Many times over the years I’ve been asked why I write. Truth is… the answer is simple. I write to entertain. I write because I get an idea in my head, usually high concept, that some part of my DNA insists I get down on paper.
Back in elementary school, our teacher gave us a creative writing assignment. I wrote a Scooby-Doo episode that, if given the chance, I’d love to go back in time and get my hands on. There was also a poem I wrote about a kid getting locked out of his house titled, ‘If you ever forget your key’. All I remember of that one was the first few lines:
If you ever forget your keyYou could use a heavy treeOr if you dare, you could useSome dynamite, just light the fuse
Not Robert Frost mind you, but not bad for an eight-year-old and I’m pretty sure the teacher gave me an A.
I wrote a nice speech for my wedding but being that at the time I was too shy to publicly speak—my words were always better than my delivery—my best man read it for me. He got plenty of laughs and a round of applause.
One night we went to dinner with my wife’s family to Ben’s Delicatessen. Her mother, who turns 90 today as I write this, is a notoriously slow eater. We’d all be finished with our meals, chatting away, and she’d just be finishing the first half of her sandwich. Our game was over and she hadn’t even reached halftime yet. The moment we got home I wrote a poem titled, ‘Ode to a Slow Eater’. My mother-in-law kept that one in her archives and she’d bring it out every few years at family gatherings.
For our Fantasy Football league, which I’ve been proudly playing with the greatest group of guys for the last 24 years, I wrote a weekly newsletter to spice up the trash talking, ingeniously titled ‘Trash Talk’. Nothing better than taking the Bombers team plane logo, flipping it upside down, with a caption reading “May Day, May Day” after his team got bumped out of the playoffs.
The bottom line is I loved to write and finally decided to take a run at doing it professionally, or at least for a larger audience than teachers, family, and friends. Now, just as an aside, before I get into the bigger stuff I’ve written, the whole starving artist thing wasn’t for me. Back in college, I came to a crossroads decision. I could major in creative writing, or I could major in computer science. This was back in the days of punch card programming. Being that computers were the up-and-coming field back in the 80’s, and I had a good head for logic (if not advanced mathematics), I chose the latter. A few years out of school, not quite enjoying the programming work I’d found, I pivoted and went back to business school at USC earning an MBA in Marketing and Finance which I put to good use.
I mention this because as much as I love writing, I decided to do it on the side in favor of a safer career, a choice I often wonder about as my life would have taken a completely different path.
I had a great idea for a comic strip, totally original, and wrote 200 plus daily strips for it, without any idea of how to draw it or pitch it. I hired a very talented artist, who drew the first 36 strips for me for minimal dollars, and it came out better than I dreamed of. Unfortunately, I only knew three syndicates to pitch to, and they all passed (but if anyone reading this who loves the dailies and knows how to get this out there, please let me know because it would be awesome to get these out in the world).
I wrote two children’s picture books. One I self-published; that you might find on Amazon (at least as an e-book), but the second I held back because damn… publishing is a tough business to do on your own and paying an illustrator was money I couldn’t earn back.
Then I had a killer of a sci-fi thriller idea for a novel. I had never written anything as big as a novel at the time. I’m also a plotter and not a “pantser” as they say (referring to authors that just sit down and write their story by the seat of their pants). Nope. That’s not me. I needed to know the beginning, middle, and end before I started. I needed a chapter-by-chapter outline. I also needed to hone my skills because writing a novel requires a whole different level of detail with multiple character arcs that MUST come together at the end to make it all work. And then I had to do a ton of research to make the story as realistic as possible. An audience can buy fantastic scenarios as long as you get the down-to-earth stuff right. And for the most part I did, though it definitely wasn’t perfect.
The high concept: Imagine if Roswell happened again, only this time the UFO doesn’t crash within the United States. My ultimate What If? My answer, well… we’d go to war to get that ship. And so would others. At the very least, a covert war would start between the nations that learned of its existence. And just to add a little extra nuance, this time the alien craft held survivors. A year later, THE ROSWELL PROTOCOLS was complete. Holy shit! I wrote a novel.
A few agents toyed with it. Somehow, I got it to the editor’s desk at St. Martin’s Press on my own. In the end it came down to me and another author (I suspect I know who but can’t confirm) with a similar premise and I drew the short straw. Unable to sell it on my own, I almost gave up, but Amazon launched Book Surge (now CreateSpace) that gave underdogs like me a chance. So I went for it. Within two weeks I sold over 700 copies and received mostly positive reviews. 88 reviews at last glance. And I loved every minute of it, even smiling at the few bad reviews because damn… I had the largest audience I’ve ever had and for the most part they liked it. And even better, a few years after the initial burst died down, a reader in England discovered the book, wrote a nice review, and sales caught a second wind.
As a marketing guy, I knew I should’ve stayed in that lane and kept writing sci-fi, including an immediate sequel. Unfortunately, creativity comes from the heart and the imagination, so I decided to write a TV Pilot. Yeah… that was a wild pivot. A manager would have been good for me back then, but I wasn’t writing for the money. I was writing to get cool ideas out of my head.
I got it to a few producers, who liked it better than they thought they would (with me being an amateur), but they passed, and since I really didn’t know what to do with it next, I tossed it in a drawer and then into some contests later on, where it received a couple of accolades, for whatever that’s worth.
From there I moved on to writing a few monster novels. A decently reviewed monster hunting series I’m looking for a better way to move forward with, and one hell of a thriller of a YA novel that landed me an agent at a big agency. This was it. The big leagues. It looked like I was finally heading to the show with this one. Or at least the nearest Barnes & Noble. It went through several iterations and titles, received an offer from a publisher which then got pulled back because (we think) the publisher was having some financial difficulties at the time. Yeah… like I said, publishing is a tough biz. Ultimately, and unfortunately, the agent moved on, so instead of beginning the arduous year and a half journey all over again, I decided to release it myself as ‘HELLION’. If nothing else, I made a very cool ad.
And though that was a tough setback, I was fortunate to meet a lot of terrific writers along the way and through those connections I have gotten some short stories published by traditional publishers. My recent successes include a short story called ‘THE GRIM’ about a veteran detective investigating a series of frightening crimes in New York City, which just appeared in Flame Tree Publishing’s ‘CHILLING CRIME’ anthology. They produce beautifully bound books all of which are worth checking out. I wrote a ghost story titled, ‘THE FINAL EXPERIMENT OF EUGENE APPLETON’ which recently appeared in the “EVEN IN THE GRAVE” anthology from Espec books.
And in the pipeline, I have another novel, a whole slew of short stories (one I know is being released in 2024), a full-length screenplay, a second TV pilot, and a short film I’d love to produce. The stories I tell and the media through which I choose to tell those stories are all over the map. But it’s the way my brain works, so I just go with it. Sooner or later, one of my stories will hit big. But even if it doesn’t, that’s okay. Just having unloaded all these ideas onto paper in a well-executed manner is success enough. Because at the end of the day, the journey is truly more important than the destination.
If you love to write, do it! It’s a subjective industry so live your dream your way (assuming you don’t need to do it to pay the bills). And along the way, treat everyone you meet professionally and personally with respect, honesty, and integrity. Be proud of your accomplishments and you will prosper no matter how many dollars there are at the end of the path.
Allan Burd writes imaginative thrillers in the YA, science fiction, and action horror genres. He also dabbles in children’s books and short stories and is a contributing author to a Bram Stoker nominated anthology. For more information on Allan, please visit www.allanburd.com
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