WEDNESDAY WONDERINGS: I BECAME A WRITER BECAUSE—UH, WELL, UM . . .

The title of this post is a question I’ve wondered about for some time. Why do I write? And why on earth, Romance?

I have my ideas, but recently something triggered a new revelation in that direction.

One of my nieces is engrossed with ancestry and, more specifically, genealogy. The other day, she sent me some articles from an ancient biweekly local newspaper, the East Whittier Star Review. They presented the text of two essays I wrote at Orchard Dale Elementary School in East Whittier, California, reminders of things I’d not thought of for more than five decades.

The first was from the school’s 1957 yearly patriotic essay contest, recounting my fifth-grade second-place entry about Thomas Jefferson. The second was from the same competition in 1958 when I won first place for the sixth grade for writing about Andrew Jackson, Frontier Statesman.

I clearly had some aptitude and desire for writing at that age. However, in Intermediate School (7th-8th grades), my talent for mathematics and science reared its developing self, and, as they say, the rest was history. Winning high school district math contests and Bank of America awards for math seemed to tell me that I should be heading in that direction.

I received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After two years on active duty as a Naval Officer, I went on to an M.S degree from California State University at Long Beach, acquired a license as a professional mechanical engineer in California, and eventually national certification as a Quality Engineer. All well and good—so I thought.

So—where does my current career as an author come in? Thanks to Mike Treman, my senior year college roommate and fellow pioneer member of the UCSB Crew Club, I became fascinated with the works of science fiction icon Robert Heinlein and thriller star Michael Crichton, known to most of the world as the creator of the original Jurassic Park novel. I also became a massive fan of the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, which I have read in total maybe a dozen times.

Later, I got into Tom Clancy, encouraged in part by my own earlier experience as a Naval officer. I loved the details and the whole thriller genre. That led to David Baldacci, Steve Barry et al. From Heinlein, I branched out to more sci-fi classics: Asimov, Herbert,  Bradbury, Clarke, and Wells.

All this inspired me to try writing. I actually completed a thriller that had religious overtones. It’s never seen the light of day and may never do so—it’s pretty terrible. Well, it has lived, actually, as a fictional published book that became a giant hit in my current second chance romance series. You’ll have to read one of them to figure out the thriller’s title.

Okay, all this is fine. But what does it have to do with writing romances? The answer is nothing—except the desire to write. I think along the way, high school and college reunions triggered thoughts of my youth. It was inevitable some of the early intense romantic regrets I still harbor five decades later would inspire me to write something romantic (don’t worry, kids—it was long before I met your mother). It didn’t take long to see that trying to rewrite those stories the way I wished they had turned out was not a good idea: not fair to the real people involved, and certainly not fair to the characters in my stories, whose lives didn’t deserve to be limited by my follies.

It grew from early creative fumbling to something more deliberate, and finally to what is now a downright passion, something I can’t NOT do. I don’t fear death and what will happen afterward. But my prayers regularly ask God to give me enough years to write all of the stories he’s put in my head. Please?