At the end of the day, everyone writes for their own reason. More realistically they write for a whole myriad of reasons that blend together into one super-reason. While I have many reasons why I write, I wanted to take a bit of time to talk about two of the people along the way who fed what eventually became my passion for writing. Thanksgiving is this month, so this is a way of saying thanks to the people who've probably had the most impact on me as a writer. The real OGs. Mom and Dad, don't read this unless you want emotions. This post will probably be a bit more anecdotal than my previous ones, since it's hard to thank people without highlighting what they've done, and also a little bit less directly related to writing as a whole but more specific to my evolution as a writer. Feel free to skip if you're only here for random brain drippings and not a little bit of Vaughn Lore. (Yes, it is the blog equivalent of yelling "Hi Mom" into a Television camera) My dad and I are exceptionally similar, apparently even down to the way we walk. It wasn't always this way, since little Vaughn was far more wild and unruly than my dad would have liked, I think, but I mellowed out with age as most people do and now we see eye to eye on most things. I don't remember the first book my dad ever gave me. I know a lot of people have stories about "the beat up copy of [insert life altering book here]" but I don't, mostly because I don't think the book itself was what mattered in that instance. It may have been The Hobbit or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but part of me thinks it could have just as easily been The Phantom Tollbooth or the first of the Deltora Quest books. I don't know what came first, because I read randomly as a child. But again, the book didn't/doesn't matter, the insistence that I read is what mattered and still does. As did my resistance to be handed books larger than I felt like reading. I still haven't read The Lord of the Rings series, does that discredit me as an author? But in time I came round and read most of the books he gave me, after I found that "yes, these books are long, and yes, I am lazy, but they're also good and well worth the read".

I know for a fact I read the first four books of The Dark Tower series younger than maybe I should have (Twelve maybe? Thirteen?) or maybe I imagine myself younger than I was because it was the first time I can remember reading a book so obviously for adults. I remember going to my dad after reading the first parts of The Drawing of the Three and asking him, "Are you sure it's okay that I'm reading this?" and simply looking at me with a laugh and asking "Detta?". So yeah. He also got me into Sherlock Holmes, and gave me the only Agatha Christie book I've read to date, And Then There Were None. At one point we tried to do a Dune read together, he finished and I clocked out maybe 130 pages into the first book. Oops. We both read Ender's Game either together or one after the other, and while I do love the book (and prefer Ender's Shadow), we collectively agreed that it's pretty "WTF". Oh, and I still need to read the copy of The Eye of the Dragon that's sitting on my shelf. So not too much has changed in that regard. I'm always behind on reading. But it's on my list! He says, knowing that list will grow next time he sees a bookstore.

This education carried over into other media forms as well. I've mentioned before that comics are a source of inspiration for my writing, and I have him to thank for that as well. I remember going with him on Wednesdays to the comic book shop that used to be over near the Bowie Library (I want to say it was Alliance Comics, but that could be wrong). Eventually he started letting me pick out my own comics (initially I think because he didn't want me messing up his), so I would pick comics that looked like what he was reading. Particularly The Batman Adventures comics based off the animated series. Not only comics but television and movies as well. My dad is why I like anime. Princess Mononoke being the one that started it all. Then later, Akira, and so on. Or shows like The Twilight Zone, and Babylon 5. Hell, my dad is the reason my family got into Doctor Who which remains one of our favorite shows to this day. Even video games, DOOM (which, since I was a child, didn't last long per request of my mom), Spyro, and Crash Bandicoot, my love of speculative fiction can be traced back almost entirely to these suggestions from my dad. A writer is influenced by the media he consumes, and when it comes to what I consumed, my dad was usually the one handing me new things to broaden my horizons. Now my writerly upbringing was not solely in the hands of dear old dad. If my dad influenced the consumption of media that charted the path to my style of writing, my mother was always there to encourage the writing. (This is of course, not saying that my dad didn't, but that my memories of my mom involve a more direct form of encouragement in regards to the writing).

