You need to be a juggler, a priest and a wizard to be an independent author

September 6, 2016Leave a comment

I have been writing professionally for more than 33 years and, as an independent author, for seven. I have learned more about being a writer these past seven years than the previous 26. You learn so much more when it’s not just a simple essay or press release you’re writing. Writing a novel tends to reveal part of your soul, so it takes a lot more out of you.

In performing this juggling act, you need to have a quick mind, very thick skin, the keen intellect of a sage and the stamina of Atlas to keep up with all you must accomplish just ti get a book published. It’s something that every writer has experienced at some point in their career.

J.K. Rowling said, “Writing doesn’t always get easier. In fact, it can be more difficult for successful writers.” I have yet to achieve her level of success, so I can’t speak on that directly, but I can say it’s even tougher when you’re just starting out. You need the patience of Job as you wait to hear back from the publishers or literary agents you submitted your manuscript too. Add to that the financial stress from your dwindling bank account after paying for editing, publishing, and marketing as you wait patiently for royalties to come in.

American poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.”

That sentiment is true, especially for the independent author. When I self-published my first book, Forever Avalon, I sent out copies provided by the publisher to family and friends. In return, I got a two-page list of spelling and grammatical errors I missed from my mother. That was my pants down moment and it opened my eyes.

As most authors can attest, we bare our souls when we write. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose, writers care deeply how people react to reading their work. Author Elizabeth Clements said, “It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they’re writing at all. To have one’s writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected.”

If I’ve learned anything it’s that you can’t take it personally when someone gives you a bad review, rejects your manuscript submission or doesn’t like you work. That’s the one thing that’s great about the human race. We’re all different and we all have our own opinions and the right to express those opinions how we see fit. That is the mark of a free society. That’s also what makes writers so important.

There are millions of writers and millions of books being published every year, and though that makes it hard for independent authors to get recognized, we are doing our part to tell the story of humanity. Writers have recorded the good, the bad and the indifferent of the world since man put chisel to stone and pen to paper. That collective history will be around for countless generations to read and learn.

Just being a part of that makes me proud to be a writer and gives me the courage to continue, even when my sales are down and my bank account empty. I still want to write.

***

Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon book series. Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iUniverse. The Outlander War can be previewed at Inkitt.

Inspiration comes in every form, shape and size for writers

May 16, 2016Leave a comment

inspiration-sign Inspiration … it’s a word I use a lot in most of my social media posts. You’ll find #inspiration in almost everything I write. I can relate to so many different things as I weave my stories together. Movies, books, television, theater, and music give me the focus and drive in everything I do. Even as I am writing this blog, I am listening to Joss Whedon’s 2005 sci-fi classic Serenity.

Some people get inspiration through meditation and solace while others get it through experiences and community. Jimmy Dean said, “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” That, in a nutshell, is the true definition of inspiration.

Our senses are the source of our inspiration: The sight of a beautiful sunset, the touch of a loved one’s hand, the smell of a bouquet of flowers, the taste of an ice cream sundae, and the sound of a touching song. These provide us the input for our inspiration. As an author, I focused on the things I love the most to inspire my writing. Whether it’s watching the original Star Trek TV series, any of the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit movies, or listening to classic 80’s rock like Def Leppard, Duran Duran or Asia, I am inspired to put words to paper.

I know some writers prefer peace and quiet when they right, I need constant sound to help me focus on my writing. It’s a little strange, I know, but I found that by being surrounded by sight and sound, I’m able to push myself to concentrate on my writing. The great actress Audrey Hepburn said, “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” You can’t argue with that logic.

David Bennet wrote a great blog about #inspiration at the Huffington Post. “Don’t look to the sky or mountains for inspiration. Look beneath the trees and shrubs. Our greatest inspirations can be at our feet at any moment. It reminds me of a time while hiking alone in Arizona, feeling the awe of nature surrounding me without a soul in sight. In my stillness, I heard ‘look down’ and there by my toe was the smallest flower. I would have never seen it. Thanks for the attentiveness of my inner voice. In that moment, that little flower felt like it carried all the beauty of the world. I’ve never forgotten that moment or that feeling.”

r5FGZcd It’s the simplest things in life that inspire us. I remember a few months ago when I was working to finish the third book in the Forever Avalon series, The Outlander War. I was looking for a known magical artifact to include in my story. In my novels, I prefer to find actual things from myth and legend and put my own twist to it. To me, it allows my readers to better identify with my stories. I came across a fantasy movie from 1984 with Sean Connery called “Sword of the Valiant.” Connery played the mythical Green Knight from Arthurian legend. I watched the original trailer and researched the origins of the Green Knight and it fit perfectly into my story.

