An Epic Saga Of Youth
My childhood went through several different levels of growth spurts; stages of learning in things that interested me and maturing, but then regressing back toward a negative nature. The early years of my life were the worst. I was spoiled, to say the least, and any time a brother of mine got something I thought was neat, I'd cry. It seemed unfair to me at the time that I should get something when others did, as if I was automatically entitled it. My brothers bought legions of action figures, mostly of Batman and Superman; of course I wanted to play with them more than anyone else under our roof.
Then, as I grew older, I developed a keen interest in animals, and later on outer space. I'd read a couple of these huge animal books often to refresh my memory on every creature's name and/or species that they came from. And then we had this pretty slim book that mainly covered our galaxy. I memorized all the nine planets in this solar system and even some of their moons, although I can't recall them all that well right now. But a funny memory from back then is that I thought Saturn had the ability to destroy incoming meteors before they struck it, due to how one of the pictures was illustrated. It turns out that those "meteors" were floating chunks of rock in Saturn's ring. xD
Again I outgrew these things, this time my attention turning to a LEGO series known as Bionicle. I don't recall how I came across those—perhaps a friend got tired of his collection and lent them to me—but I do know that the more my mind was occupied by them, the more I came to love tinkering with them. I soon began keeping up with all the latest varieties of Bionicles and the stories that went with them. They were the only toyline that I amassed every chance I received, be it through the books or the products. And the four movies that LEGO produced over the years.
Only video games and certain television series are the things I sustained an consistent interest in. They're part of my best good old times growing up, and went a little something like this in terms of favorites, to name a few:
After this there came a time that my parents noticed I wasn't getting out of the house enough. They put me and my younger siblings in to a series of co-op classes and we later that year joined up with a homeshool basketball team. At first I was so unhappy with this that my childhood selfishness seemed to be returning; once more I wasn't getting my way, and I didn't know why I felt like that. I got used to the idea of hanging around new people the more I got into it. Thankfully friends in my basketball team also consisted of the co-op classes group, so I'd be playing alongside people I was familiar with.
During this same segment in my life I developed yet another passion: Perusing a dictionary and/or thesaurus so that I could know the meaning of every big word. My imagination went soaring as I gradually began to form sentences out of this ever-growing vocabulary. Somehow I knew that I was meant to be a writer. After watching the movie Eragon, reading that same book, and reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy that very year, I was utterly certain that was to be my life's work. So I commenced on my first ever novel, yet didn't make it past the first 75 pages before I quit it, because it was too similar to Eragon.
Discouraged somewhat, but even more emboldened, at the age of 14 still I came up with a brand new plot and hammered out every detail as I went along. Between basketball, the co-op classes, and working on this novel, The Dark Legion, all that went on for four years. When those years had elapsed I'd decided to try my luck at editing and eventually publication. It took me very little time to find an editor, a very gracious man who was willing to help with every little detail, but almost a year to come up with an interested publisher. Part of the reason that the process drew out so long is because I was spending too much time on ZD and had to leave for a few months.
But around August of last year, and after an endless stream of book submissions to other publishers on my part, I at last received an email from a publishing company interested in taking The Dark Legion. After circa three months of readying the formatting, illustrating, and making copies, my book was officially published—one of the most joyous moments of my life.
My childhood went through several different levels of growth spurts; stages of learning in things that interested me and maturing, but then regressing back toward a negative nature. The early years of my life were the worst. I was spoiled, to say the least, and any time a brother of mine got something I thought was neat, I'd cry. It seemed unfair to me at the time that I should get something when others did, as if I was automatically entitled it. My brothers bought legions of action figures, mostly of Batman and Superman; of course I wanted to play with them more than anyone else under our roof.
Then, as I grew older, I developed a keen interest in animals, and later on outer space. I'd read a couple of these huge animal books often to refresh my memory on every creature's name and/or species that they came from. And then we had this pretty slim book that mainly covered our galaxy. I memorized all the nine planets in this solar system and even some of their moons, although I can't recall them all that well right now. But a funny memory from back then is that I thought Saturn had the ability to destroy incoming meteors before they struck it, due to how one of the pictures was illustrated. It turns out that those "meteors" were floating chunks of rock in Saturn's ring. xD
Again I outgrew these things, this time my attention turning to a LEGO series known as Bionicle. I don't recall how I came across those—perhaps a friend got tired of his collection and lent them to me—but I do know that the more my mind was occupied by them, the more I came to love tinkering with them. I soon began keeping up with all the latest varieties of Bionicles and the stories that went with them. They were the only toyline that I amassed every chance I received, be it through the books or the products. And the four movies that LEGO produced over the years.
Only video games and certain television series are the things I sustained an consistent interest in. They're part of my best good old times growing up, and went a little something like this in terms of favorites, to name a few:
After this there came a time that my parents noticed I wasn't getting out of the house enough. They put me and my younger siblings in to a series of co-op classes and we later that year joined up with a homeshool basketball team. At first I was so unhappy with this that my childhood selfishness seemed to be returning; once more I wasn't getting my way, and I didn't know why I felt like that. I got used to the idea of hanging around new people the more I got into it. Thankfully friends in my basketball team also consisted of the co-op classes group, so I'd be playing alongside people I was familiar with.
During this same segment in my life I developed yet another passion: Perusing a dictionary and/or thesaurus so that I could know the meaning of every big word. My imagination went soaring as I gradually began to form sentences out of this ever-growing vocabulary. Somehow I knew that I was meant to be a writer. After watching the movie Eragon, reading that same book, and reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy that very year, I was utterly certain that was to be my life's work. So I commenced on my first ever novel, yet didn't make it past the first 75 pages before I quit it, because it was too similar to Eragon.
Discouraged somewhat, but even more emboldened, at the age of 14 still I came up with a brand new plot and hammered out every detail as I went along. Between basketball, the co-op classes, and working on this novel, The Dark Legion, all that went on for four years. When those years had elapsed I'd decided to try my luck at editing and eventually publication. It took me very little time to find an editor, a very gracious man who was willing to help with every little detail, but almost a year to come up with an interested publisher. Part of the reason that the process drew out so long is because I was spending too much time on ZD and had to leave for a few months.
But around August of last year, and after an endless stream of book submissions to other publishers on my part, I at last received an email from a publishing company interested in taking The Dark Legion. After circa three months of readying the formatting, illustrating, and making copies, my book was officially published—one of the most joyous moments of my life.
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