Where It All Began...

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I was born in West Virginia and grew up in the little hick town of Roderfield.  My mother and father, Lonnie and Judy owned a clothing/8-track/CB radio store in town for over twelve years in the '70s and early '80s.  I always had my choice of music to listen to with a variety of genres.  This explains my current heavy metal and country music playlist.  Music is a strong motivator for my writing.  

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My father passed away when I was six.  Being too young to fully understand at the time, this was probably when I truly started to use my emotions to express myself on paper.  Being so young though, no one, including myself, ever actually took my writing seriously.  I do remember being at my grandparents' house, sitting at their dinner table trying to write something but not knowing just how to express it.  I remember my friend Theresa Rice and her grandfather Herman Long walking in.  "Watcha doin Skipper?", Herman asked me.  Skip was my family nickname.  "Oh...nothing", I remember responding and then I'd throw the paper away.  

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Not long after, I remember sitting on the floor behind my mom's store counter with a notebook, trying to write a story about a TransAm.  Again, being young and not knowing what I was doing, I was trying to make my own version of 'Corvette Summer', the big movie at that time.  

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There were quite a few changes in my childhood through the '70s and '80s, up until I graduated high school. These changes, life experiences, pleasant and challenging, all continue to contribute to my creativity when writing.  

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In my early years, after my dad passed, I gained weight making me the "fat kid" in school.  But I had a tight group of friends since first grade, so it was fine, we stuck together. However, after the West Virginia coal mines went on strike in 1980, our store and newly opened swimming pool business struggled.  My mom had remarried by then and she and my stepdad, Mahlon Chapman, decided it was best to close up shop in 1982 and we moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee.  

 

It was in Knoxville that I really started to get in touch with my writing "style", so to speak.  We lived in three different areas around the Knoxville area in a span of two years. The first place was Hickory Star, Union County, Tennessee, right outside of the county of Knoxville. I mention Hickory Star because the school there was a good school. The kids and the teachers there were great; they accepted you for who you were.  

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Then, for work reasons, we moved into the suburb area of Knoxville. This area was a little different for me. We lived in a great neighborhood with a lot of kids to play with and a lot of bike trails. But the school was a little too "upper class". This was where I learned the difference between who had heart and who was shallow; the real people and the fake, especially when it came to money and possessions. And that was just the children my age!

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Coming from a family who once owned a business, one would think I would have been spoiled but that was far from the truth. I always knew it could have been worse growing up. I never took our lifestyle for granted. And now, no longer living the same way, we were grateful for what we did have. So, seeing kids act entitled helped me realize even more the type of person I wanted to be; I wouldn't allow them to influence me; and because of that, I was the "fat kid" but it was no big deal, it just gave me more motivation to write.  

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A couple years later, we moved to Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, right outside of Fredericksburg. I was enrolled in Northern Lebanon High School, class of '89. I learned a lot there. Real friends, real people. There were still some shallow people as well, but all schools will have those. I learned so much about life at NLHS, or as much as I could as a teenager; from hard schoolwork to football to girlfriends. I also learned, the hard way, if you mouth-off to a farm boy you will get hit - HARD! In all honesty, this was when and where my writing style took shape and some of my best writing was done because of girls and my broken heart.  

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I graduated high school in June 1989 and enlisted in the United States Army on September 11, 1990; I have a high school diploma with a military background. After a short stint in the reserves, I went active duty stationed in Ft. Stewart Georgia, where I had a great time! It was while living in a trailer in 1993 in Walthourville, Georgia, where I started writing "Doctor's Orders".

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