and me battling aliens from the planet Ebon. This was my “sequel” to an episode from the original The Outer Limits, called “Nightmare.” In sixth grade I wrote a play called “The Return of the Greatest Monsters Ever,” which was a sequel to Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Unfortunately, unlike Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, my Dad didn’t have a barn, and none of my friends were interested in “putting on a show.” Between freshman and sophomore years of high school I wrote and even illustrated yet another sequel, this time for the film Jason and The Argonauts. Sadly, Hollywood did not come knocking at my door.
But then, in 1968, I read The Hobbit, followed by Lord of the Rings in 1969.
I started writing my own original stories in those days, but accomplished very little throughout the 1970s. However, in 1980 I came an inch away from signing a contract with Bantam Books for a massive fantasy I had written, called The Djinn Quest, but then the deal fell through. I finally managed to sell two stories in 1984 to what we called “fanzines,” which were pretty much amateur publications sol through the mail. Between the years 1997 and 2001 I wrote five screenplays, none of which sold. My Dad passed in 1999 and I began to lose heart. After my Mom passed in 2001, I stopped writing for about seven years. Then, in 2008 or so, the spark returned and I developed my heroic fantasy private eye, Dorgo the Dowser. In 2010 I self-published my first book, Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, and because of that, I was asked to write for a number of publishers: Airship 27 Productions, Damnation Books/Caliburn Press, Heathen Oracle, MVmedia, and Perseid Press.
So here I am, roughly 55 years after I wrote my first story, still writing, still learning . . . and still dreaming.
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