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas at the recommendation of my friend Andrew and I found myself inspired by its bleak, post-apocalyptic setting. Around the same time I was able to watch Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in one sitting rather than in the 5 minute chunks I managed to sneak while my parents weren’t looking. The final nail in this particular coffin was when my father handed me a copy of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. That’s when I realized that instead of a magical sword I wanted my hero to carry a big-ass revolver. Instead of orcs there would be mutants. Instead of a faraway, fantastical land I would take familiar locations and warp them into alien landscapes. That’s when the story that would eventually become The Long Road first began to coalesce.

I’m fairly certain it took the better part of seven years to write The Long Road, during which I started, stopped, rewrote, scrapped, and rewrote the first draft some more. Originally it was going to be much closer to Fallout with gonzo technology and sentient mutants and all that jazz. The plot was heavily inspired by the plot of Spec Ops: The Line (which is a fantastic game - I recommend giving it a shot if you can find a copy) and was broken down into a “past” and “present.” The villain was going to be some over-the-top gangster in a ridiculous zoot suit that had no real connection to the protagonist, a man named Locke. I finished this draft while visiting my grandmother one summer. I typed the last words of the final chapter - a cliffhanger ending to kickstart the next novel - and closed my laptop, disappointed. The story was a goddamn mess, if I’m being completely honest (and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be, it’s my blog after all).

I let it sit for about 6 months, during which I consumed all manner of post-apocalyptic and (eventually) Western media. I watched The Road (sadly I only read the book in 2020), finished The Dark Tower series, watched the rest of the Mad Max movies, and started in on dozens of classic Western films and cracked the covers of many dime novels inherited from friends and relatives. The Magnificent Seven helped me switch the plot from Locke seeking out the villain (which I could never seemingly justify in a satisfying fashion in the first draft) to the villain encountering Locke - serving to make Locke more of a reluctant hero and my poorly-defined antagonist more menacing.

The next piece of the puzzle was Captain America: The Winter Soldier of all things. Cap inspired me to make Locke into something literally more than human, which had the nice side-effect of being a tongue-in-cheek reference to the protagonists of the Fallout being stupid tough by virtue of being video game characters. The eponymous Winter Soldier (with the help of Darth Vader, Lord Humungus, Immortan Joe, and Ulysses from the Lonesome Road DLC of New Vegas) gave me a new antagonist in Phoenix of Mesa, Taladro of the Sixty-Eight Tribes of the Marked Ones. The relationship between Locke and his villain became personal, even if he wasn’t aware of it during their first meetings.

What brought it all together was Looper, a Rian Johnson film (also very good and I recommend watching it). The quiet moments between Joe (Gordon-Levitt), Sara (Blunt), and Cid (Gagnon) were some of my favorites in the movie and helped me put the finishing touches on Locke’s background. Originally I went all-in on the “Lost Lenore” aspects and made Locke into a grizzled gunfighter whose family had been completely wiped up, but this resulted in the character and story being a tad too dark, so Alejandro “AJ” Grey was given a new lease on life and sent out into the wastes to accompany Locke. It was later brought to my attention that this increased the similarities to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I wasn’t exactly mad about.

So I had my hero (Locke), his moral compass (AJ, his ward), my enigmatic villain (Phoenix of Mesa), and a plot (defend the town of Paradiso). But how did Locke get there? Why did Phoenix hate him so much? What was originally supposed to be a few chapters of Locke and AJ traveling and hearing about Phoenix of Mesa turned into most of a novel all on its own. At Cameron’s suggestion I added the subplot of Red Jake Mathers so that Locke could experience some amount of closure, but it quickly became apparent that I wasn’t going to complete this tale in one volume. So several beta reads, a lot of polish, and a few script changes later The Long Road was released on May 4th, 2020.

I’m not going to act like I’m the best writer in the world. My primary points of inspiration were pulp fantasy, sci-fi, and Western media and it shows in my work. Some of my opinions and thoughts bleed into my stories, but at the end of the day I just hope that people are entertained for the few hours it takes to read one of my books. If they feel something, even better! But the response I got when The Long Road first came out was amazing. Friends, family, colleagues, and even complete strangers bought copies of my novel and generally seemed to enjoy it. People asked me how I managed to write a whole book and what inspired me and I got to talk about one of my biggest passions. It was pretty fucking awesome.

I finally released The Minutemen in January of 2022. I finished in two books what was originally supposed to be one novel, but in the course of writing it and running the campaign (which was unfortunately delayed multiple times) I started drafting a third part to bring a close to Locke and AJ’s stories and more-or-less accidentally wrote an entire prequel novella, which I plan to polish and release sometime in 2023. While I’ve largely taken a break from story writing to focus on game design, the whispers of plot, the visions of various scenes, and an addiction to caffeine keep me awake at night. While it’s already been a long road to get where I’m at, there’s still plenty of it ahead of me.