I wasn’t even looking for it and it found me. That’s the easiest way to become inspired. When you least expect it or don’t even look for it, we find our inspiration. You can find it too.

The best wisdom to navigate through life comes from authors

April 25, 2016Leave a comment

145805516-fantasy_20quotes_20philosophy_20game_20of_20thrones_20tv_20series_20arya_20stark_20hbo_201920x1200_20wallpaper_www_wall321_com_73 “Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.” That’s from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. That’s just one constant you can always find throughout literature, words to live by and wisdom to navigate through the rivers of self-doubt. As authors, we represent the struggles of not only our own lives but that of the world events happening around us. Authors want to instill hope, courage, determination and justice in the words we right.

How we deal with death was beautifully written in Games of Thrones by Geroge R. R. Martin. “There is only one God and his name is death. And there is only one thing we say to death … Not today!”

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as great and sudden change.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy teaches us that, “It is much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” Parse that with a quote from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”

There are thousands of inspirational and life-changing words throughout literature, from The Bible to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or even The Shining. Please, don’t misunderstand me, I am not comparing something as powerful as the word of God to a gothic horror classic. What I am trying to say is, there are words to inspire us in all facets of literature.

The inner demons of self-worth from Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island come out, where he wrote, “It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.” The same can be said for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.” Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

An examination of the human psyche has always been an essential part of literature. From The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Even Richard Yates in Revolutionary Road looked into the mind’s eye when he wrote, “No one forgets the truth, they just get better at lying.”

How we spend our days is also a theme carried throughout books. P.D. James in The Children of Men wrote, “We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.” Roald Dahl wrote in The Witches, “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”

There are hundreds more that many of us know and use as guiding posts through life. What’s your favorite quote from a book? Please let me know, I’d love to read about it and more. I’d like to leave you with a quote from my own “soon to be published” novel, The Outlander War: Book Three of the Forever Avalon Series. I am, by no means, comparing myself to the great authors represented here. I just wanted to show how my own personal inspiration, my family, comes through in my writing. I hope it can inspire you too.

“When you feel the sunlight warming your face, that’s me looking at you. When the wind blows through your hair, that’s me touching you.

“And when the rain falls on your lips, that’s me kissing you!”

Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse. The Outlander War can be viewed at Inkitt and cast your vote to get it published.

The coming apocalypse has been predicted for years, and we’re still waiting for it

April 18, 2016Leave a comment

7040310-apocalypse-hd-wallpaper The end of the world has been prophesied since the dawn of time. The Mayans said the world would end on December 21, 2012. The Vikings called it Ragnarök when the world ends and the Norse Gods die, only to be reborn. Of course, the book of Revelation in the New Testament goes into detail about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus; and with the current climate of financial, political and global upheaval happening today, people are scared that our time has come.

I’m not trying to be the voice of doom and gloom because I don’t see the end of the world, at least not yet. There is still so much to do, from deep space exploration to robotics/cybernetics and other advances in science. The amazing thing today is that all of this has been written about and talked about for hundreds of years, first in books then in movies and television.

Ray Bradbury saw a world where books were the downfall of mankind in Fahrenheit 451. H.G. Wells saw a future where the human race split into two groups—the predators and the prey—in The Time Machine. Stephen King gave us the end of the world through disease and biblical proportions in The Stand. Philip K. Dick imagined a world where genetically engineered humans were hunted down because they wanted more time to explore their humanity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or as we like to call it, Blade Runner. George Miller made a living of showing us a crazy wasteland through the eyes of one man, Mad Max.

saints+of+the+apocalypse+b As writers, the end of the world can come about through endless possibilities and that gives us so many options in the stories we tell: Zombie apocalypse, machines taking control, deadly viruses, nuclear war, climate change, etc. We are fatalistic in our views of the apocalypse and show humanity at its worst to bring about the end of the world. Yet, through all that turmoil and tribulation, we find a glimmer of hope. There is always one guiding light or shining star that wins out in the end and gives everyone, from readers to storytellers alike, that spark of optimism that will inspire.

