While the recognition of story’s importance for your brand has been on the rise lately, story has long been important to me.

When I was a child, I jumped into story and let it take me to undiscovered lands and people. In one early creation, I traveled with a circus train full of lions and tigers and bears I had drawn.

After starting from behind in reading, I was soon ahead of the class and my teachers would have to break the spell of the story, so I could join my fellow classmates. When it came time for us to visit the school library, I filled my arms with every book I could find on Native American lore and legend. I read along as Crazy Horse rode a buffalo and earned his name.

In fifth grade, when I contracted chicken pox, I traveled with Sam and Frodo from the Shire to Mount Doom on the other side of Middle Earth. Every moment not scratching, I spent reading The Lord of the Rings.

I traveled along as Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe journeyed through A Wrinkle in Time with Mrs Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs Whatsit. I rode with Stile as he traveled between Phaze and Proton in Piers Anthony’s Apprentice Adept series.

Stories took me on adventures and introduced me to new lands and people.

After getting married when my wife shared with me the horrors of a trauma she had experienced as a child, I turned to story to make sense of it all. We were trying to make sense of our relationship together and the childhood trauma’s impact on it. The incident was long ago and far away and seemingly impossible to overcome.
By creating a fictional world, I was able to wrestle with the emotions roiling inside both of us. It gave me purchase upon otherwise elusive events and emotions. It gave us time and space to find ourselves.

When my career was going nowhere fast, I spent my early mornings and late nights writing fiction. Feeling little control over where I was headed in life, I created a world where I had some creative control.

By day, I used story to understand the numbers and operations of the business I served.

After nearly losing myself inside what I once thought was the perfect job, I turned to fiction to find my way past crippling depression and despair.

It has only been in the past year, though, that I’ve come to appreciate the full impact of story on my life. While in the past it has been entertainment, escape, and grappling hook for life’s challenges, this year story has become my calling.

Instead of looking out from and looking beyond my story, I’ve begun to see myself as the author and architect of story.

You don’t have to be alone on your heroic journey. I can help you discover, develop, and deliver your unforgettable story, so you can reach your Happily Ever After.