So – I Wrote a Book. What the Actual Fuck?
Yep, it’s true. I wrote a book. What? Like it’s hard? Lol! 😂 Seriously though, most of you know musical theatre has been my decades long career so why am I talking about being an author? Well, gather round gentle readers and I’ll share the story. It all began in the little town of Davenport… Stomping Ground It was an inevitable and accepted fact that one day my rare, incurable disease, CIDP, would take me down without remorse and make it impossible to walk, drive, dress or dance ever again. However, from 2013 when it first presented itself through full diagnosis in 2015 until right before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I fought against the rage that was slowly but consistently taking over my muscles, consuming my nerves, altering my speech, and dissolving my mental state of mind. Even after I lost all the nerves and feeling in both my feet, resulting in drop feet, I learned how to ‘stomp’ the ground just to know where I was spatially. This stomping method allowed me to continue to teach dance and choreograph musicals for five more years after diagnosis. And sometimes look like a drunken orangutan! Wake Up Call – Can You Hear Me Now? The pandemic and the two years that followed put a crushing blow on my career and my entire life. When our country went into pandemic lock down and I paused all my work, I finally realized just how sick I really was. To add insult to injury, not one but two spinal reconstructions happened out of nowhere in 2021 and 2022, due to long-term use of Prednisone dissolving my actual spine. These immense and dangerous surgeries would finally shut the door and twist the key in the lock to end everything I loved about my life. When you loose your life and everything you ever worked for in the way I did, the real tragedy is: you’re still alive. Now what? Standing on the Corner of Fucked and Fucked Good question. Now what? I won’t recount every last detail from 2021 to 2025 but suffice it to say, as the pandemic proceeded, I was sucked into a black storm of confusion and depression that bore down on me every day. If I wasn’t distracted by a long phone call from a loved one or spilling my beer on an ECV scooter at Universal Studios Orlando, the storm was there. It would surround everything I was trying to do to get rid of it, bashing my thoughts against the rocks, swallowing every effort down below its black waters. Yes. I entered a period where suicide became a thought more than several times. I’m not proud of that. I was such a strong, resourceful man. Until I wasn’t. My neurologist finally intervened. Don’t ever be afraid to reach out. 988 – Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text. Unseen Wisdom So many levels of recovery must happen on the road to surviving a lifetime chronic disease. But the one that would not let go of me was purpose. We all need a purpose in life to feel we are contributing to society, to our family, to ourselves. Having no purpose is like plunging down a pitch black, bottomless hole in the ground. You swear there must be rocky earth you’re about to slam into any minute. That actually would have been great, but fuck, no. Endless falling. And falling. And falling. Supernova Then in June 2022, through the physical destruction and mental exhaustion of the last three years, a beam of light exploded, rocking my entire being. A powerful epiphany I needed more than anything materialized out of nowhere: “You are a born storyteller. You’ve told stories for decades on the stage. Why not the page?” At first, I was frightened. The kind of in-the-pit-of your stomach-I’m-gonna-puke frightened as if I were at my first theatre audition. I couldn’t do this. What was I thinking? Then Abel, my partner, nailed it in for me with his simplistic words: “If anyone can do this, you can.” A man of few words but always powerful when he does pipe up. I suddenly was filled with a determination that got me happily out of bed every morning! Commitment Thus, on July 7, 2022, I proclaimed to myself, Abel and the Universe that I was going to be an author. Just like that, my feet hit the ground, the rain halted and the clouds began to part. I haven’t stopped writing since. The road to becoming a writer, I learned, truly has no clear road map but I made one promise that I believe made all the difference: I would not put pen to my stories until I studied how to be a writer for six months. I created a daily curriculum, 8am-4pm, five days a week and stuck to it. I mostly learned how to write from the many books on the subject by the incredible author, James Scott Bell. I credit him to this day for the skills and courage he taught me that would allow me to lay pen to paper with confidence. I started by writing horror; one of my many obsessions. And I made a promise that I would do everything to not write the cookie cutter horror that has sadly permeated our entertainment industry today (Sorry. Truth.) I began with two separate novels but soon backed down to short stories. It was not so daunting and finishing a short story in a condensed time frame brought a sense of completion (until Abel started editing, lol!). As I wrote the first three short stories, I realized each story was taking place on a holiday. Unintentional but so cool! I decided to outline an anthology of dark, twisted, seasonal holiday horror tales. Eight of twelve stories are
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