In series like The Walking Dead, the character of Rick Grimes is the focal point of that hope and inspiration, doing everything and anything to keep his family and friends alive in a world that wants to destroy them all. In the Terminator series, Sarah and John Conner are the only chance for humanity in a world where machines want to wipe out the disease called humanity. Even kid’s movies like Pixar’s Wall-E, we see a world destroyed by human greed where hope for life is found in a little robot looking for love.

In most post-apocalyptic stories, humanity is both the cause and the cure for the end of days. Writers see Armageddon as a tool to show us the faults in humanity and the possibilities we can achieve together. That’s the beauty of literature. For hundreds of years, authors have been talking about the end of the world and, through our writing, we have stayed off the apocalypse. As long as we continue the conversation, show people what can happen if we don’t change our ways, then maybe, just maybe, we can put off the end of the world for another millennium.

H.G. Wells said it best in his novel, The Time Machine. “We should strive to welcome change and challenges because they are what help us grow. Without them, we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. ”

I’ll take my inspiration where I can get it

March 14, 2016Leave a comment

My family has been picking on me lately as to what I watch regularly on TV. Being unemployed at this time, I spend a lot of time on the computer, looking for jobs and/or writing. I like to listen to movies and television shows to keep the creativity flowing. I know some people prefer music, but for me, it’s a product of my environment.

You see, as a retired Navy Journalist, I served primarily on aircraft carriers. At sea, my office workspace doubled as the shipboard television station. Because of the rotating shift schedules of sailors at sea, we kept the television on 24/7. So, the movies and the television shows provided to us by the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) played constantly.

Thus my conundrum. It’s easier for me to write when there is noise, like that of a television, playing in the background. It’s hard to explain but I think that having to sit down and write or work at my computer goes smoother when I can listen to something in the background. It seems to make me work harder to focus my thoughts and think about what I’m doing, but that’s not why they’re picking on me.

For some reason, I have been focused on certain movies to keep me inspired, especially The Hobbit movies, Lord of the Ring trilogy, anything Star Wars, The Martian, Pacific Rim and a few classic 80’s “sword and sorcery” guilty pleasure movies like Ladyhawke, Krull and Dragonslayer. The repetition at which I watch these movies has earned me the ridicule of my wife and children, but to be honest, I can’t help it.

These movies inspire me. I love the stories, the visual effects, the characters, just everything about them. I enjoy watching them over and over again as if I was watching them for the first time. It reminds me a lot of when I was a teenager and went to see Star Wars for the first time. I loved it so much that I went back and saw it every weekend for as long as it was in the theaters. I must have seen it 20 times. I did the same thing with The Rockey Horror Picture Show, Conan the Barbarian and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The misspent youth of my young adult life was spent in movie theaters.

Today, it furthers my want to be a successful writer and see what I write up there, whether on the silver screen or on TV. It is, I think, the dream of every writer to take their stories tot he furthest reaches possible. When you listen to the metal twang of steel in a swordfight or the hum of a lightsaber, it brings those vivid images to the forefront and sets your mind in motion.

To me, that is where inspiration comes. It’s the things we see, we hear, we taste, we smell that gets all electrons firing off at the same time. It gives writers, like me, the confidence to write the next chapter in our stories. So whatever inspires you to write, ignore the naysayers and just give into it. Whatever works for you is what’s important.

***

Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

Thank you Harper Lee for inspiring a new generation of writers

February 22, 2016Leave a comment

This past week, we lost one of the great literary giants, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. She was 89 years old. As I was researching her life, I found this one fascinating quote. She said, “I never expected any sort of success with ‘Mockingbird’ … I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.”

That quote speaks volumes to the life of an independent author. We’re not really looking for that ‘golden ring’ but rather, hoping that someone out there likes your story and gives you the encouragement to write more. This will be an endearing part of her legacy as a writer.

That’s something I found out about Harper Lee that I never knew before. I knew the writer but never knew some of her keen insights to writing. Reading them now, I can see how someone like her could inspire writers to pursue their craft.

She said, “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career, that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” That is so true, especially when you get that first bad review or next to nothing in sales. This is the wisdom from a woman who wrote two books in a career that spanned more than 56 years. It is a testament to her uncanny brilliance.

I also found it quite ironic to learn she was a huge fan of Bloom County cartoons by Berkley Breathed. After her passing, Berkley Breathed revealed his occasional correspondence with Harper Lee. It was sheer delight to find out that this legendary author loved Opus as much as I did. His tribute to her this past weekend was one of the best tributes I’ve seen to her this week.

