Writing Fiction
Nothing prepares you better for the rigors of writing than fiction. The prose must be impeccable. Editors are very demanding. It teaches you discipline like no other form of writing. I dabbled in writing fiction a few times in my year, and the experience has made me a better writer.
Literary Fiction (Short Story)
A few years ago, the neighborhood where I grew up was changed forever following the gruesome death of a toddler during a street racing incident. A teenager lost control of his car. Even though he insisted he was not speeding, the car jumped over the boardwalk, slid over several feet of grass, crashed through a cedar edge and came to a full stop only after mowing down a four-year-old little girl who was putting up Halloween decorations in her yard. The local rumors that circulated said that it took hours to extricate the little girl’s body from the car wreck. I tried to picture that intervention in my mind. In the end, I ended up writing a fictitious account of that intervention. This short story was written to increase awareness of street racing in small suburbs. It was published by the Amarillo Bay literary magazine. (Warning! Graphic Content!)
Tales for Children
In my previous career as an advertising executive, I developped an educational program for children for one of the agency’s clients, Mr. Christie’s Cookies (of OREO fame). I was the creative director and the principal writer on the project. I designed, wrote and published a magazine for children full of stories, games and crafts. The mains characters in the stories were based on the cookies. Here is their first adventure.
Comic Strip for Children
For the same project listed above, I also wrote a regular comic strip featuring the Cookiekins; the characters based on Mr. Christie’s cookies. I also wrote a play featuring those characters that was presented in Montreal and Toronto, but the script unfortunately did not survive.