Tell us about yourself.:
I am a 29-year-old writer from Bakersfield, California. I grew up in a military family. I was born in Virginia and lived in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, California, and New York. I graduated high school in 2010 in El Centro, California and graduated from California State University Bakersfield in 2014 with a degree in English Language and Literature. I was a substitute teacher from 2015 to 2018 and I currently work as a security guard, primarily for the extension campus of University of California, San Diego.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?:
I grew up in the mainly in the states of Virginia, New York, and California. I was in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Hawaii but I was under the age of ten when I was there and have vague memories of those places. I would say that how those places influenced me was through the very dramatic situations that I would go through like the racism that I dealt with living in a small town in upstate New York where they rarely see people of color outside of military families. There were always dangerous situations and life experiences that I had in those places like seeing old friends deep in drug addictions and money issues.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I am not sure if this is unusual but for me, what I like to do after I write a chapter or write something special, I take a break and play a video game for an hour or two. What it does for me is help me rejuvenate my brain so that I can think more clearly and concentrate on writing when I get back to it.
What authors have influenced you?
I grew up in the mainly in the states of Virginia, New York, and California. I was in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Hawaii but I was under the age of ten when I was there and have vague memories of those places. I would say that how those places influenced me was through the very dramatic situations that I would go through like the racism that I dealt with living in a small town in upstate New York where they rarely see people of color outside of military families. There were always dangerous situations and life experiences that I had in those places like seeing old friends deep in drug addictions and money issues.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
The same thing that they told me which was to take my time and do things right. There shouldn't be any rush to get your book done quickly. You should make sure that everything is done correctly more than quickly.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
To take my time when I write. For most of my life, I have been obsessed with the thought that I am running out of time and that I need to get things done quickly. I went to a writing group when I was in college and they always told me to not rush and take my time because they would notice errors and inconsistent things in my writing because I was always rushing to get things done so they would tell me to take me time.
What are you reading now?
I honestly spend a lot of my time reading my own work. The reason for that is because I am constantly trying to improve my own writing but as for other books, I spend time reading marketing books and the big one that I am reading is "Dotcom Secrets" by Russell Brunson. I began creating websites during college with my friends and it became a hobby that I would occasionally do. I really enjoyed working on it and I created my own website for my books and I like the lessons from Russell's book and the marketing lessons that he teaches.
What’s your biggest weakness?
My biggest weakness is caring too much. The major thing that I want to do is pay off my mother's house and have a nice place for my family to stay and pay off the debts of my family. I don't care much about myself or what I want so I think it is both that and not liking myself sometimes.
What is your favorite book of all time?
My favorite is probably "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne. There are two major reasons why and the first is that I love traveling and to read about all of the amazing places that Phineas Fogg and his companions go to and how the world was back then is fascinating to me. The second reason and the reason why it has stuck with me for so long is because I feel that Phineas is like me. He took a major risk in traveling around the world and doing what others thought couldn't be done. I am the same way. I try to do what others think can't be done like writing a book or going to different places or even speaking because until the age of, I only knew two words.
When you’re not writing, how do you like to spend your time?
I spend most of my time working or spending time talking with my friends. Lately, I have been exercising and trying to lose 75 pounds. It isn't that I have major health issues right now but I rather get started on getting where I need to be now rather than suffer later.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
Not really. I am certain that it was a Dr. Seuss book because my parents bought a giant collection of his books and I remember reading them but I didn't learn much. One of the first things that I do remember reading was a Punisher comic book. I remember looking for a Batman comic book because I liked the animated series show and I guess I wasn't looking correctly and picked up the wrong comic book. I remember liking it and collected more comic books for a little while but it didn't really have an impact on me as much as what was going on in my surroundings.
What has inspired you and your writing style?
What has inspired me the most is the situations that I have been in throughout my life and what I have seen on the news. I have a very dramatic and suspenseful style where I try to make readers feel as much as possible through the descriptions that I give about the scenarios that the characters go through and that mostly comes from how I would tell people what would happen in school or what happened outside. Like I could say "There was a fight at school" or I could say "Sam threw at overhand right at Bobby which busted his lip open and caused blood to stream all over his white and beige t-shirt." I feel that my writing is more impactful that way.
What are you working on now?
Right now, I finished my first of three books that I am making which is similar the game "Among Us". How that started is one day at work, on my break, I decided to play a game and I witnessed a ton of weird interactions between people saying that they were fake married and one person saying "I don't love you anymore" and other person saying "That's it! I'm moving out and taking the dogs with me." I was laughing hard because I was thinking "This can't be real." But then, I started thinking "What if it was and what if there was something like this set in space like the game is?" Those were my first thoughts about writing an Among Us book and now, a couple of months since then, I have turned that thought into a book and I will be making a series of books.
What is your favorite method for promoting your work?
I really don't have one. It wasn't until recently that I truly dove into the marketing side of being an author because I think that is something many authors don't know, which is as an author, you have two different jobs: You have to be a writer and you also have to be a marketer or promoter. Even if you have someone or a team helping you, you need to be active in marketing. So in that regard, I am still at the beginning of finding ways to promote my work but I will find a favorite tactic soon.
What’s next for you as a writer?
What is next for me is to continue to write and improve my writing as much as possible so that in the future, I could be on a bestseller list and get many of my books sold.
How well do you work under pressure?
I try to do the best that I can. There were times where I haven't been at my best whether it be with other things going on outside of working on books like my job or my family or whether it be my own personal struggles but I always try the best that I can.
How do you decide what tone to use with a particular piece of writing?
I decide this by thinking of the scenes that I put my characters in and how the characters are as people. Before I write my book, I always do a character worksheet for each of my major and minor characters and along with that, I do a detailed plot and scene worksheet to layout how my story will go. This helps me not only create better stories and characters but it allows me to visualize the scene better and think "Ok, this is going on. So how would this character react and how would it change the tone or how will it influence the scene that is taking place?" It usually comes down to that and how I make the characters react in any given scene.
If you could share one thing with your fans, what would that be?
I would like to say thank you for sticking with me so far. It really has been a difficult time for me to think of something new to write or think of something to do over the past year and a half with all of the illnesses that have happened to my family and friends but thank you for sticking with me. There is more to come.
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