After weeks of complaining, my mother finally bought me a Roget's thesaurus. Leather-bound with gold-leaf edged pages, it was the prettiest book I had ever seen. Now, armed with a thousand page vocabulary, I vowed my next story was going to be top of the class!

I spent hours at the dining table drafting it out with my trusted thesaurus filling every line with superfluous descriptors.

The next week, I sat in haste as Mr. Bainbridge did his slow amble through the stack of homework on his old oak desk, sorting his daily read. Finding his pick-of-the-day, his eyes scoured over his glasses searching the thirty pale faces for the story's owner. When his eyes landed on mine, my heart raced.

"Dean, come up here!" he called out, inviting me to his side.

He had never brought students front a center before! Holy bejeezus, my story must be good!

Then he turned me around to face the class. It was a proud moment. All that effort had finally paid off.

But as Mr. Bainbridge began to read, I noticed he had that tone. Immediately it became clear—my writing was being used as an example of what not to do. After reading aloud the first line (above), he stopped only to laugh and to reemphasize the words 'sodden' and 'unorthodox' with head-shaking disbelief. His laughter spurred the rest of the class to join in. I was mortified.

Looking back, I cringe at how absurdly, excessively, and ridiculously overboard I went with that weighty, cumbersome thesaurus on that vividly descriptive story and the blatant misuse of countless, superfluous adjectives. (See what I did there!). Okay, yeah it was a crap story, but, dude, did you have to make a mockery out of it in front of the whole class? Even forty plus years on, the shame he subjected me to that day still bothers me. And while I always cherished that beautiful thesaurus that my mother bought for me, I never used it again. From that day on, my interest in English turned to an almost hatred for it.

My creative side, however, continued to blossom. With an imaginitive mind, I went on to study art & design at college. Even today I have trouble sleeping with the constant brainstorm of ideas infiltrating my mind. Some days, its like a tap I can't turn off. Included among those thoughts are a plethora of story ideas and plots, original characters and crazy twists. Yet, never gaining the time and conviction to put them on paper, those stories remained locked in my head.

Then came the terrible pandemic; with it, a gift of free time. It was then I decided, screw it—I'm doing it.

As I sat down to write, I was instantly transported back to that humiliating moment in my English classroom, the tormenting laughter ringing in my ears like some horror movie. Nonetheless, I wrote, and kept writing. Perhaps out of spite, I chose to not only see it through, but to also include two words, "sodden" and "unorthodox" (or orthodox), in this story and future stories I write—the same two words that had brought ridicule so many years before, instilling a fear to write!

Admittedly, those are two pretty crappy words to be stuck with on my future literary journey, but at least I get to say… "In your face, Mr. Bainbridge!"

Everyday she would say 'I should write a book'. Whether it was a punchline or a wishlist, it sunk in after years of hearing it. I started writing a non-fiction book about meteorology during my flight instructor years but never finished it. For years since then, I have started and stopped writing ideas for a novel but never fully committed—until COVID.

Who would have thought that too many ideas slowed the plot?

In all seriousness, I would say my writing process is constantly evolving.

My first major writing endeavor was actually a screenplay: The Maiden of Jorvik, written in the 'pantser' style where I literally wrote by the seat of my pants. Well, not literally, but you get what I mean. In fact, the story began with a time-travel theme but the plot took a whole other direction, seemingly on its own.

Shortly after completing the screenplay I decided to write the novel using the screenplay as an outline. Though, I learned very quickly that transposing each scene to a chapter would not be so simple. Scenes and point of views occur way to frequently in the screenplay to be viable for chapters in the novel. The net result meant a truck load of editing. Writing was hard but not near as hard as editing. I know some authors love the editing process; not me (well, maybe in the initial stages). For me, editing is like a parabola. It starts off with a steep climb of gaining interest and excitment but then after passing the summit it then becomes a spiral dive of, OMG is this ever going to end!

While I sway more toward the pantser style of writing, I do enjoy having structure from an outline, which affords me more time to write than plot development. Moving forward, I think I will write using both styles; have a general outline, but allow my creativity to wander.

It'll either be a sequel to The Jorvik Prophecy or an entirely new storyline. The sequel makes obvious sense, but I am itching to get into new material. My research notebook is brimming with time travel ideas based on current scientific theories. Further research will reveal whether that leads anywhere.

We write from experience and from someone who has traveled extensively I can say with ease, human diversities offer a wide spectrum of description. It's almost akin to each person's character being a fingerprint—unique and unparalleled. While there exist common traits and classifiable characteristics, it's the intricate amalgamation of these traits that bestows upon us our individuality and complexity. Usually, when interacting with people, I find myself tapping into their personas, remembering their idiosyncrasies for my next character.

Naming characters is a varied experience. Sometimes the name just emerges as I write and it just fits. Others involve research requiring spreadsheets of names and their meanings ensuring each name resonates with the character.