Let's start at the very beginning

 A very good place to start. Or at least, that's what Fraulein Maria taught us.

As some of you may already know, I published a preview of my current project back in 2013.
Empyre: Preview Edition

Aside from a few minor word choice edits, it's essentially the same introduction readers of the completed novel will read. Consider it a "pilot" for the remaining story. So, while I will keep pretty tight-lipped about the rest of the book, I feel safe about any "spoilers" I might mention here.

But first, let's go back in time.

Some of my earliest memories are of writing stories, like "Save Grandma," in which I went fishing on a lake with her and she fell in, prompting me to... well, save Grandma. Other times, I'd tell stories in other ways. For example, I had my sisters' hand-me-down Barbies and gear, so for Show And Tell one day, I attempted to tell my class a story using the Barbies and their off-brand vehicles.

That... did not go great. But this was also the jeep used for one of my favorite games: "Who Lives, Who Dies?" I'd grown up watching Disaster Week on KTLA-5, so I had all sorts of ways to play that game. The jeep was used in a variety which involved putting many Barbies into the jeep, taking them to the top of the stairs, and rolling them down. If the doll stayed in the jeep, it lived, and if it was ejected, it died... There was a landing about seven steps down before the stairs made a ninety degree right turn, so bonus points were awarded if a) I could bank the jeep off the left side of the wall so that it made the turn and reached all the way downstairs, and b) if any dolls managed to stay alive even after the increased collisions and distance. Another variation of this game involved using an old styrofoam egg carton as a "plane," filling it with Little People, and throwing it across the back yard. Surely, you can imagine my thrill upon befriending the neighbor with a pool -- "Who Lives, Who Dies: Airport '77 Edition!"

At another point, I must've watched "Ski Lift To Death," or "Irwin Allen's 'Hanging By A Thread,' or perhaps "Avalanche" -- I've endured them all and I still can't say for certain what it was I saw, but it inspired me to write an ensemble COMEDY about a ski resort as a present for my dad. He kept it, and showed it to me years later... It was more painful than you can imagine. At some point, perhaps because the written word doesn't have a laugh track, I decided to punctuate a joke by writing "Quack Quack Quack!"

But, it wouldn't be long before I met my other chief inspiration. Harmony Gold imported an anime classic for US audiences. In order to have enough episodes for syndication, they took three serials and turned them into one megaserial, about three generations of interplanetary conflict, which they titled "Robotech." It too was a fairly large ensemble of animated characters. And, unlike most cartoons for short attention span children, it was an honest to goodness soap opera, complete with complicated relationships and even death. At a time when even GI Joe had to show pilots parachuting to safety after their planes were shot down, this was a very vivid war scenario, and even two significant protagonists were killed in the line of duty. Heavy stuff! But, man, what a great show. So a lot of my early writing took on properties that I liked about the show, with my own spin... As a kid, I remember a day where the clouds seemed to be concentrated in one long, dense cloud that nearly eclipsed the sun, and I began to think, "What if, instead of being on the SDF-1, often several planets away from Earth, I focused on such an invasion from the Earth's perspective."I developed the scenario. I drew up illustrations of the characters in uniform. But then, I had a whole new inspiration with Tim Burton's "Batman." I didn't really have any interest in comic books before, but I thought perhaps that would be my medium. My dad had a love of plastic models, and I got one of a Pontiac concept car that looked especially suitable as my character's version of a Batmobile. We had taken a road trip up the coast, so I put my hero's HQ right on a cliff overlooking the Pacific (at the time, I don't think I'd seen Wayne Manor presented that way). And then I thought, how did he get this way? What if he was, in fact, a veteran of this battle with extraterrestrial attackers? The war with them was over, but the battle against crime on Earth goes on... 

Of course, life often has other plans for us, and I had other things to deal with. But before long, I was coming up with ideas I can't quite remember the origin of. Sometimes, it's the wordplay. Long before the Costner flop, I was writing a story I called "World Of Water," or for short, "WoW." The idea was, someone had built an elaborate water park out in the arid West, and they did it all underground -- level after level, with different features, like a wave pool on one, and deeper down, a complete SCUBA environment. And then, of course, criminals strike, and the rest of the story is about watching the bad guys chase the good guys through it, causing destruction and havoc along the way. But, even with a mind in this mode, I found myself writing something a little different for me... I'd left the comfort of my mom's home for new experiences living with my dad. But it meant leaving several things undone and unanswered. And I found myself writing about what it would be like to see some of the people I'd left behind... I tried to gloss over the personal details behind the real-life situation, and pictured it as more of a high school reunion scenario. I was calling it simply "The Return," and in a couple of years, it became the centerpiece of the book now known as LOL.

So, I will repeat something I've said before, regarding advice often given to writers... I've often heard it said that, to become a good writer, you must be a good reader. I find this too simplistic. If you want to sound just like everything you've ever read, then by all means, read everything. But do we need more imitation and assimilation? I don't think so. By all means, read what appeals to you. Ignore the rest. Especially the things you feel you HAVE to read because it's on someone's list. But, what if you want to write comic books? What if you want to write a sitcom? And what if you want ton write an autobiography? Probably the best and only real "advice" I give to aspiring writers is, there is and always will be only one you. There are all sorts of specific situations that arise, which other writers including myself can share our experiences with, but for the most part, you should always listen to your own instincts, and write in your own voice. When you work on that, your search will lead you to the truest answers. In many ways, I've put away my sci-fi and comic books (for now), but the WAY those stories are told still guides my hand... Many people won't remember this, but "Robotech" was novelized after the fact, and despite not being able to visually represent those massive ships, the dogfights, the transformations, it captures the STORY, expands it beyond the original medium. The book I'm writing now owes a huge debt of gratitude to what those novels did -- and did you know, no one ever TOLD me to find and read them.

The object of becoming a published writer is to have people discover your voice -- and YOU must be the first person to discover it.