My writing career began by a happy, unintentional circumstance. I am a teacher by trade and education and gave an assignment to my eighth-grade science students which entailed detailing a day in the life of an alien. Seems weird? Not really since all of the classes needed to help support ELA and Math in any way possible. At the time we were learning about human body systems, so I had my students create an alien with six body systems and then the story. As any teacher should do, I provided a model of the project.
They were blown away by my simple story! “Is this a picture book?” “Is this published?” I was surprised by their enthusiasm for the story, but it got me thinking. Why shouldn’t it be a book?
I began querying agents (the old-fashioned snail-mail way) and got a bunch of nothing back from these prospects. Until, one agent took the time to write back and said that she liked my writing style and could see me as a published author, but I would need to write a novel. “Children’s and picture books are for already published authors and celebrities.”
That was it. I looked at some of the stories that I had been writing for my own children and one stood out. I wrote about a trip to Ireland (fictional, of course) where we found and observed Leprechauns collecting magic sparkles from a rainbow. My own children liked it, but I morbidly thought, “What if I have a griffin tear through the rainbow and kill a bunch of Leprechauns while stealing the King?”
Celtic Mythos was born and I wrote The Obsidian Dagger. Thankfully a small but awesome publisher saw my vision and the rest is history…or is it?
The odd thing is that this wasn’t the first novel that I completed. As a matter of fact, this wasn’t the second novel I wrote. My first book, Angler Island, just became a published novel and is available everywhere you can buy books.
Enjoy the story, folks.
Brad A. LaMar is the author of the best selling and award winning YA fantasy series, Celtic Mythos as well as the Angler Island science fiction series. Brad is from Indianapolis, Indiana and has been an educator for 20+ years. He enjoys crafting fun stories and tries to always create interesting characters that readers will love. Brad's favorite genres to write are science-fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. He writes stories for young children all the way up through adults. There's nothing like a good story to pass the time and engage the mind.
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