I’ve not always been a writer, but I have told stories in one way or another. And up until now, I’ve never really had the courage to share them.

Now Broken Road is a newer story. It was written during NaNoWriMo 2016 in collaboration with my friend Marc, as a side story to The Shagal, when I was looking for inspiration to sit down and write.

I wasn't trying to write a novel though. I simply wanted to write. And so I challenged myself to write everyday. Weekends included. Family was coming second until they couldn’t. I was trying to create, not just a story, but a habit… to write. Some days it was a sentence. Other days were details about characters that never made it into the story. And I drafted it out from beginning to end. It was my outline. My initial vision was definitely a bit different than what turned out, but the story was complete. It was a short bordering on novelette or novella. What lacked was personality and some detail. So next came some character study.

Not to get too deep into this, but I did take a good amount of time on each character trying to really discover each personality and putting it on paper. Elias was a family man, a farmer, a father, and a friend. He had the life that was mapped out from point A to point B. Got married, had a son, and maybe his only ambition was to expand his farm. The same sort of details went into Willem, Gernant, Hammund, and Elias. I also sketched some other characters that weren’t in the story, but made the world feel more real to me just knowing they were there, going through something of their own.

Without a doubt, the experience was a challenge I’m happy to have undergone. I truly believe it has made me a bit more fearless about sharing what I am writing. And by the end of the story, I hope I have created something that fit nicely into the world that Marc has created with The Shagal.