From a young age, I was a storyteller, or what parents call "oh my god he talks so much". I would talk to just about anyone about anything at length until their eyes glazed over and, well... One of the funniest running gags in Airplane! ...you get the idea. And my mother would listen. It could me going on an in-depth explanation of what I was doing in my Pokemon game, or why this Pokemon card was awesome, or a recap of the most recent Pokemon episode. You probably noticed a theme there, so yes, I admit it, I love Digimon. And she'd listen. Sometimes I would just make stories up, usually involving me and my Pokemon and tell them. I distinctly remember an in class school assignment where we had to write a story based on a prompt, and the prompt was "You discover an egg. Tell a story about what hatches from it". I was determined not to write a story about a dragon hatching from my egg, so instead, a Gyarados hatched from my egg. so painfully not a dragon Definitely not a dragon, right? The story ended up being something along the lines of "A Gyarados hatched from my egg, and everyone thought I was awesome because Hyper Beam. The End." Riveting. I told my mom the story and she pretended it was good. Which of course elated the little elementary schooler who spent all of fifteen minutes on this masterpiece. It may have been at this point that I declared I wanted to be a writer, since my story was so good.

If you're wondering, this habit of going on about my interests has not changed, but, like a frugal vampire, I talk only until I see the first hints of glaze form in their eyes and then back off, so that they might live to listen to me another day.

We had composition notebooks for school, and in my periods of boredom (all the time as a child) I would scribble little stories in them complete with all my necessities: Pokemon, me (by any other name, just as sweet), and spelling and grammar mistakes. As I got older and more serious about writing, my mom would buy me notebooks and journals to write in, which in classic writerly fashion I still have and cannot write in because "the journals are so nice I don't want to ruin them". Ah to be able to approach journals with that childlike confidence of slanting writing that ignored even the lines there to guide you.

My mom is also the one who found what has become my favorite, and in my opinion, the best Writer's Conference: Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity after I had lamented at having missed all the spring and summer writing conferences at a time where the lack of a writing community had left me somewhat stagnate and flailing. It was here that I met the fantastic S.A. Cosby whose support and encouragement reignited what I had worried was a fading flame of passion for my writing, and, in my second year of attendance, a friend with whom I now do a bi-weekly writing group. Truly everyone I met there was wonderful and encouraging and as passionate as I had been and now am again. I attribute a lot of my forward thrust to this conference, and without my mom I may not have found it.

Bouncing back to childhood, if my dad was the one suggesting new books for me to read, my mother was the one facilitating my personal desire to read (ie: "mom can you buy me a book?" *holds out a stack of definitely more than a book*). So libraries became our friend, and from libraries I would mostly get books on real things: dinosaurs, the ocean, airplanes, ROCKS! I used to love rocks. I still love a good rock. They rock. And then in the spirit of the above GIF, I would recount this information to anyone who made the fatal mistake of asking me about anything. This part is important because where my dad definitely influenced the genre that I write, my mother facilitated a lot of the extra-curricular self-teaching I did. Not to say that my dad didn't also, but if I really liked rocks one year, my mom's gifts to me for birthday or Christmas would often incorporate that interest. And she would ask about them. I sometimes wonder how much information my mom got from her motormouth five year old that she never wanted. She also claims to be the one who got me into watching Godzilla movies, which I can neither confirm nor deny because in my mind I've always been watching Godzilla movies. They are intrinsic to who Vaughn is. So I just attribute it to both of them!

Whether or not this parenting style was a coordinated and decided upon effort, or if it just worked out that way, I don't know, but it worked, because here I am. Typing. A lot.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't have ended up a writer had my parents not been the way they are. Obviously it goes beyond that. But I will say that they deserve so much of my thanks for encouraging and facilitating my passion even in the times that it waned, or I wanted to give up. They've asked me recently why I never let them read any of the things I was writing/wrote, and I always just kind of shrug it off, but honestly, I wanted them to be able to see the culmination of my passion as an actually realized dream, and not just a work in progress. And now that's happening. See, I'm much better with words like this than I am with words from mouth, so...

Thanks, Mom.
​Thanks, Dad.
Look, I made it! My favorite type of rock: Hematite. It kind of bleeds. Which is cool.
Vaughn A. Jackson

Vaughn is a neophyte author of speculative fiction. His debut novel TOUCHED BY SHADOWS will be released via JournalStone publishing on September 24, 2021.