So, I Did This Thing

I’m a writer. Did you know that?

I write stories that turn into books. Well, sometimes I write stories that end up as just stories. I give those away or they end up in anthologies from time to time.

Regardless, whenever I write stories–no matter where they end up–I write them the way I see them in my head. What The Muse™ tells me to put down on paper (er, screen?).

I have no other motive than to tell the story the way I feel it should be told. Hopefully, it will make some money for me, but I have no control over that part, so I focus on the telling of the story aspect of writing.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, book after book, that has been my modus operandi.

Have a story; tell a story. Release it to the wild.

Other than the hope that a piece of work will make money for me, I have no expectations of what readers will or won’t think. I hope they have a lot of fun reading what I wrote. I love entertaining readers more than anything. However, I know that everything–other than the writing of the story–is out of my hands.

Once that is done, I can’t expect anything specific from my stories. I can’t expect anything from the readers.

I send them out and hope for the best and move on to the next thing.

It has always been that way for me. Until recently…

When I started writing POSSIBLY TEXAS in November of 2020 (during NaNoWriMo), I was so excited. It’s a story about a quirky little town with quirky citizens and it’s a lot of fun. It’s charming. Cute. I felt like readers would enjoy visiting this weird little town and all of its weird little citizens that live in my head.

Over the next year, I realized that I was writing something that was a metaphor. Even I didn’t know what my brain had in mind when I started writing the story. POSSIBLY TEXAS wasn’t just a story about a quirky town and the Possbilians who live there.

With each new page I wrote and polished, I realized that the book was full of my own personal philosophies. My hopes. My dreams. What I hoped for others. The way I see the world. What life means to me.

I found myself hoping–for the first time ever–that readers would feel…something more…while reading one of my books.

I hope POSSIBLY TEXAS entertains. It has a lot of fun characters and locales. I hope readers are charmed and delighted but what they find on the pages.

But I hope it leads readers to also, well, hope. My wish is that it inspires kindness and mindfulness. That it makes readers pause and think of the world outside of themselves.

I hope it inspires everyone to want to be a Possibilian.

Tremendous Love & Thanks,

Chase