I’ve really dropped the ball on this, haven’t I? Well, I’m back in the saddle for now. So for all three of you who’s reading this, here goes!

Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Most of my very first stories and characters were based on real people. OK, they WERE real people–namely, my friends, or people I wanted to be my friends. The first story I wrote was in a Michael Jackson notebook. I was in sixth grade, and it was a story about myself and a bunch of classmates getting stuck in a haunted house. I sat at the table and wrote it in such a short amount of time.

In eighth grade, I wrote stories about my friends and our crushes and called it As The Bell Rings (which I think is the name of a real show now). These stories were written in play form, not prose, and were simple sheets of notebook paper stapled together. Most of the writing I did after that was in play form, especially if I’d somehow inserted myself in the story. And I almost always did.

During high school, most of my writing was an early form of fan-fic, only starring my friends and me along with New Kids on the Block and the Mousketeers from the 1990s MMC. I was always with Joe, Jon, or Ricky Luna. Some of them, my friends and I told verbally over super long phone conversations. Others, I wrote on my own. I wrote all those stories in these 100 page notebooks I got from the school store for 50¢ each. The only non-play one I remember writing was one called The Paperboy.

I wish I still had them.

I didn’t start writing stories with people I actually made up until I got to college. I’d stay up all hours, just writing. Longhand! I have an unfinished novel in the biggest binder ever. There’s even a paper on the front that says “Ronni’s Big Ass Notebook.”

I have loads of stories now. MANY false starts. A couple of finished ones that will never see the light of day (again). But that first one, that haunted house one, is what seems to have started it all.