Guest Blog with Author Ron Bagliere
My guest this month is FBP author and editor, Ron Bagliere.
Ron is the author of three published works, Beyond the Veil, Loving Neil, and The Lion of Khum Jung, and a fourth to be published in the near future.
Thank you, Ron for being a guest on my blog.
First of all, I would like to thank Sandra for inviting me to speak on her blog. I’m honored to share a little about my writing journey here. So where to begin…
Thirty years ago, I ventured into the world of story telling. It all began when my daughter started asking for made-up bedtime tales. As I began making them up and telling them from memory, I realized it might make sense to be putting them down on paper, so without the use of a word processing program (because back in the day it wasn’t something most folks had the luxury of having) I wrote them all by hand on paper.
That seems like a hundred years ago now in another universe. I don’t think I could’ve produced four novels if I had to continue writing everything by hand. Anyway, the stories grew in the telling and provided many fun interactive moments with my four year old. Then, a year after I started all this, a friend of mine introduced me to Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’. This book, more than anything, changed how I looked at writing and story telling. I remember finish reading it and sitting on my couch a long time, soaking up the epic novel I’d just read. I was left in awe and energized to write my own epic fantasy novel.
I still have it in my drawer, unfinished with the idea of possibly going back to it someday, but for now it will have to wait, because over the last twenty-five years I’ve changed as a writer. What I first thought I wanted to write about morphed into things I wanted to say about relationships and people in my current time. This led me to into the world of women’s fiction. I didn’t purposely wake up one morning and decide to write women’s fiction, it just sort of happened to me over time and the result of it became my first novel, ‘Loving Neil’.
‘Loving Neil’, which is a tale of an intergenerational marriage, is loosely based on events that happened to me ten years ago. In fact much of what I write now, is loosely based on experience and memories. The story of Janet and Neil is placed on the west coast of Oregon and it went through seven re-writes – the original manuscript of 120,000 words was eventually pared down to 83,000 words by the time it was finally published. To this day it is my touchstone whenever I feel like I’m drowning in a raging sea while writing a Work in Progress.
Now might be a good time to express my thoughts on writing. Writing is a thing I do that brings me satisfaction and joy. The minute it stops being that, I will stop. Like any creative thing we do, our work should represent the expression of our hearts or why bother? That doesn’t mean that it Isn’t frustrating at times, but in the end, it should result in your feeling proud of what you’ve done, if even for only yourself…and if you’re fortunate to make a living at it, so much the better.
Fortunately, for me I’ve been able to break even in the process financially, and as my books sell more and more here where I live, I’ve been asked to lecture and teach at the local libraries and book clubs. This year, I’ll be offering a webinar workshop through my publisher, Fountain Blue Publishing on writing. I look forward to it. There is nothing more gratifying than sharing some of the things I’ve learned and love about in this wonderful craft over the years with others. If you want to learn more about the webinar or my novels, you can contact me through Sandra or go to my website or my FaceBook editor page.
Thanks for reading and happy writing.
Ron