Dream Of My Life
By Jim Melvin
I grew up in Tampa Bay (Fla.) and spent many years running around barefoot in a pair of shorts and pretty much nothing else. A group of boys my age lived on the same street, and we spent hour upon hour playing the usual kinds of games boys adore—football, baseball, basketball, kill the carrier. But we also played more imaginative games, usually based off the movies and TV shows of that era (Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Captain America). A stick became a sword, a garbage can lid a shield, a pine cone a grenade. We were tireless.
In the mid-1970s when I was a junior in high school, the “Dream of My Life” took hold of my awareness. I decided then and there that I wanted to become a best-selling novelist and make millions of dollars. The novels were my dream, the millions just sort of a thick gravy. I knew I would succeed; any doubts were overwhelmed by my youthful enthusiasm.
At age 20 I wrote my first novel that I titled Sarah’s Curse. It was a scary, brooding, artsy horror novel that was never published. But at the time I didn’t care. It’s rarely the first but rather the second or third novel that hits it big.
At the time, I was enthralled (and still am) by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, so I began to envision a fantastical tale about a band of desert warriors called Tugars who would battle an evil sorcerer. The Tugars’ leader would be named Torg, and he would have magical powers derived from death itself.
I started writing and got to about page 20. Then hit a wall and threw it all away. I started over again and got to page 15 and hit another wall. Again. Again. Twenty-five years later, there was no second novel, much less a third.
I had become one of the millions of people who have a “Dream of My Life” and never realize it.
But during those 25 years, I never quit thinking about Torg and his heroic desert warriors. While I was driving alone in the car, taking a shower, or falling asleep at night, I would invent tales about them. And I would repeat these tales in my mind, hour upon hour, just like the playtime of my youth. The stories became engrained in my memory.
When I turned 45, my wife and three youngest daughters (five, all told J ) moved from Tampa Bay to Upstate South Carolina to be near my
wife’s elderly parents. My wife and I chose to step out of the rat race, take a couple of years off, and live off savings. This wasn’t the smartest financial move, but the dream thing kept haunting me. I didn’t want to remain one of those who never fulfilled it. So in my new home in Upstate South Carolina, I wrote—on Sept. 3, 2004—the first word of Book 1 of what would become The Death Wizard Chronicles. And because of those previous 25 years of thinking-thinking, the words poured out of me as if I were channeling.
On Dec. 8, 2007 I wrote the final word of Book 6. Seven hundred thousand words in all.
As you’re reading this blog posting, the Year 2012 is nearing its end—and I’m lucky enough to be with Bell Bridge Books, an emerging force in the publishing industry that is operated by some talented and, more importantly, high-quality people. Keep in mind that I first envisioned The Death Wizard Chronicles in the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter was president. Now Barack Obama is in charge. A lot has passed in between. Book 1 was published in August 2012 and Book 2 in November 2012. The final four books, already written by me (but not yet edited by BBB’s ultra-talented Pat Van Wie), are on their way.
The “Dream of My Life” has been fulfilled. I can look myself in the mirror knowing that I willed it to happen. If I also eventually make even a small portion of those vaunted “millions of dollars,” I certainly won’t complain. J
Do you have a “Dream of Your Life”?
If so, why put it off any longer?
Start on it next week. Or tomorrow.
Or today.
Life is short.
