Long Time Coming!

It's been a long time coming...after seven years my vision is finally coming to fruition!

     First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Benjamin Clark. I am 31 years old and I am a new up and coming author. Writing has been a passion of mine for many years now. The problem with that though, was that I've had so many different ideas that I couldn't pick one to just sit and work on. I've started writing novel after novel, but never officially finished a single one. It wasn't until the year 2012, when a group of friends and I came up with this idea to create a web-series. Mind you, none of us knew what we were doing so we just did our best to see what we could come up with. That's exactly what we did. So many different ideas were discussed, and finally we had a direction we wanted to go in. At the time, The Walking Dead was the big thing, so we started off with a Zombie series, similar to The Walking Dead, but with our own twists, turns, and story.

     As we continued working on this idea, it started to become more and more like any Zombie TV Series or Movie that was out there, and just wasn't original enough. Also, to be completely honest, it wasn't one of my favorite topics to write about, but I did, because it sounded like fun and it was with friends of mine. So, my one friend and I started talking about different ideas we could work on instead, and we tried including the other's as well, because we were sure that we'd be able to come up with something better. Now, it was back to the drawing board. We sat down and threw around a few more ideas, and by this time, it ended up just being my one friend and I trying to figure out something new to work with. 

     Finally, we thought we came up with the perfect idea. "Two guys sell their souls to the devil to save the ones they love". Sound familiar, yeah, in almost every season of Supernatural, Sam and Dean Winchester sell their souls to the crossroads demon, or do something along that line to save a loved one. So, again it was back to the drawing board. We needed to find something original, that has never been done before. Finally, we came up with the perfect idea!

"DECEMBER 21, 2012"

     For some of you that may not know, December 21, 2012 was the year "the anti-christ would be born and the world was supposed to end" That was our story right there. So we started building our ideas around that. We started writing our series and there were two main characters, Bryce and Lex,  followed by a recurring female character, Paige. Bryce and Lex were the two characters we wanted to revolve the story around, but as we continued writing, we began to realize that the story should revolve around Paige, making her the main character of the story with Bryce and Lex being downgraded to a recurring roles. The more we thought about it, the better we realized this idea was, because at the time many story ideas revolved around a male lead character and not a female lead character. This is where we wanted to be different and do something that wasn't done that often. The idea stuck and just like that, six episodes were written for the web-series, but we were left without a director, a producer and of course we were left without actors.

     Again, this was the first time we did anything like this. So, getting serious about everything, I reached out to a wrestling buddy of mine who I use to wrestle with on the Independent wrestling scene, because he was an aspiring actor and actually filming a few things with some people. So, he hooked me up with the director he was working with, and while there was communications between us, in the end it didn't work out. I tried to connect with a few other people as well, but again in the end nothing seemed to work out. At this point, a year or two had passed and my friend and I were having a hard time getting together to work more on the series, as our schedules clashed and caused conflicts. We tried to make it work, but it just wouldn't happen. 

     Now, the story had been put on the back burner. We didn't even touch it for at least another two years. At this point, I had gotten a new job and loss contact with my friend. I maybe spoke to him occasionally here and there, but it was never about the series. Three months had passed since I got my new job, and unfortunately they had to let me go, do to company issues. Of course because I was the newbie, I was the first to go. Anyway, I was left with some free time as I waited to get my job back with the prior company I worked for. So, as I sat home with nothing to do, I figured to dust off the series and begin working on it again. This time though, I decided to turn it into a novel. I figured what the hell, I like writing so I am going to give it a try. Everyday that I was home, I just sat on my computer and just kept writing and writing. I had typed 105 pages, which was a lot for me. Now I was left with where to go next with the story. Where my friend and I had stopped was only halfway through and not all the way to the end.

     I then got my job back and reconnected with my friend who had still been working there. At this point, I was more interested in working on it than he was, because he had a lot on his plate with school and what not at that specific time, but I still kept him in the loop and asked his opinion on certain things. So, I continued writing more, and then decided that I was going to now turn it into a TV Series, because I have all this material and I can write four to five hour long scripts with what I had already. Right now I was the only one working on the idea, so I took full ownership of it. I continued working on the scripts and decided to enter them into some screenwriting contests to see what can come out of this idea. I got some excellent feedback, some positive and some negative, so I knew I had to work on the idea some more and polish everything to make sense. At this point, I once again had gotten a new job and was very busy, to the point that I got burnt out from working on the scripts. It was like everything I was writing didn't make any sense, making what I had already written worse than it was. So I pushed it to the back burner.

     It wasn't until a former co-worker of mine had a book published, that reignited the flame to get this novel done once and for all. Now, this idea had gone from a web-series to a novel to a TV series, and now back to a novel. I knew what needed to be done and I knew I needed to push myself to get it done, whether I wanted to do it or not. So, day in and day out, every free moment I had, I used that to work as hard as I could to get this novel finished. It wasn't until June 11, 2019 @ 4:39PM that I wrote the last sentence of the novel. What emotions I felt at that very minute, I can't even explain. It was happiness, relief, and the only thing I was thinking in the back of my mind was "It's about time" Now, as the editing process moves forward and the Pre-Order process on Amazon.com has begun, I couldn't be happier. It's the next step in the right direction for my future in writing.

     This is only the first novel I've published, but I think it has a great story and one that many people will enjoy. I know I've enjoyed writing every minute of it and I am very pleased to get it out there for everyone to read. Thank you all for your support and I hope you enjoy the first book in my Darkest Days series and my first officially published novel The Beginning of the End set to be released in both Paperback and Kindle format on July 31, 2019.

Be prepared as the Darkest Days draw near!

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