Tales From Burkeland: Tale Zero

I’m glad you’re joining me on my journey! For readers wanting to get to know the author behind the page, Tales from Burkeland is the place to be. Here you’ll find personal stories as well as publishing news and other writing-related content.

Why Am I a Writer?

The short answer: It’s my calling. And it never shuts up.

At age nine, I decided to be a novelist.  My elementary school participated in a young authors program where we created our own hardback picture books. Already an avid reader, I fell in love with creating stories through those bright white pages. Between ages nine and sixteen, I wrote tons of poems, short stories and a novel. None of that will ever see publication.

Despite that early fervor, my journey from young author to published fiction writer has been more of a Sunday drive down a winding highway than a straight shot down an interstate.

In high school, well-meaning adults questioned how I’d make a living as a writer. Determined to prove writing could produce a steady paycheck, I explored print journalism. I planned to write news articles by day and create fiction stories by night.

I earned a Bachelor of Arts in writing from DePauw University and began my decade-long career in professional journalism with an internship at The Salt Lake Tribune. After graduating college, I moved to Southern Indiana where I worked as a staff reporter for The Dubois County Herald before transitioning to freelance work. I focused on hyperlocal journalism, telling the stories of everyday people in the small, rural communities in Dubois and surrounding counties. It’s an often overlooked style of journalism that taught me the power of a free press and, more importantly, the power of stories to shape our thoughts and our communities. I carry these lessons with me in my fiction.

Despite my best intentions, fiction writing became barely a hobby. After writing news articles all day, more writing was the last thing I wanted to do when I got home. My dream of being a novelist burned in my soul but never exploded into reality.

In 2023, that changed.

After a combination of life events that included a small health scare, I got real with myself. Yes, I’d been writing stories since childhood. Yes, I’d been writing professionally for years. But my published works weren’t the stories I yearned to tell. To leave the legacy I wanted, I had to make changes.

I joined David Farland’s Apex Writers Group and the Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana and studied the craft of fiction. I submitted “In Flames” to the Midwest Writers Guild’s 2023 anthology Rebirth of the Prose. In 2024, it became my first fiction publication.

I also joined Wulf Moon’s Wulf Pack Writers and studied his Super Secrets of Writing. After applying his teachings, I sold “Rise of the Witches” to Flame Tree Press for Circe, part of their Myths, Gods, and Immortals series. It’s slated to publish in early 2025.

Remember that novel I wrote as a kid? It’s morphed into The Heirs Saga, a fantasy novel series currently in planning. Several short stories set in the same world are in various developmental stages, as are a host of other short works.

As you can tell, I have writing to do. The dream of being a published fiction author is now a reality, but I’m at least a few years from realizing my dream of being a published novelist. It will happen, though. It’s more tangible now than it’s ever been.

For now, I’ll leave you with this: don’t sleep on your dreams. You can make them a reality.

It’s worth it.

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