About

Photo by Death’s House Productions

Hello, there!  Welcome to my crazy inner-monologue – grab a cup of tea and stay a while?  Or if you’d prefer, you might need something a bit…stronger to get through my inane ramblings ;)

After nearly nine years, I’ve finally decided to revamp this “About” page, thanks in part to an old blogging friend reading it and pointing out that a lot has changed :)  So here we go!

The Road So Far…

I’ve always been a story-teller.  One of my earliest memories is of sitting at my Great-Grandma’s kitchen table, telling her wild tales over milk and cookies, and her listening with great patience.

But I was about ten years old when I first put pen to paper.  Or maybe it was pencil.  In any case, it started because I’d been reading a lot of Star Wars and Star Trek novels at that point in my life, and I had this insane dream of one day getting a Star Trek novel published!  So what did I do?  I wrote what would be my first fan fiction story (although I didn’t know that’s what it was called at the time).  It was horrible!

However, it also sparked a passion in me that has never died.  My classmates read it and mostly were enthusiastic about it (while some, as is common with children, were mean about it.  That did hurt.  I was still learning how to shrug off the bullies.)  And so I buckled down and wrote more stories.  And more.

Of course, I very quickly learned the truth – no one got to publish a Star Trek novel without being asked to do it.  I could write Star Trek stories to my heart’s content and submit them for publication, but I would never get one of those stories accepted.

But I wrote anyway.  Somewhere in middle school (we called it Junior High back then) I came up with the original idea that would one day become The Sword of Dragons, and started writing the first novel.

About 12 chapters in, I learned the hard way that I needed to keep backups of my stories – our computer got a virus and I lost everything!

Then, everything changed…

The World Wide Web and the Fan Fiction Community

I don’t remember when exactly it happened, just that it was when we lived in New Mexico – I discovered the internet!  It was first at school, in a computer lab, that we learned what the Internet was and learned how to connect to it.  Then at a friend’s house, I saw what dial-up was like, and I created my first-ever email account.

I still have that account ;)

Anyway, it wasn’t long before I convinced my parents to get us Internet, and then I very quickly discovered the Yahoo chat rooms!  As anyone who was around for that era might remember, there were some…toxic people and toxic rooms back then.  (Oh hey, there’s STILL a lot of toxic people on the internet!)  But there were also a lot of incredible, wonderful people that I was able to connect with.

More importantly, I connected with other writers!  And I found fan fiction websites (Star Trek: The Adventures of Argus was the first one I found.)  I realized this was the perfect opportunity – I could write my own Star Trek stories, put them out on the internet for others to read and critique, and this would let me hone my skills as a writer with near-instant feedback!

Thus, Star Trek Dragon was born.  (Oh yeah, that reminds me – I have a thing for dragons ;) )  Over the course of 7 seasons, I wrote 70 episodes of an ever-evolving story.  Some stories worked, some didn’t.  Some changes to my writing style worked, some didn’t.  But that feedback was invaluable.

Also of great value (and would become essential to my decision later in life to self-publish), I decided to learn how to do graphic design and animation, in order to create my own website and story-related images!

From Junior High – wait, sorry, Middle School, through High School, and into College, STDragon was a huge part of my life.  When the 7th and final season finished, it was a sad day, but at the same time, I felt ready.  Ready to stop writing fan fiction, and to instead write more original content.

I was ready to become a published author.

Except…

The Evolution of the Sword of Dragons

I’ve written a blog post about how the Sword of Dragons evolved from a sci-fi to a fantasy, so I’ll just leave that link for you there, and instead cover the evolution of how it came to be published.

I finished the first version of the Sword of Dragons (back then I called it Sword of the Dragon) my sophomore year of college, or rather the summer after.  It was nothing like the story you may have read now, but I was immensely proud of it at the time.  I found an editor to submit it to, and just a week or two before I went off to my junior year of college, I mailed a copy (yes, mailed!) to the editor I’d chosen, with high hopes!

It was an exciting time!  Not only had I just submitted my first full novel for publication, but I was also transferring to a bigger college, one with multiple creative writing courses I could take!

Unfortunately…the excitement died very quickly.  That college was New Mexico State University.  My first day of creative writing, I learned the hard way, thanks to criticism from the professor, that this college didn’t accept genre fiction.  They were literary fiction purists.  I would not be allowed to write sci-fi or fantasy.

Things only got worse.  At the time, I’d been a choir geek all my life, and I was excited to join the choir at the new university, only to discover that the director was…well, let’s just say that she hardly was ever present, and made the experience unenjoyable when she was there.

And then, the worst blow came when my parents got my manuscript back with a rejection letter from the editor.

All of that hitting all at once led to a fairly deep depression, and it kicked off a 4+ year writer’s block.  I still took creative writing classes and wrote literary fiction, but I wasn’t passionate about almost any of those stories.

There was a minor stint where I had a bit of passion rekindle, and I wrote the first 12 chapters of what you all know today as Rise of the Forgotten, but then the block reasserted, and it took years just to write two more chapters.

Passion Rekindled

It turns out that, sometimes, you have to move and start life over again to shove yourself out of a rut.  2012 was among the hardest years of my life!  So in 2013, I finally decided to change things up, and moved to Colorado.

With a new life, a new hope, a renewed passion for life, my writing came back with fire!  I picked up where I’d left off on the Sword of Dragons saga, and after I finished writing book 1, I started looking at how to submit for publication – turns out the publishing industry had evolved since my last attempt in 2004!

I discovered the world of blogging back then, in 2014, and thus, this very blog you’re visiting was born, chronicling the trials and triumphs of writing, finding an agent or editor, and getting published.

At least, that was my original goal for the blog.  Things changed in 2014 and 2015 in that regard – after countless rejections for the Sword of Dragons, followed by rejections for the first iteration of Chronicles of the Sentinels, I decided to self-publish.

In may 2015, using a combination of the writing skills I’d gained over decades of writing, proofreading and editing I’d gained in school, and from hobbies, and using the graphic design skills I’d learned as a hobby, I self-published the first edition of book 1 in the Sword of Dragons saga.

Since then, I’ve learned more about the industry, I’ve become a better writer, and now, as of when I wrote this updated “About” page, I have 8 active titles published!

The Road Still Ahead

If you made it this far into my bio, I’m amazed and grateful that you’ve taken such an interest in me and my writing!  It’s been a long road.

But “the road goes ever on and on.”  As of today (March 2nd, 2023), I have two more novels in the Sword of Dragons saga to write, I have a new YA Sci-Fi to finish editing and to publish, and at least two more series I want to start writing.

Better still, after so many false-starts, sales and reads are trending upward – the Sword of Dragons is growing in popularity, and I feel hope about my writing career, even if it’s only just a small, teeny-tiny spark of hope.

I don’t update this blog nearly as much as when I first started it, and I do so with no regular frequency, but I will continue to chronicle my journey here, and hope that I can help inspire or educate other writers or readers out there.

Thank you again for reading this far, and I hope to see you out there!

-Jon Wasik