Let me begin by saying that I am a very private person. That’s not to say I’ve ever been someone who runs and hides, just that I was raised to believe that you shouldn’t expect to be famous. I was taught that you shouldn’t advertise what you’re doing. You shouldn’t have to hide what you’re doing either. I guess the moral of that teaching moment was simply this: If you need to hide what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
For me, I know that I never thought of any kind of fame for what I did in my previous career. Like the primary character of my series (which was loosely based on my previous career), I spent my life as a fire department rescue worker. I was a paramedic. I actively avoided getting my picture in the news or on TV. I personally think most people don’t realize how toxic that kind of attention can be.
Now that I’m retired and have time to myself, I’ve returned to many of the things that I’ve always loved but just didn’t have time to enjoy as much as I would have liked. I’ve always been a storyteller. I grew up in an urban environment but was lucky enough to be exposed to camping and hiking at an early age. My earliest memories of camping were wandering and exploring, finding all manner of things that fascinated me and ultimately returning to the campsite for dinner. What came next really put storytelling deep in my heart and soul.
After dinner, the group would sit around the fire and the elders of the group would begin telling stories. Sometimes the stories were ghost stories, sometimes they were stories that the elders had heard or read sometime prior to our current trip, and sometimes they were just the events of the day that occurred away from the rest of the group. Whatever the tale, it was always mythic! Maybe it was just the environment, or perhaps it was just my perspective. Either way, those stories got into my heart and soul in that indescribable way that made me want to be the one telling them!
Fast forward to my adult years and I was the one telling the stories. First to my friend’s younger siblings, then to my friends’ children, and then to my own children and their friends. I still loved camping, survivalism, and science. I guess those things all fed my natural explorative nature. On their first camping trip, my kids were actually uncomfortable with my storytelling around the campfire! Not because they didn’t like hearing the story, but because the friends they had made on the trip were so fascinated with the stories that they were telling everyone in the surrounding campsites to come hear the stories! Like me, my kids didn’t want that kind of attention.
It did make me happy and proud that they all enjoyed the campfire story tradition, though. Sometimes the stories were a bit long… lasting several nights. On more than one trip, kids visiting from other campsites would beg my kids and I to stay around the campfire extra late, just to finish the current story because they would be going home the following day. I would be a bold-faced liar if I tried to say that didn’t feed all our egos.
That quiet, internal joy and the desire to help others is the reason I wound up in a career in the medical rescue field. I’ve never craved a cheering crowd. I always did love the feeling I got from the emotional “thank you” I got from someone I helped (or sometimes their family). I also knew that I could never be happy in an office job. I’ve known that since my first camping trip at just three years of age!
Now, with my retirement from my first career, I’ve begun enjoying camping again. I go far more often now, usually with my oldest daughter and her kids. It seems the tradition has been passed on. Still, I feel that I would like to share my stories with a wider audience. Perhaps I could write to appeal to the young adult or early middle-aged crowd. Writing just seems to be the natural vehicle for that.
My stories tend to be long-winded. That’s why I was forced to write a series of books. Science fiction/fantasy was the obvious genre for my writing because of my affinity for the medical sciences and the outdoors. The science fiction/fantasy genre allows far more freedom in those areas. I tend to stay close to “current events” type of time frame because it allows people to use their imaginations on the more interesting fiction and fantasy of the story, without the distractions of explaining the environment. I have too much to say as it is! Besides, any unexplained references that distract the reader should be intentional and part of the plot, to be discovered and revealed later! My characters are pure fiction, but like many of us, I tend to base my characters personalities on observed real people. All of this becomes a great deal of work, but it is truly a labor of love.
It really is far more difficult to write a story than it is to tell a story. To my amazement, I’ve found that I love writing my stories as much as telling them. I truly hope you enjoy reading my stories even just half as much as I enjoy writing them!
W. J. Landeye