The Spark–Questions Week

Earlier in the week I discussed my first writing experience, or rather when I first started writing. It took a bit of effort to not add onto that the fact that actually it had been a specific book that had made me want to become a writer in the first place. I believe there is always one book that lights the spark in a young authors mind.

For me that spark came while waiting for the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I had started reading other books to pass the time and I enjoyed most of what I read, but by the fifth grade I was already at a college reading level and so it was recommended to me that I read the newspaper (something I was not about to do at the time). I decided that rather than simply wait for the next novel, I would write my own novel instead. And so began a horror story about a serial killer that inexplicably could never be caught. I was, at the time, obsessed with what was, at the time, a new show, called CSI. In a paranormal twist to my book however, the main character was later haunted by the ghosts of his victims and dragged into the river in which he had stored their bodies. This was the novel that I had decided to send in to a publisher and was later my first experience with rejection. I’ve thought about rewriting the book many times over the last few years but I’ve never managed to get around too it.

What was the first book that put the spark of becoming an author into your mind?