From Library Love Affair to Literary Club: How Letter Play Was Sparked

The path to starting this platform was a long one, but don’t worry I won’t bore you with all the details. Just a few (insert evil laugh here).

The gist of it is that I needed to create an online presence for my Author journey, however I didn’t want to just promote my one book. It would be overdone and everyone would be sick of it (...like I currently am. Trust me, when you’ve re-read your own novel 18 million times, you’d be sick of it too). I wanted my name and my brand to be more and to give more. I wanted to try and cultivate a community of people who still believe in letters and words as a lost art. That storytelling, storywriting, and creative freedoms are falling away to screen time and the day-to-day crap.

I wanted to try and cultivate a community of people who still believe in letters and words as a lost art.

I first fell in love with reading when I was 14 years old. I mean, I loved reading, I read a lot, but I didn’t fall head over heels until I was sitting on the back deck at my Nanna and Pappa’s finishing the final chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When my pages were wrinkled, damp and smudged, my Nanna came out and asked me if I was crying because it was a sad ending. I replied, “No, I'm crying because it’s over.”

It was in that moment that I felt the immensity of a story. The impact. The emotion. I was absolutely crushed that a series I had spent years of my life reading (over and over again), was done. There would be no more. The characters, the setting, the magic, it was all just gone. And I felt empty. I was desperate to find something that made me feel like that again, and that’s when my Pappa took me to the library to get my first library card. From there, I was hooked. Not just by all the books I could take (for free!) but by the smell, the feel, the exploration.

...and that’s when my Pappa took me to the library to get my first library card. From there, I was hooked.

I felt at home around pages and pages of letters and words, pictures and graphics. I would spend hours walking through the aisles, touching, opening, smelling. (...yes I love the smell of books, don’t pretend that’s weird, you get it. Right?). My pappa was the most patient man in the world, giving me my space, freedom, and time to roam about to my heart’s content before settling on the maximum number of books I could take out at any given time.

Fast forward to today and I still feel this way, except I understand the importance of it so much more. The importance of cultivating, feeding, cherishing and celebrating my love of literature. Our love of literature. I respect each and every book I have the honour of opening, touching or just being near.

I ebb and flow in my reading, don’t get me wrong. I give in to the season of life in which I'm in (summer I barely read at all, and winters I can’t stop). Writing is a bit different, writing you have to force yourself a bit, add some discipline and time blocking, but it ebbs and flows the same with inspiration and creativity. Sometimes I write 5 lines about a sasquatch, sometimes I write deeply profound poetry that has me in tears. It’s called balance.

In summary (...cue high school English essay writing), I'm glad you made it this far and I am super excited to see where this journey takes us together.

If anything I said rings true to you, or makes you feel any tiny little bit of a spark, then please stay. Welcome to the club. We have jackets (well not yet, but maybe someday). Jocks aren’t the only ones who can have jackets...