Greetings and salutations people and peoplettes.
My name is D.B.Tarpley and I am a writer. Most of you know this already or you wouldn’t be reading this damned thing. But I just wanted to take a moment to sit down and relate a little bit of my journey and where on this road I am planning to take us together. I have been writing for over 25 years. I am 41 years old at present so that would put me starting out my storytelling around the age of 15 or so. I know I wrote some corny stories for my own personal enjoyment at an earlier age but around 15 I decide to write for others which meant tightening that shit up.
It was high school and I was one of four students who started up the first literary magazine in the school. Even then my stories were darker… pulpy action serials with as much blood and guts as the venue would allow. I was an underground hit garnering requests for follow ups on a grand scale. College saw me listless and in a poetic mood. I dominated poetry slams when I entered and I wrote news copy for the school T.V. station. This experience was invaluable for picking up quick decisive writing skills regarding telling the important facts in the allotted time. It is a different kind of writing than anything I had ever done but its punctuation and brevity have been easily translated into my later forms. I wrote cleaner faster copy than anyone who had ever attended the school.
I tried a novel, hugely autobiographical and just a bit on the patronizing side. This was during a period of huge depression for me. The writing was good, but fairly static. I got about a quarter of the way into the piece and then lost it all in a random act of self destruction. But sometimes you have to lose everything to gain anything.
Getting back on my feet I found my focus to be screenplays. I wrote and directed several small films with friends and then produced several industry formatted scripts after I researched the ins and outs of the style. I shopped the first of these, a hugely quirky indie flick with the unsellable title of ‘Nashville Nigger’, around Hollywood at any production house I could think of. I was turned down by over a hundred places before Appian Way, Dicaprio’s house, took a look at it. They held the property a bit before eventually turning down as well. A production house gets thousands of screenplays a year and may produce 2.
This ended the script writing for awhile and in fact all writing for quite some bit. The tidal wave of manic depression the ups and downs of the marketing experience can offer is just too much to take at times. Every once in awhile you have to catch your wind before you dive back into it and so catch my wind I did. It took a traumatic break up for me to throw myself back into my craft. At the time it was the only way to heal but whatever the reason it stuck and I wrote over a hundred short stories over a period of 2 years. The more I wrote the better I got and I would tell any aspiring writer that is as simple as the key gets. Just write tons and tons of stuff and before you know it the words will come easier and easier.
I self published my first collection, titled ‘Learning to Kiss in the Snow’, and was lucky enough to get a publisher for my follow up collection, ‘Lick the Razor.’ Both books have been incredible learning experiences for me, on both the creative and marketing sides of the coin. I recently found myself once again at a crossroads in my career and had to sit down and figure a few things out. And once I got back up again, plan in hand, this is what I decided to offer you – my dear and beloved reader.
27 books.
That is what I am going to write before I retire. I have each and every one mapped out in my head and I even tattooed the number 27 on my arm so that I won’t lose focus. This is my commitment to both you and my craft. This will be a fun and satisfying journey for both of us if you just take my hand and come along for the ride. I am re-launching my brand in a huge way at the end of the year and once I do there is no turning back.
27 books dear reader… that is what we both have to look forward to.
I’m excited and I sincerely hope you are too.
27!
Until next time keep reading and have an amazing ass day.