His debut YA novel, Vision of Shadows, comes out in December. He's here with me today to talk about his journey as a writer and where it all began. Take it away, Vince!
People often
ask me how I became an author. After all, I’m no spring chicken. As of this
writing, I’m two days away from celebrating my 42nd birthday with my
wife and two teenage daughters. So when did I get the writing bug?
The answer is,
it’s always been there. When I was a little kid, it wasn’t enough to just tuck
a blanket into the back of my shirt and run around like an idiot calling myself
SuperVin. (Which isn’t to say that I didn’t do that.) I always had to have a
story. A puzzle that needed to be figured out. A bad guy to battle. A cute
little girl to rescue who would smile at me as I stood there with my hands on
my hips, my white blankie flapping in the wind as I stood in front of the fan.
Of course, the white blankie was real, but the puzzle, the bad guy and sadly
the cute little girl were all imaginary.
Eventually, I
decided instead of play acting my adventures as a superhero, or Captain of the
Enterprise, or a Jedi Knight, I should create my own adventures and put them on
paper. One of my earlier endeavors was to become a comic book writer. Alas, I
can’t draw a stick figure of a stick. I did have some cool stories about aliens
anointing a pudgy kid to become an intergalactic super soldier. And yes, there
was always a cute girl. Often times, not just as a damsel in distress, but a
fellow hero who would fight by my side.
Somewhere along
the way, I realized that those things with pages called books didn’t all have
to be of the school variety. They could be fun to read. But often times, I
found that while I enjoyed them, why didn’t they do this, or that?
So why not
write my own? I started my first book when I was in the fourth grade. Humans
were living on a world where aliens ruled. We never saw them, but they told us
what to do, what to think and who we could love. Some kids ran away from their
home to be free and… Well, that’s about as far as I got.
In high school,
short stories became my thing. I had about a dozen of them. They were read by
quite a few people and I generally got good feedback. Since I was harboring delusions
of being the next lead guitarist for KISS. Songs became a big part of my
creative world. I even got into poetry. And not the roses are red, violets are
blue kind of thing. I tried my hand at some poems that didn’t even rhyme.
I still thought
about being an author back then. In fact, I wrote 2 stories that I thought of
as novels. No idea what the word count was, but they were probably in the
novella range. Both MS are long gone. (And nobody will miss them.) I had a list
a mile long of different book ideas. My earlier influences were Steven King and
Dean Koontz, so they were more of the horror variety. Romance hadn’t gotten
into there yet.
Then college
came. I had been told many times by my parents that making a living as a
novelist was next to impossible. So I tried to find another career. My writing
got put to the side. My guitar sat in a corner. I started to work with the NYC
Housing Police Department in a cadet corps that would help pay for college. My
plan was to turn around and become a police officer. That didn’t work out. I
eventually started working as a customer service representative for a large
company. Good pay, good benefits. And it let me invest in the other lifelong
dream that I’ve always had. Family.
I got married
and my wife and I wanted children. That part wasn’t easy and probably could be
a novel right there, but I’ll just go straight to the spoilers. We have two
very beautiful twin girls that I am oh so proud of.
So how did I
become an author as opposed to a guy who says, I used to write? Sometimes, one
dream can lead to another. One night, while bellyaching about how I had wanted
to write books, my wife asked if I wanted to, what was stopping me? So with
that kick in the butt, I began to write.
I had a couple
of false starts. I’d start a book without a clear picture of where I wanted to
take it. Then I’d hit that wall and say, “Now what?” And the story would die.
(May they RIP) Then I realized I couldn’t be Steven King who doesn’t know what
he’s going to write until he writes it. I outlined.
Then I wrote. My kids were old enough then to understand what I was writing and
were huge fans of my first full length novel about a magical world with
dragons. I was worried that what I wrote wouldn’t be long enough, so I made
sure to give myself a long plot. Only to discover that while a normal Young
Adult novel is around 70k, mine came in at 188k. Yeah, that wasn’t going to be
trimmed down easily.
So with the
love and support of my family, I started over again. I had a thought. A girl
with psychic abilities sees the person that she’s going to spend her life with.
He’ll either be the love of her life, or the end of it. Pretty nifty, huh? And
so Vision of Shadows was born, the first in a 5 part series.
Even after it
was done, it took me a long time to revise it. And it’s so hard to get anyone
to even look at these things. Then one day, I got an offer. It’s not with the
publishing company that will now release VoS in December of 2013, but they
wanted to publish my book.
My world
changed that day. I got the official offer via email after I had begun my work
day. I had to wait until I got home. Then I casually said I had an announcement
to make. I got to tell my wife and daughters that I was going to be a published
author. There was a moment of shock. My daughter Danielle gave me a hug. It was
one of those perfect moments in time.
So how did I, a
pudgy little boy with a white blanket become an Author for Entranced
Publishing? What’s the formula? First you take a dream. Then you mix in a lot
of early attempts, which teach you along the way. Sprinkle on a lot of hard
work. And don’t forget the kick in the butt from the cute little girl who
believes in you.
Vincent Morrone can be reached at Vinent@VincentMorrone.com or visit his web site VincentMorrone.com
