The first story I wrote was in the second grade and it was about an 8 foot tall Martian who's spaceship crashes and he gets rescued by a magic genie. Honestly, not everything I've written has been a step up from there. In the days of fanzines I submitted Dr. Who fanfic and even tried to get permission to do a Star Wars novel once. It's not a big surprise the genre work has always been my thing. It's where the five novels I've written and published and 3/4th of the short films I've written and shot belong.
A few months ago a consultant I was interviewing with here suddenly asked if I'd ever written outside the genre stories and recommended I try something. Others I met here asked the same question. My best friend reading my work pointed out that even in the genre stories the sf, fantasy or horror elements were getting pushed into the background more.
Go outside the genre, they said. Try something challenging, they said. Try something outside your comfort zone, they said.
"10:28:22 am" is the hardest thing I've ever done. There's no playing around and inventing things to fit the story. It's the other way around and I never imagined it being this much of a challenge.
10:28:22 am is the moment the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11/2001.
Here goes.
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Good luck. I used to write with my brother who is a talented TV Comedy writer. Therefore I thought I was funny.
It wasn’t till I started “colouring outside the lines” that I discovered am I dark and as funny as a plague. So I found my groove. Never been happier.