A Double Life

I've always felt like a double agent in all the ways that suck and none of the ways that rule. Growing up in a small school as the youngest of four had its ups and downs. I was hardly ever bullied by others and very often picked on by my friends, siblings, and sibling's friends. All along I felt like no matter how many sports I played, girls who thought the tall kid with balance issues was cute enough to date, or classes I excelled in or flunked, something was trapped inside of me.

It turns out, a big something was within me waiting to be molded and unleashed. That something being; storytelling.

My grandfather had a large hand in raising me. He would go around the neighborhood helping all the other elderly folks (he might have grabbed me by the ear and yanked if I called him elderly to his face) who were either less mobile than him or in need of something they couldn't do. As I would sit in long truck rides up north to our family cabin in Quebec, or just around the kitchen table when I visited him, he always had a story to tell.

My father who had the other largest portion of raising me to do was a storyteller through and through. He had a lot of them. So many in fact, that I don't think he ever repeated the same story twice to just me. Unlike most people who tell the same story over and over again (which we did plenty of when campfires or fishing trips came along) my old man told story after story and managed to keep my attention from 5 years old to 30.

As I gathered in all of this unique storytelling hand gestures and animations of both the face and voice, something inside me grew while I remained unaware of the giant sleeping beneath my bones. It wasn't until the summer of 2011 that the storytelling giant took his first stride from the shadows and into the light.

At a family vacation, my sister, an avid reader, decided that she and the other girl cousins were going to write a book. Being a 20 year old male with a need to make everything a competition, I burst out with a challenge in my heart.

"I'm going to write a book and it's going to be better than yours!"

Fast forward to 2023 and I have over 2,000,000 words typed and even more written by pen & ink into this world I have created. I hope that a few of my words, inspire the next generation of High Fantasy readers the way the ancient worlds of Tolkien, Martin, Rufus, and MacDonald did for me. I hope to connect with my readers and present the content that will give them what they seek.