Hello! Welcome to WWOW. My name is Holly Bernabe, and I write under the name HL Bernabe. I’ve recently became the facilitator of our group, and I thought it would be nice to write a post introducing myself and talk about how I became a novel writer.
Where to start?
Hmm. From the beginning, I suppose.The first story I remember writing was at seven years old–a horror about a gigantic celery stick following me home so it could eat me. My love of the ironic and of horror has never left. I love reading it; I love writing it. But not just horror. I love writing in many genres. If I spend a lot of time writing in one, I have to take a break and write something else for a while. It’s like a palate cleanser, stimulating my appetite and my creative well.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to my evolution. When I was younger, I mostly wrote short stories. Once in my early-twenties, I even tried to write a novel. I failed to finish it, like 97% of the people out there who try to write a book.
I discovered tabletop roleplaying games around that time, too, and from there dove into LARPing (live action role-playing). Through my gaming friends, I met Joe Sherlock, who made indie horror movies. He asked me to act in one, and that grew to several, which also grew into me acting in the movies of some of his filmmaker friends, and even an indie filmmaker in Quebec! It was a fantastic time. Some of the titles: Mars vs. the Pope, Eyeball of Fear, Look! UFOs!, Monster in the Garage, and Dreamwalkers, among others. I think my favorite was Look! UFOs! because the script for that was brilliant.
Working with Joe got me thinking about movies and story and I pitched some ideas to him about filming something for me, and he said, “I’ve got all kinds of projects on the back burner. Why don’t you make it?” This option had never occurred to me, because I didn’t know the first thing about making movies, despite having been in a bunch of them and helping out on set. (Oh, and just so you don’t think Joe wasn’t willing to help me, he was. He understandably didn’t want to have to do all the filming and editing. He was happy to help in other ways.)
So, I went to school and got a bachelor’s degree in film. It was a bit of a jump to go from “here, let’s make a horror movie in my backyard” to going to college, but… I wanted to learn all about the industry, if I was going to do it. My focus was on screenwriting, but I did learn all the ins and outs of how to make a film from pre-production to post. I tried to get into the film business for a while, working with other indie filmmakers to produce short films–theirs and mine–and otherwise volunteering and networking. Enough to get me in the IMDb, but not enough to make it. After a couple of years of this, I realized I wasn’t going to go anywhere with it. I’m an introvert by nature, and going to events, schmoozing, selling myself for money to produce a movie, was just mortifyingly awful for me. I hated that side of the business.
During all this, my husband’s health was getting worse and worse. He had heart surgery, his leg amputated, and ended up on dialysis. I needed a job that paid, so I went back to work as a long haul truck driver. I did very little creative writing over the next five years, other than blogging and an occasional short story, since I was focusing more on keeping a roof over my family’s heads and I didn’t have time.
It was only after my husband passed that I finally felt that urge to sit down and create again. I wrote a Netflix style series with two seasons of 8 episodes each season. Then I decided no, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to expand on the world. So I wrote those scripts AND three novels based on those scripts in about 16 months. My husband’s spirit shines like a bright beacon through the characters and their personality quirks. It was very cathartic.
Once I had those written, I was pretty pleased. I actually wrote and finished three novels! I decided I should DO something with them. And thus, my descent into madness. Er, I mean my journey into the publishing business.
I decided to name my publishing imprint Geek House Press, as a nod to Joe Sherlock and all my friends. We called one of the homes we often met at Geek House–an inside joke referring to all the frats in our small university town. We were a fraternity of geeks, in the days before it was cool to play D&D. They inspired me, and because of my experiences with them, here I am writing for fellow geeky people.
Since I finished the rough drafts of my three novels, I’ve written and published my prequel novella, written a couple of other books, been published in an anthology, and book one of my original epic is in rewrites using everything I’ve learned these last few years. I have attended many summits, workshops, and seminars; read craft and business books; bought the software; joined the groups; made a lot of friends over the last few years; and I’ve had a lot of fun in the process. My pockets are decidedly emptier, but my heart is fuller.
Women Writing Other Worlds 