Ramblings of a designer turned fiction writer
The journey that saw me finally become a published author
SERIES: Designer to author
The long and winding road to…
Some might say I’ve taken a non-traditional journey to becoming an author, meandering through a lifetime of excuses and careers, while others, like myself, would likely respond that there is no traditional path to writing.
Don’t get me wrong. Along the journey I studied and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. But the journey I took to get there, and the one since certainly didn’t follow the path of a writer.
I’ve always been one of those strange people who knew exactly who, and what, I wanted to be. From a very young age I wanted to be a writer. I surrounded myself with books. Books were probably my best friends, apart from my friend Charlie, when I was a boy. Books were my go to for escape, knowledge, adventure, and learning about the world — and other worlds.
So when I found myself in university studying engineering it was a bit of a shock. Studying engineering when you had the mind of a creator of worlds was an interesting experience. Let’s just say I was never the traditional, run of the mill, engineer. I jumped across onto the digital ship at the first chance I got, not long after moving to Boston. By then, I’d applied for the master’s degree program at Emerson and been accepted.
For a creative adventurer, hopping on the digital bandwagon in 1994 as it was just beginning, seemed like a way to live some of that adventure that I’d read about. For the next few years my work in the industry and my studies intertwined and when I graduated from Emerson at the end of 1997 I had a mix of engineering, digital and writing skills. My life journey to that point had seen me do stints as a fireman, a farmer, a technical writer, a project manager, a hardware salesman, and worker in an agricultural shop.
Suffice to say that at the point of graduation, I could have gone in many different directions. What I did do was jump fully into digital. For the next 25 years — through to today — I learned about digital product and service design, running operations, founding and running agencies, and, oh yeah, moved from Boston to London.
I continued to write off and on through that time — lots of story starts. Mostly short fiction. Some poetry. And some attempts at writing novels. But my digital career took most of my time, and so that’s what really thrived during this period.
Global pandemic as a catalyst for change
And then came the pandemic. I was just finishing an engagement with a client — by now I was running my own consultancy. I had planned to take a couple of months off to rest and recover from a deep and complex project. And out of the blue, the pandemic hit. Now, I accept that in many ways, the pandemic was a tragedy for many people. And things like this rarely result in good outcomes.
But for me, something happened. Something serendipitous. I found myself sitting at home, finishing up with a client, the prospect of at least a couple of months ahead of me with nothing to do… and a government mandate to only leave the house for up to one hour each day. Really, it could have been a disaster. But for me, with a clean slate ahead of me, I began digging through some of the more recent things I’d been writing and settled on an early draft of something that for the first time I felt I could turn into a book.
Instead of the intended two months, I took four months off. And in those four months, I wrote my first novel, The Weaver, the first book of a five-book series. I got advice from an author friend, found an editor, a cover designer and a team who create ebook and paperback formats from your manuscripts and off I went. I’ve not looked back since.
Where are things today?
A couple of weeks ago, I finished the first draft of the third book in the series. Last year I published the second book, Old Blood. Over the last few years I evolved from the kid who dreamed about other worlds to the man who wrote about them. This year, I have an ambitious plan to publish the third book in the series, and write drafts of the final two books in the series.
Along this journey I’ve learned a lot of things, not least about how to turn the “fantasy” of wanting to be a writer into the reality of becoming an author. My intention, across this year, is to create a bunch of content around all of this; articles, videos, social posts, courses. There is a lot to share. And there is, of course, much more to learn.
I’d love to hear your stories, and I hope you will “tune-in” and engage with the ones I intend to share. I look forward to engaging with you.
B. Scott Hoadley is the author of The Weaver and Old Blood, the first two novels in the urban fantasy series, Old Blood Saga. His third novel, Hunter’s Moon will be out later this year. He lives in London with his partner, a round cat, and a Volvo named Daisy. You can find him online at bscotthoadley.com, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Mastodon.
