So, you’re probably wondering, who is this JMD Reid and why am I receiving a newsletter from him. Or maybe you do remember me. It’s been a long time since I sent a newsletter. If you’re getting his, then you must have signed up to hear about my works for some reason. Maybe you liked my short stories on Amazon (The Assassin’s Remorse, Reflections of Eternity, or Time’s Prison). Or maybe you found my blog and liked my articles on writing.
Or maybe you don’t know how you signed up for my newsletter. Either way, I hope you all stick around. I am working on getting my first fantasy series published. It’s not going to be soon, sadly, but when I do release the five book epic The Storm Below (hopefully in 2018), they will come out fast. I want to get all of the books out in a quick time. I want to hit the indie publishing scene hard.
And I hope you all will make the journey with me.
But first, here’s the opportunity to be a beta reader on my new short story! If you’re interested, click here!
So who am I? Why should you journey with me? What do I bring to the table? I hope it’s great characters, great writing, and imaginative stories. I could talk on and on about what I feel are my strengths as a writer, but who likes hearing about people talk about how amazing they are? I know I don’t.
Instead, I wanted to talk about myself. To share who I am with you. I want to build a community where I interact with my fans. Because fans are what makes writing so amazing. To share your work with others and to learn people enjoy what you’ve written. It touches you in so many ways.
So who is JMD Reid? He’s a community college dropout. Yep, I didn’t even dropout of four year college. Nope, I “attended” Green River Community College for two years. Well, I paid to attend, but I didn’t end up going that much. I tried, I really did, but I just wasn’t motivated.
I always wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t the first job I ever wanted as a child, that was a paleontologist (and, yes, I owned all the dinosaur books when I was in elementary school). But as I grew older and headed into Junior High, I started writing at school. I’d pull out my spiral bound notebook and write the most terrible pieces of fiction ever composed by human beings.
I was inspired by the books I’d read. Tolkien was the beginning, but Eddings and Jordan and Brooks followed. The writing duo of Weis & Hickman fanned the flames of my imagination. I would go to my library and grab any Fantasy novel they had. I would read it all.
As I went through high school, I kept writing. I dreamed of being a writer, of having my book published. So what did I do when it came time to think about college? Did I look at schools that had an amazing English or Creative Writing program. Nope? I decided to go to Green River Community College. I didn’t pluck this school out of nowhere. It wasn’t the closest Community College to me (that was Pierce Community College Puyallup campus). But it had a great drafting program.
Drafting? You’re probably scratching your head. What is drafting? Why would a young man who wanted nothing more than to be a writer decide to go to a community college to be a drafter? Well, drafting is the skill of making blueprints. Whether it’s the blueprint for the very laptop I’m writing this newsletter on, the engine in your car, or the architectural plans for Sears Tower, a drafter had to draw out those plans. At first they did it by hand, but these days they do it on CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) programs like Cadkey or AutoCAD. I liked it. I thought it could make a career out of it. Even though I really, really wanted to be a writer, I just didn’t think I would ever make it.
I sabotaged myself. And that is exactly why I dropped out of Community College. You see, I was working at evenings and going to school during the day. I was bored at school. I find sitting down and being lectured to very boring. Teachers often repeat themselves and my classmates were asking questions on things I found so intuitively obvious or that the teacher had easily explained ten minutes earlier. I chafed. I wanted to be doing something. And even though I could have used my Associate Degree in Mechanical Drafting to transfer to a four year college and get a Masters in Engineering, I instead wanted to play video games.
It was easier. It was more fun. It didn’t take any skill. Instead of pursing my real dream, which I was afraid of, or my backup dream, which was two hard, I settled into menial jobs so I could just screw around and not care about life.
That desire to self-sabotage lurks in me. I’ve put off publishing Above the Storm for years now. I’ve come up with all sorts of excuses: I’m going through the query process, I’ll write the entire series and then get to it, I’ll try this new marketing technique of rapid releases. I’ll be honest with you. I’m scared to release this book.
But I’m trying so hard not to sabotage myself. I believe in Above the Storm. I believe in the story, the characters, and I believe that you (what few people will read this) will fall in love with it. That is why I want you to make this journey with me. I want to build a community, to create opportunities for my fans to receive ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) of my novels and to find beta readers to help me hone my stories and improve them.
If you’d like to join my Facebook group, Fantastic Worlds of the Imagination, and help support my writing, click here!
So I hope you’ll make this journey with me. Stick around, I’m publishing short stories throughout 2018, I have my Urban Fantasy novel, Chooser of the Slain, coming to the Radish app for serialized publication, and I’ll be posting excerpts from my works (like the Prologue to Above the Storm just below). I am founding a Facebook group as a place for exciting works of fantasy to be discussed and shared, a place where I can interact with my fans and we can talk about things that interest us.
And I would love just to hear back from you. Ask me questions. I will be more than happy to answer them. I want to get to know you, too.
Thanks,
JMD Reid
We all have a storyteller inside of us. Join me as we find out what the rising stars and established voices in publishing have to say about their craft and inspiration.
We all have a storyteller inside of us. Join me as we find out what the rising stars and established voices in publishing have to say about their craft and inspiration.