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself … It’s a self exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent,” Harper Lee said once, and I agree with it whole heartedly. Even as I write today, I see it as a way of putting my heart, my soul, into every word.

Many people prefer to quote her directly from her books, and that’s okay, but to me, that’s only one side of a writer. You want to look at what they write as well as what they say to get the whole picture of the writer.

I want to leave you with one more inspiring quote from Harper Lee. It speaks not only to the writer in us, but the reader as well. She said, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Some may say I’m a dreamer, and they’re absolutely right

January 18, 2016Leave a comment

Dreams are the lifeblood of a writer, for it is in the dream that we cultivate and grow our stories. John Lennon once said, “I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”

That’s the truth about writing for in the dream, we get our inspiration, make changes to character and plot and navigate our way through the dreamscape. It was in my dreams that I found the story that is the Forever Avalon series.

I was a sailor, deployed far from home and missing his wife and newborn baby daughter. Off duty hours were spent indulging in my favorite pastime, Dungeons and Dragons. The combination of the two led to a recurring dream of being stranded on a magical island with my family. Over the years, the dream changed and expanded until I finally decided to write it all down.

Today, that dream has come full circle in the publication of the Forever Avalon series, including The Dark Tides and the third book in the series, currently under development, The Outlander War. These are the products of my dreams, my pure inspiration and fantasy.

People use to tell me to stop being a dreamer, to grow up; but Oscar Wilde declared, “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” That’s the magic of being a dreamer.

I often try to guide my dreams as I fall asleep, so I can continue to cultivate my story each and every night. Sometimes, I just let the dream take over and see where it leads me as I sleep. More often than not, the dream escapes me and I toss and turn as I try to sleep. On more than one occasion, the most brilliant idea comes to mind and I have to get up and write it down before I forget it completely.

These are the faults of our dreams. As writers, we can’t stop creating, even when we sleep. The dream is our reality, though not in the Inception kind of way. It’s funny how the human mind works. in that sense, our dreams are our (the writer’s) way of bringing our reality into everyone else’s.

Stephen King said, “And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.” Neither can I.

Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

The worlds inside the mind of a writer

January 12, 2016Leave a comment

Middle Earth from “The Lord of the Rings”

Franz Kafka said in The Diaries of Franz Kafka, “This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

That explains what’s inside the mind of a writer. I know I’ve touched on world building before in my blog, but I had to take another whack at it. World building can either make or break a story. You have to make the world your characters live in believable. That means, as an author, you have to be an architect, city planner, landscape artist, geologist and mapmaker, all rolled into one.

I really started last week when I started watching Terry Brooks’ The Shannara Chronicles on MTV. It really made me appreciate this new world he created from the ashes of our world today. That’s a common thread you see in world building in literature–building a new one from the old. You see that in the Four Lands in Shannara, Panem in The Hunger Games just to name a few. These are not worlds built using by redrawing the lines of states and countries but places imagined after the worst possible disaster.

Westeros from “Game of Thrones”

Then there are original worlds like Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkien or Westeros from George R.R. Martin. These are the works of masters in the art of world-building. Author Ace Antonio Hall said, “When you get some free time, write. When you get some lazy time, plan. When you get down time, world build. When your time comes, shine!”

This is true for those who take the challenge of creating a world from scratch. This was the problem I faced when I started writing the Forever Avalon series. Though Avalon was a place mired in legend and mythology, it was never something that was mapped out. I had to create Avalon as it would develop in my story and mine alone.

Author Patrick Rothfuss was interviewed by bloggers The Rabid Rainbow Ferret Society about world building. He said, “World building has two parts. One is the actual creation. The other is bringing the world into your story. Everything you create should not be in your story.” He called this secondary world creation.

I did a lot of this in my misspent youth playing hours upon hours of Dungeons and Dragons. As a Dungeonmaster, you create everything from the country to the towns and the dungeons, then fill it with everything under the sun from monsters to Elves, Dwarves, etc.

I took Avalon to be a lot like England was in medieval times, specifically because legend and local lore suggests Avalon was actually a part of Wales. So first, I divided up the lands, giving them out to the various Lords of Avalon to control, in the name of the King. I even used names from towns, provinces and local landmarks in England, assuming that people who were brought from England to Avalon needed that familiarity.

(FYI, here’s my self-serving pitch for those wanting to catch up on Avalon in my first two books, Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.)

