Author: John Rogers

I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my adult life. In 2011, I became a fiction writer full time. I studied creative writing as an English major in college. Then came family and career. I worked in finance and biotech and did a wonderful stint in Vienna. Now, I have the opportunity to use those experiences as the substrate for my stories. My first novel takes on the world of Big Data and the very timely issue of cyber war. The second uses the manipulation of financial derivatives as impetus for attempted murder during a trip from Vienna to Budapest on the Danube. I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis. I am finding writers’ groups to be very helpful as concept editors, as well as practical advice from the published authors. I am in three such groups. I have taken writing instruction at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and from The Loft in Minneapolis.

Getting Started

I have always loved a good story, whether it was my cousin Gamble telling about a sorry guy with a 3-legged dog that he called ‘flat tire’ or my friend Maher reciting the Reincarnation of O’Rourke in perfect Irish brogue.  Wonderful stories both.  Maybe that was why I loved Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  Talk about some good stories!  Apparently, we’ve always been at it … Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Boccaccio, hundreds of troubadours and the itinerant bluesmen whose music I play.

I started writing without thoughts of a novel.  Maybe just some sketches, some literary stretching exercises.  My first lesson:  you can’t write fiction without characters, and you can’t just conjure up characters and then stop writing about them.  They take over the story.  You get drawn in.  What will she do next?  He wouldn’t put up with THAT, would he?  So here I am, 126,000 words of original draft later, 10,000 cut in rewrite, learning slowly about the real-world aspects of writing, which is a business, after all.

So, why a blog?

In short, H-E-L-P!  I’d like to share ideas with other writers, and get some help from readers.  I’m starting my second novel, and there are plenty of places I’d like your reaction, to both plot and character.  Follow the blog and leave a reply when you see something that demands a comment.  I’ll be back to you soon.

Preamble

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.  Geoffrey Chaucer said that about 600 years ago as part of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the first writing we would recognize as English.  I believe it.  What would life be worth if it weren’t a pilgrimage?  Every day.  I hope you will join my pilgrimage.  I’m writing a book … well, several.  Writing is pilgrimage, and I’ll need sustenance along the way.  I hope you will follow along, comment, help lead me.  C’mon, it will be an adventure …