I’ve always been a writer…
A Passion for Storytelling
I’ve been writing for decades. I got my start filling composition notebooks with stories about me and my friends taking on monsters in the playground. Later on, I moved to telling my own original stories with wholly original characters.
Awards
I’ve won several short story awards now—each one is just as special to me as the last. I remember when I got my first one, I was sitting on a train ride heading back home to Kansas City when I got an email notification.
“You’ve received an honorable mention for your short story, Edwin. Where would you like us to send your certificate?”
I was absolutely floored. I didn’t know how to respond. I thought there may have been a mistake. Was Edwin that good? Was I good? This was the first bit of validation I’d received from someone who wasn’t a family member or friend. These were professional authors judging a competition—judges that include the likes of Orson Scott Card, an author whose book Ender’s Game meant a lot to me.
Even when I got the certificate in my hands, I still couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t first, second or third place, but it meant the world to me.
I went on to win more awards with every subsequent entry. I wrote The Ansleigh Arc a few years later, submitted it, and got an award. Then I wrote Beneath Magenta Rain a year after that. Boom, award. Next came Our World is Ending and I Love You, perhaps the story I’m most proud of and that meant the most to me.
Silver award.
And yet, every time I got this award, it felt just as jarringly surreal as the last. Surely I couldn’t be good at this. But, well, some people out there think I might just be. So, I’ve continued to write.
I have been working on novels for years and have never been able to get over my need to “perfect” every project, so nothing has been published. I did have a novel How I Ruined My Life out for a few years and it did surprisingly well, but I eventually pulled it because I believed I could do better. That was probably a mistake, but I’ve stuck to it. I’m going to release a novel I’m proud of. I’m going to.
Publications
I have published many of my short stories. Well, a couple of them. Even with short story judges handing awards to me, I still have that inferiority complex I can’t get over. You can pick up The Ansleigh Arc and Beneath Magenta Rain on Amazon as eBooks. I am currently working through the notes that judges gave me on Our World is Ending and I Love You so that I can publish that one too, but it’s taking some time because I am in love with this story and I want it to be as undeniably perfect as it can be.
