Good question. That’s me underneath the helmet, obviously.
The modesty in my heart would say that I am no one; just a dude, a guy, a badly written NPC to be ignored in a medium-budget, mid-2010’s RPG. Putting modesty aside, I’ve written four books, self-published three, left two aside for now and I’m only proud of one; Violet Vickers. Over a million words have been typed by my squishy digits and, out of all of them, 86,000 thousand odd were chosen to tell Violet’s story.
I’m getting sidetracked already…
The world I was born into no longer exists; a simpler time, a happier time — Ireland circa 1994. My childhood was as typical as any other; toys, PlayStation, kicking a ball aimlessly for hours on end, watching the World Trade Center fall in real-time on Sky News — y’know, normal shit. I don’t wish to make light of that event, but it certainly stands out in my mind as something that deeply affected me, changed the lens through which my innocent little mind viewed the world… Things never shined as bright once I peered behind that particular curtain, uncovered the lie, discovered the harsh truth that we live in a not-so-nice timeline; a timeline of our own making, no-less.
Anyway… Mother and Father went their separate ways when I was eleven, yadda-yadda-yadda, School was rough, yadda-yadda-yadda — boring. The meat of it all, the crux, the point, is that many events shaped me into the cynic I am today and that same cynicism has found its way into my writings. I suppose I should touch on that, the writing thing. It’s something I’ve always done, as an outlet, as a coping mechanism, as an attempt to create something that was mine. No angels visited me in my sleep, no family tragedy forced me down this path; all I had were good teachers that encouraged me to write and to keep writing.
Writing…
Writing’s a funny thing, isn’t it? You translate the images in your head into words, put those words on a page using 26 characters and try your level-best to describe what you saw — glimpses of an imagination, of fever-dreams had on cold nights under sweat-soaked blankets. It’s madness, it really, really is madness. Then, if that wasn’t lunacy enough, someone else picks up your work and hallucinates vividly for a few hours — maybe they’ll like what they pictured, maybe they won’t. Thus we arrive at the thing that stops most writing their own; not starting, no, but finishing, getting the damn thing writ (wrote, written, done?).
That’s my biggest stumbling block. I’ll get a great idea, an idea that will surely propel me into the big leagues (so to speak), and I’ll sit and write, and write, and write a bit more. Maybe I’ll get to thirty, maybe forty thousand words, then BAM: total loss of interest. Don’t ask me why, but it happens to four out of every five works I try to write. In complete and total contrast, A Glimpse of a Girl (Violet for the uninitiated) was the easiest story I’ve ever brought to life. It flowed, it ran, it spewed from me like it was always in me, like I’d been born with it in my bones and, upon me reaching the right age, it needed out, needed freedom, needed to escape and take its first real breath — Violet’s initial draft took me two, maybe three months to flesh out.
Short stories seem to come naturally to me, too. Poems also, but I don’t believe that they’re very good. In fact, I don’t believe anything I write is good. That’s the writer’s curse, isn’t it? To forever doubt yourself to the point of not wanting to pick up the pen at all (or keyboard, rather). I care deeply about how my writing is received… All authors do, I surmise.
Where was I? Ah, yes…
As an amateur, work is a necessity for me; there’re bills to be paid, Credit Unions to be kept happy, bellies to be fed and a partner to save for a house with. I was once under the employ of a pet store where I wrote enchanting emails for their exclusive audience of animal lovers. Being a writer lent itself naturally to my role and success was once a word associated with my efforts there (if only the same could be said for poor Violet).
Still, life goes by. I write, ride my motorbike, play a little Wild Rift, work, sleep, save, rinse, repeat. As much as the world wanted to fuck up my plans of leading a simple life, a life my Father no doubt envies, it failed, miserably. I suppose that’s me in my entirety; simple, no airs and graces, no lofty ideals, no delusions of grandeur. What you see is certainly what you get, no more and no less.
However, still waters run deep as my Grandmother once said…
Auf Wiedersehen.
AJ Carney 