I didn't really hate writing or reading when I was a kid. I was just more preoccupied with drawing, and that was my gig for half of my life. Then came puberty and growing pains and the emo phase of my life where I got into poetry writing and spurged my demons / sexual frustrations into lines of horrid poetry. This was around middle school to early high school. It wasn't until later in high school that I started reading books that weren't assigned readings, 'cause I was bored with all the other reading assignments (The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, etc), so I read something else to relieve my boredom: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and classic romantic poets like Poe and Keats.
Into college when I got burned out by my first major (interior design), I changed majors first to political science and then to english with emphasis in creative writing. That's when I developed an interest in writing actual stories. First it was fanfiction, and that was like a 5 year stint in it from 2010-2015. In the middle of that, I continued writing poetry and tried my hand at original novels (2011), but when I couldn't get those off the ground, I wrote short stories, novelettes, novellas (2012-2018). 2015-2016 were kind of the low years in my writing, 'cause life was starting to kick my ass, and Wattpad (the platform I had been active on for the longest time at that time) was starting to change into what it is today.
I didn't wanna write anymore fanfiction after 2015, b/c I wanted to write more of my own stuff. And that point, the only thing I was able to get done was my poetry, in which I finished two major poem collections on Wattpad: Nove Otto of Roses, and The 99 Poem Challenge. Those were my only two literary highlights during those two tough writing years. During those two years, I started writing two novels that I was forced to abandon, b/c I just couldn't do it: the first version of The Late Bird's Tale (the 2nd version is posted on Wattpad, RR, and SH), and The Mirror Beyond the Void. They showed some promise, but I just didn't have the stamina to keep those stories afloat.
It wasn't until 2017 when I tried to continue writing one of my first books of original stories, the story sequence that I had started in 2012, Behind the Mirror, but by the time I was writing the 5th installment into the summer of 2017, I was working with a story idea and characters that have grown stale after 5 years of writing off and on. My interests have evolved since my fanfiction-writing days, and at that point, I needed something new to write about, and at the time, I was binge-watching anime in the library in college after finals, and a fair amount of them were magical girls. And so, I chose to write about that, and that's how my Days of Blood and Roses book was born, and by God, I kept at it to this year in 2023. I'm into the 5th volume of that book out of a projected 6 volumes. July 2017 was the turning point in my writing journey, 'cause that was the first and only time I ever completed the 50k words in a month for Camp NaNoWriMo. Then life decided to really kick my ass, but I managed to stick with it through thick and thin, and I WILL get the last two volumes finished.
Now in the year of our Lord, 2023, I'm here. I'm on the 5th volume of Days of Blood and Roses, the 1st volume of the 2nd version of The Late Bird's Tale, and the 2nd volume of Villainess, Retry! I'm making headway!
