As most of my friends were graduating college and moving on with their lives, I was getting left behind. I couldn't afford to finish school and worked my life away. Every day waking up and doing the same thing. Go to work. Go to a second job. Go to sleep. Repeat. It was horrible and I started falling into a pretty dark depression. Writing was the one thing I could turn to that would make me feel happy. Make me feel like me again.

Any free time I had I would try and write something. Many ideas came and went, just like all writers, but one idea stuck with me. A story about Patrick and his college experience. For months I wrote about him, his friends, his school, his loves. All these different stories making me feel nostalgic for college but helping lift my spirits. I fine tuned his adventures and compiled things into a neat little snippet of his freshman year. From move in day to the start of winter break. It wasn't half bad either. Something I rarely said about my own work. In those weeks, The CSU Stories were born.

Most of my projects sit on a computer or notebook somewhere and are never seen again. It didn't feel right for Patrick to fade into obscurity though. I shared the story with my Mom. An editing queen and published author herself, she read the story and was not shy about leaving her remarks. At first I felt discouraged. Like maybe it was garbage that I wrote but then I got to the last page. She wrote a paragraph telling me how proud she was of me and how amazing the story was and would be after I finished the editing process. Something  a Mother had to say.

It spurred me on. I edited everything she marked and resubmitted it her. Round two of edits came down and I flew through them. Patrick was finished and ready to be something. What I didn't know. My Mom suggested I make it an ebook and I thought she was crazy. No one would want to read it. She pushed me until I finally did and in 2013, Patrick was released on Amazon. Four years later we worked together to make Patrick a paperback as well. It's been an amazing journey to this point but I'm proud of the work we did. Now almost six years since I started work on Patrick the next book in the series will be releasing on Friday!

You can get Patrick on Amazon in either format at https://goo.gl/szVDR5