October 26, 2022 Writing Update

To start with today I am nearing the end of the first draft. It has been a process to get this far and now it is just the end that I need to do.

For my writing, I have been doing it for a long time. It all started when I would write out my favorite books when I was a young child. I don't know why I had started doing that but as I look back on it now, I guess it was how I learned to write.

After we moved from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan, I found myself writing poetry and short stories in my spare time. At that time, I always had a dream to write a book. As I got older, I found myself in the library of the school where I was spending my time writing as I was being bullied and it was the safest place to go. It was an escape for me as I was able to create worlds where I was in control of what was happening.

When I moved to Edmonton, I started to write essays to fill my time when I wasn't at college or at the hotel working in the kitchen. I spent four years there and then moved back home to Saskatchewan for a year.

After a year working in the oilfield I moved to Halifax to continue my career as a chef. It was then when the character Charles Davis was created. I didn't know one hundred percent what I was going to write but it wasn't until I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I had a clear path set out for me for the An Individual's Innocence series.

Over the past years since January of 2005 when I was diagnosed, I have worked on showing that people who have mental illness are not monsters like how the stigma likes to portray.

Anyway that is a little about me and I will talk more about my writing life in the following weeks to come.

Stay safe.