I actually had to draw out the map of the island so that, when I’m writing, I make sure I’m going in the right direction when I’m moving characters around the island. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult that’s going to become after my third book, The Outlander War, is finished. So, no spoilers here … not yet at least.

For the best advice on how to reveal your world to the reader, I have to give it again to Patrick Rothfuss, who said, “My advice is to withhold information from the reader. Because if you tease with a little information early on, they’ll get curious. And if I can get them to go “How does this work?” and lean in a little bit, then I’ve won.”

He’s absolutely right about that. In Forever Avalon, I teased my readers about the dragon island Emmyr, the home of Lord Bryan MoonDrake, the Gil-Gamesh of Avalon. I talked about the dragons, how he built a home there, but never let on about the true nature of the island until they arrived to see the floating island in the sky, shrouded by mist and encircled by flying dragons. The surprise was worth the wait.

So create your worlds, build them as you build your story, but keep the reader guessing. It’ll help draw them in and wanting more.

As a writer, I often dream about being a writer … don’t you?

November 1, 2015Leave a comment

Neil Gaiman said, “As far as I’m concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.” That is what I aspire too.

Writing as a passion or writing as a business … That question has hounded me since I began my life as a self-published author. It may seem to some as an easy one to answer, but it’s definitely not. For many authors, we love to write because we have a story to tell. Your mind is filled with images, as if you can hear the whirring sound of a movie projector in your head as they fly by. You can’t write fast enough to keep up with it.

Many of us dream about being the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. We all think that once our story grabs onto an audience once, we’ll have it made. It’s a nice idea, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette suggests, “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

I’ve invested time and money into my two books, Forever Avalon and The Dark Tides, and no matter what the cost, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Writing every word has brought me the full range of emotions, from sadness and grief at the death of a character to sheer joy when an idea came together.

This is the point where writing as a passion or a business diverges. It is so easy to self-publish today, anyone can put out a book for very little money. The time it takes away from work and family for writing, editing, engaging on social media makes it hard work.

The dedication it takes is well-known by any author. If you believe In your story, in yourself, then you’re willing to put the time and effort into it. “Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers,” said Charles Bukowski.

I want nothing more than to spend my days getting up in the morning, pouring a nice cup of coffee and sitting down at my desk to spend my day writing the next chapter of my next novel. It is what we all strive for. Not the glamour, but the freedom to be a writer.

Roald Dahl said, “A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”

Forever Avalon is available for purchase at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Dark Tides is now available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

Dreamers are the writers of tomorrow

September 17, 2015Leave a comment

It’s funny how writing correlates to dreaming. Most people forget what they’re dreaming about when they wake up the next morning. As a writer, I find inspiration in my dreams.

Dreaming is the television of the mind, as I like to call it. It’s where our fantasies become realities. Daydreams are especially poignant. Edgar Allen Poe said, “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”

I truly believe that day dreamers are the most creative people alive today. It takes that level of imagination to inspire one in art, writing, and other creative endeavors.

Daydreams are the most prevalent dreams we have. They have been the subject of everything from Saturday Morning Cartoons to an episode of “Happy Days” (the episode that introduced us to “Mork from Ork” played by the incomparable Robin Williams). I remember a “Looney Tunes” cartoon with little Ralph, who daydreamed his way through school, being a deep-sea diver after gazing at the classroom fish tank one moment to being General MacArthur when he leaves school promising “I will return,”

Dreams are the playgrounds of our minds, as the song says. As writers, we use it to cultivate the stories for our next chapter. The hard part for me is that, at times, my mind is racing through thoughts and ideas so fast that I can’t get to sleep. It’s especially difficult if I was writing just before I went to bed.

That’s the difficulty of being and independent author. You have to work at another job so that, at night, you can focus on your passion for writing. Unfortunately, it can lead to a few restless nights.

Dreams is your subconscious talking to you, in one way or another. It’s the creative side of your brain reaching out to tell you something. That’s how I originally came to write Forever Avalon.

When I was on active duty in the Navy, I had this recurring dream whenever I deployed. It was my subconscious trying to help me cope with the long separation from my family. It put me in a place where they relied on me, needed me, on a magical island out of time and space. In my dream, I felt closer to my family than any time before.

This was the dream that inspired me and led me to write the Forever Avalon series. Funny thing is that after I wrote my first story, the dream stopped. Like I said, it was my subconscious talking to me and I got the message, loud and clear.

Edgar Allen Poe said, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” These are words to live by when you’re delving into your creativity and inspiration to create a world of fantasy.