From Rhinos To Castles

One thing I can never stress enough is how darn lucky I am to have met each and every one of you. Having the chance to talk you amazing people, hearing what you have to say… it more than makes all the hard work worthwhile. I know that I deserve less than half of the praise you give me, but I appreciate it, all the same.

You have to know, though; if you think you like my work, then without a doubt, you’d be knocked over by what my sister can do.

I’ve taken the name Wordweaver as part of my pseudonym; I know what a lofty title that is, and it’s because that’s how good I eventually want to work myself up to be. But my elder sister, SH? If anyone deserved the title Wordweaver, she’s the one. She’s always had a way with words that I could never hope to match, and if she ever starts writing again, as I hope that she eventually will, you’ll be in be in for something special.

The eight years between us shoved us into completely different age groups; but whether she knew it or not, SH had a lot of influence on me over the years. We were pretty much your average normal siblings; we fought, played pranks on each other, watched TV shows together, and et cetera, the usual. All in all, whenever we chat on Skype these days, it’s mostly good memories we bring up.

With a little bickering here and there. What can I say, old habits die hard and that sort.

I first ‘started writing’ when I was somewhere around seven or eight. No, I’m not trying to boast. Trust me. You see those ‘stories’ were something beyond your normal newbie trash. They were just…

...this.

I was sometime near the year 2000, when dad brought home our first computer. It was a Pentium 2, with Windows 98, the hot new thing at the time. If you were around back then (heyya, kids), you'll probably remember that there weren’t many games around at the time. 

 We had a computer. but on that computer, all I had to amuse myself was paint... and Microsoft Word. Was I was transfixed? Can't remember that too well for some reason... but hours on end at a keyboard has to count for something, I suppose.

What possessed me to start writing? Not a clue, really. Maybe it was access to a computer and finally getting bored of hearts and solitaire. I came up with this ridiculous ‘masterpiece’ which, if Fate had let me go on with, would probably be at chapter 10k and would still be one volume. 

 I called it “Ricky the Rhino,” and yes, the protagonist was a rhinoceros whose home was invaded by hunters. He joined a bunch of other animals and fought back against the evil hunters. And that was about it. 

My big sister SH did something for me back then that I'll never forget (...nor will I admit to her that I acknowledge it. Such does one wageth the Sible War). As stupid, weak, and never ending as that story was, she would voluntarily sit there and edit and rearrange text, hours on end. She knew perfectly well how poor it was, and what a waste of time it was for both of us; and yet at the time, it meant a lot to me, as you can imagine. And so she did it.

Just so you get a glimpse of how bad it was... let me just say that I did not for the life of me understand the concept of paragraphs, and how they are born. Yup. It was one horrendous aberration, a block of text of such drivel that no sane man would stay with it for long.

And yet SH stuck through it. (Let me just take this convenient moment to mention that this post makes no comment on her sanity. Thank you)

And if you think that was bad, you ain't heard the rest. See, even back then, I was never the short story type. As horrible as it was, Ricky the Rhino to me was a novel, and God help me, that meant quantity over quality. I’d fill pages up with hogwash, and for my sake, she would edit them out.

Looking back on it now, I admire her even more. She could have just told me to stop bothering her, or ignored me completely. That would have been the obvious, the logical, the sane (yes, I said it) thing to do. But she no. She didn’t.

She, too, wrote quite a bit around then. Unlike me, she did have the knack for short stories; but just as I did, she had ideas for things that were way bigger. She never showed me most of her stuff, but some of which she did let me read blew me away. I remember reading the prologue to her story Mirage, a three page document that she had printed out and kept lying around for some reason.

I remember her watching me as I read it, and when I was done, I honestly swear I did not know what to say. My jaw was literally hanging, and my voice did not work.

That was when I knew that however hard I tried, I would never, ever be able to match her. It didn’t mean I was going to stop, oh no. I was born to write, and write I would. But no matter how good I got, it wouldn’t matter. She would always be better than me.

And the best part; that will never bother me. Believe me, I am competitive. Don't let anything tell you otherwise. It's a part of me. But SH is the one person who truly matters; she is the one person who I want to impress more than anyone else. As corny as that sounds, I am proud of her, and I want her to be proud of me. Moment over.

This post isn’t similar to the others I usually do, you would notice. This happens to be my number 40 on my list, believe it or not. I felt that it would be right to use it as a tribute to SH, to whom every single one of my books will always be dedicated.

I have read a lot since she gave me her prologue of Mirage to devour. Some authors I thought were simply brilliant, and some… well, in my humble opinion, they rather left much to be desired. I guess I can say that I’ve been around long enough to have a reasonably decent idea of what good writing should look like.

Trust me when I say this; I know for a fact that my sister is up there with the best of them.

A few close friends of mine are the only ones who know who I really am behind the mask of The Weaver; but I still haven’t told SH yet, nor anyone else in my family. One of the perks of being anonymous; I get to have a few surprises to save for a rainy day.

Maybe if she stumbles onto this by accident, read a few lines and recognizes the style… maybe.

Thank you, SH.

(And I used your real initials here, so if you do stumble here by accident and don’t realize it’s you that I’m talking about, then you really are thicker than you pretend to be)