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Introduction


Rock Raider Obsidian

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So, I'm not very good at blogging, although I like the idea of it. I figured the first post should act as an introduction.

 

Since it's very easy to find anyway, here's some information. My name is Sean A. Lusher and I live in Columbia, MO. I'm married. My wife and I started dating in 2006, got engaged in 2009, and married in 2010. We just bought our first (and hopefully only) house in July of 2016. We live with three cats, (two are ours, and if you visit any of my other social media, you'll see lots of pictures of them, they're very photogenic), and two of our friends. As a little aside, I know there are a lot of people that are kind of weirded out by the idea of a married couple living with other people. I'm not entirely sure why this is, beyond the fact that it's not traditional, but we've tried living alone. Did it for a year. Living with people, (people you can trust and are reasonable, obviously,) is definitely better.

 

I'm a writer. Currently a self-published writer, looking to become a somewhat more traditionally published writer.

 

I began writing consistently in 2004. I wrote fan fiction for about nine years solid, with the occasional foray into original fiction. In 2008 I finished my first original novel. It was crap. Later, I rewrote it. In 2009, I won a contest at a convention for writing a short story in a certain amount of time. I was up against a couple of dozen others, one of them being a professional. (I still wish I knew who it was that was the professional published author.) I also got a short story published on a free online website that no longer exists, to my knowledge. In 2011 I got a sci-fi/horror novella published by Damnation Books (They no longer exist in their original form either, thankfully). I then self-published a short story and a novella for the Kindle. I kind of just screwed around through all of 2012 and some of 2013. I got two more novellas published that year with Damnation Books, a contemporary horror and a fantasy tragedy. I regret it, they sucked at their jobs. Hardly made any money. I think that perhaps, altogether, with those three titles across however many years they were published, I might have made 100$. Though my self published titles didn't do any better.

 

In 2012, my wife and I moved to New Mexico, as she got a good job. Good enough that I no longer needed to work the awful minimum wage jobs I'd been working for several years at that point to support first myself, then us. It took a little while, but I finally produced my first full length novel that seemed worthy of publishing. It garnered a great deal of attention on WattPad, getting over 250,000 Views and hitting #1 in both Sci-Fi and Horror on the site.

 

From September of 2013 to December of 2016, I worked on a series of Sci-Fi/Action/Horror stories called The Shadow Wars. The series features fifteen novels, three novellas, and nine short stories. I didn't see any real success until early 2015 and while I enjoyed about six solid months of upwards success, I've since had my income cut in half. Twice. For no discernible reason. I'm still lucky enough to be piecing together enough money to cover the bills so that I don't have to work. I'm currently preparing to start up a second pen name and attempt to get published with an Australian horror publisher that I think would be great for me and my ideas. The reason I'm doing this is because I think I can reach a wider audience and I'm honestly exhausted from doing EVERYTHING by myself. I'd like to have someone help with the workload of creating and publishing books. Although for several years I had a very good friend of mine, who was exceptionally talented, creating cover art for me and some occasional marketing, I now do everything by myself, and after three solid years of writing a fifteen novel franchise, I'm exhausted.

 

So, now that I've spent the past several paragraphs talking about what I've done, I'd like to take a moment to let it be known that I have no illusions about myself and my writing. I am as successful as I am, (not very, at this point, I could probably make more at a full time, minimum-wage job), because I am lucky and because I work pretty hard. But mainly because I am lucky. I don't believe I'm owed anything, and I'm happy for every sale, every read, and every comment on anything I write. I try to find a happy medium between writing what people want to read, and writing what I want to write, and I think I do okay, for the most part. As for my writing itself and my ideas, I think that, on my good days, I'm about average. Most of the time I feel like what comes out falls pretty far short of what I had hoped would come out, but I know that basically every creative person feels this way, and honestly, it's for the best. Feeling like you produce crap motivates you to consistently try harder, which means you get better. So, for the record, I don't think I'm special, important, or even particularly interesting because I have written books or because I'm lucky enough to scrape by on what I manage to pull in each month. I don't even think I'm all that intelligent, to be honest.

 

I've worked through a lot of crap over the years, and I'm on some light psych meds nowadays, and I've evened out for the most part. At this point, I just try not to worry about whether or not I'm good enough, or smart enough, or whatever. It doesn't really work as much as I'd like, though. Honestly, how I look at my life can be summed up in a two quotes. The first is from House: "Yeah, if we were all satisfied with what we had, what a beautiful world it would be. We'd all slowly starve to death in our own filth, but at least we'd be happy. Listen, I need your self worth to hang on this job, for kicking ass here to be all that lets you rise above miserable. If waking up in the morning is enough, then I don't need you." And, probably the one I apply more often to my problems, a quote from Rick (from Rick & Morty): "THE ANSWER IS DON'T THINK ABOUT IT, MORTY!" Whether or not I'm good enough or smart enough or whatever, honestly doesn't have a lot of bearing in my day to day life. What really matters more is that I don't think about it and just WORK, just get stuff done. Overthinking things, in my experience, leads to a huge amount of procrastination.

And, for the most part, kicking ass at writing is, a lot of the days, all that lets me rise above miserable.


Maybe not the picture of mental health, but I managed to get fifteen novels written in three years as a result of it. And I hope to get a lot more written.

 

So, that's basically me in a nutshell. Honestly, I'm a boring person. I spend 95% of my awake time in my office, at my laptop, doing something related to writing. What little social contact I get comes from my wife, my roommates, and typically one other friend who I go to watch crappy movies with once a week at her house. (Right now, we're working our way through Friday the 13th.) And really, it works for me.

 

Despite that, I do actually really like talking to people. If you have questions, feel free to shoot me a message anytime and I'll more than likely get back fairly promptly.

 

The only other thing that I feel is worth mentioning right now is that I'm working on a feature-length written adaptation of Lego Rock Raiders. It'll be a little bit before I get to the actual writing portion, but it's going to happen, and I've got a good feeling about it.

 

-Obsidian

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