OLD SCHOOL: BLOOD MOON

Let's take a trip back to the early 90s. I know, it'll be scary. There's all sorts of things we'll probably see: pinned and rolled acid-washed jeans, Boyz II Men videos on MTV, maybe even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or two. We're also apt to see a scrawny, gawky-looking teenage drama nerd with a penchant for mystery novels and big, swooping hair. Like, Jason Priestley, 90210 large hair. And as you may have guessed, the nerd with the comic books and Stephen King novels in his backpack, rushing off to play practice? Yeah, that's me.

In our basement, there are bins of old work from my childhood, from elementary school through the aforementioned awkward teen years. There are papers and stories and poems (yes, I wrote them for a girl. And yes, it did work, so lay off) written on my grandfather's old typewriter. There's childhood stories about Spider-Man, about werewolves, about The Hardy Boys. There's also a bunch of printed out emails from college, when my friends and I would spend our workstudy time sending one another lyrics for a fictional rap group (don't ask).

So I'm going to start sharing them with you. I thought it would be fun to see what that early work was like, and how it has - or hasn't - influenced my current work.

Up first? A little gem titled Blood Moon, a short story I wrote in '93 for my creative writing assignment. It's about a man who discovers his one true love has been kidnapped by an ancient vampire, and he and his chums rush off to rescue her. Yep. I was on to the whole vampire craze waaaay before that Stephenie Meyers lady.

Here's the opening paragraph:

He crouched there, quivering. Deep in the shadows of a far-away corner of the castle, he sat with his head between his knees and his arms wrapped around his legs. His body ached from the amount of time he had hidden there, in the abandoned room in a cobwebbed corner. His mind, filled with fear, ran back the dreadful events of the night so far, fearing the end of it.

Exciting, right? You want to read more, right? Well, if you do, God bless you. The whole story is just one click away.

CLICK HERE FOR THE WHOLE STORY.

Be on the lookout for more posts like this, where I start to share all kinds of quirky stories from and about my youth.

Until then,
B

*NOTE: How cool is that Photoshop art I whipped up?!