"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage
to pursue them."--Walt Disney
Well as a writer you follow the story as it presents itself
and this week has kind of been a never give up themed week. So in honor of the
theme this week and this being Thursday here is a story of never giving up from
my past.
In 1994, I was a junior in high-school and had very little
clue of what I really wanted to do with my life. I wrote my first story in
second grade and had written off and on since then. My 11th grade
academic English teacher challenged us to come up with our own soap opera that
could actual make it as a series. Nothing against soap operas or those who
follow them, but soap operas weren’t for me. So I came up with a dramatic television
drama and pitched it to my teacher. It wasn’t exactly the assignment, but it
was close enough and even back then I must have been one hell of a salesman.
My dramatic television drama was called “Nam 365 days
of hell;” it was kind of like the television series China Beach.
My main character was a young Lt. Colonel named Chuck Miles. He had above
average intelligence but he was a little bit of a loose cannon. He was a
patriot true and blue, but he bucked the system on more than one occasion. Miles
was one of those boy scout type characters that the bad guys takes out back of
the wood shed and beats him until a new man is born. The evil that he is trying
to protect the world from transforms him into a man that believes in Illegal
Justices. Illegal Justices are justified means of acting in an illegal way to
serve justice because the bad guys don’t operate within the law so sometimes
you have to operate outside the law to bring forth justice. (Illegal Justices
sounds like a great title of a book.)
As I recall, I received an “A” on the project that ran the
whole year long. For most of the students their projects ended with the school
year, but mine didn’t. The character I created was so vivid to me I needed to
write more of his story and I set out to do so. I used the “Nam 365 days of
hell” as the back story for Miles and I fast forwarded the story to the present
day. What would Miles have been in 1995? He’d be a fierce CIA agent, but he
would have done something by now to get him blacked listed. So with that a book
started to form a book that would became known as “The Last Winter,” a book
that I would take twenty years to write.
What does this have to do with chasing your dreams? Well
today marks the release of the print version of “The Last Winter”. For twenty years, I have changed and perfected Chuck Miles as a character. I
have built a story around him that one of my fans has said that it rivals something
Clancy
would write. Before “The Last Winter” I couldn’t see myself as a commercial writer
and now that it has been published, I can’t see myself as anything but a
commercial writer. It is kind of funny that I created this character and
because his story had to be told he transformed me into a writer.
I had the courage to pursue my dreams over a twenty year span,
even though at times I didn’t know what I was chasing, but I took a leap of
faith and now all my dreams are coming true.
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