The first story I ever wrote was called The Boy and The Bee, and it was a couple pages with giant handwritten text stapled together. I'm five years old, it's dumb, it's innocent, it's whatever. I write a poem about a ghost that was apparently as dreadful as the subject, because when I asked Ms. Rodda how to get it published, she just said "no." Somehow one year later The Boy and The Bee has a plotline where the boy is now a man (RIP Cormac Mccarthy) and he rapes his girlfriend. I was, to say the least a troubled child. I of course had no actual concept of rape and so what was depicted was just a child's attempt at shock value and cry for help. I'd heard the word in association with my mom and knew only it was a Bad Thing and that by saying the boy did as much, he was a Bad Person. 

Third grade ushered in more of these stapled together stories. I even added some illustrations and snuck them into the classroom bookshelf. Mrs. Wallin did not approve. In fifth grade or thereabouts, I conceived what only a child could have believed to be the most groundbreaking idea: a monkey, who was a spy, and who would thus aptly be called Spyder Monkey. This idea was mocked relentlessly by my friend group. Rightfully. Fucking rightfully. 

Had the story ended there, I would not be setting up this website that maybe two people will see. Seventh grade I wrote what again I thought was the best shit since condoms and booze. THE CHEESEBURGER OF LIFE. I actually got in trouble (sort of) in sixth grade for saying this girl I had a crush on---but who despised me---needed a cheeseburger to be pretty. The cheeseburger of life that is. Imagine trying to explain the dumbass lore behind that one. Eh, back in my day we had to invent our own "brainrot," damnit. Well, anyway, there was a lot more wrong with that book written painstakingly in my composition notebook than the tortured metaphors, nonsensical plot, and iffy sense of continuity and structure. The actual content of the story was just terrible. Being as smart as a twelve year old, I excitedly told my principal (for some reason) about this novel I was working on. She read through it with great interest and concern. Asks me what an "aartard" is. I never saw that notebook again, which was smuttier than the dark side of the moon of Wattpad. 

So I moved on and wrote a novella set in my actual city, with every actual person I knew as actual characters...again, for some reason. I was a dumb kid. I will briefly thank my seventh grade English teacher for editing that piece of shit to the best of her abilities, but it was beyond saving. The antagonist, the eponymous "beast" of THE BEAST halts the story multiple times to lecture about animal rights and other topics (say it with me) for some reason close to its heart. The main character who was actually literally me forgot his hand was chopped off at one point because I forgot that. 

Like you, hypothetical loyal reader, you're probably wondering HOW THE FUCK I could have jammed more stupidity into middle school. Enter Hugh Mungus, my beloved Fifty Shades Of Fucked--I mean, Gray parody. Plot goes that he had such a massive cock he could have sex with any woman he desired, but he wanted this chick who used to be the school, uh, community whore for lack of any sensitive language I could possibly use to describe this story. It was simple and short. She breaks his dick at the end and he drinks bleach til he dies. This shit was like crack-cocaine to my peers. It spread like wildfire. Kids would sit around in circles reading it. My buddy Enrique kept telling me "this is all gonna crash and burn, just you wait." Little shithead was right. Due to popular demand I wrote a ton of sequels, and even a reboot at one point. Now, I thankfully did NOT write the one requested about a school shooting. But my assistant principal who sounded like she had swallowed a Kermit and could never clear him from her throat called me into the office and recited "Hugh Mungus needed a plump juicy ass to fuck." Heart, meet ass. It wasn't the worst of the stories, but it was bad enough that they tried to scare me straight with a resource officer and my dad on speaker phone listening to Ms. Bohren read my salacious satire.

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At fifteen, Bedfellows was published in a Halloween anthology and I had pretty much calmed way the hell down by then and never did cause that level of trouble again. At eighteen Critic was published by Horror Tree's Trembling With Fear, and it was my first paid credit. Somehow I've shifted my focus to litfic despite a lot of spec fic in my portfolio, because hey money is money. That five bucks Critic paid went a long way during the shit situation I was in at the time. The tenth or whatever novel I'm working on now is firmly Litfic and that's the tone I plan to set for my novel career. With short stories, well, sometimes you gotta do what pays even a little in any reasonable amount of time, and sometimes you can afford to wait two years to get rejected. 

And funny as my juvenile years sometimes were, I have grown up immensely since then. When I was eighteen I met the love of my life, Angie, and I do not think she would have fallen for me were it not for my first novel, Numb. In 2019 my best friend cut ties with me, a move at the time I called "ghosting," but have since come to understood was entirely reasonable. I poured a lot of myself into the story and the protagonist became an amalgam of myself and many girls throughout the years who suffered without recourse. She has become my editor, and without her I'd have a lot fewer stories published and I probably wouldn't have taken decided to keep pushing myself to improve my craft and attempt to leave my mark on literature one day. 

Much of what I write pulls from the less humorous aspects of my childhood. The isolation and neglect I felt. Wishing I could help family members who I in all reality had no ability to. I don't have many desires in life, but to make a living from my writing, own a home with my partner, and hang out with my siblings sometimes. I've seen the best and worst of humanity, sometimes from the same person. Life is gray. It's strange, it's beautiful, it's what you make of it. For better or worse, I am who I am and my writing reflects that and will continue to as I change.