How I became a writer Part XXI

Title: How I became a writer

Part XXI

Last year in cross country season, we were on a field outback of the Elementary school.  I said, “Team Captain Jilly Bean, show the new runners Vanessa’s line.”  She lined up on the invisible line and other members of the team moved to either side of her.  A younger athlete who had just come up to varsity said, “Actually, isn’t the line here?”  I came up beside him and said quietly, “Vanessa’s line is wherever the team captain says it is.”  “Oh,” he said, moving to the growing line around the captain.  In JT cross country the boys and girls train together so their captains take turns leading warm ups.  When we are at Elementary facility we always assemble on Vanessa’s line and have been for years now.

Was Vanessa a legendary cross country runner?  Yes and no.  Vanessa never won a major meet or invitational in cross country but she is an athlete I will mention to new runners a fair amount of the time.  Why?  Vanessa started out at the very bottom of modified runners in seventh grade, rarely beating anyone, and six years later she became a solid XC runner and an amazing track and field athlete.  She did that through hard work and by not quitting. 

How far was the bottom?  Oh, it was far, even in ninth grade.  Vanessa’s first cross country varsity meet she came in at 38 or 39 minutes.  She was not alone.  We had many new varsity runners that year and they started out really struggling, BUT Vanessa was not new.  She had already run for two years in modified.  Vanessa’s goal that year was to crack thirty minutes and she did it at the county meet.  That was a big accomplishment for her!  Oh, but did she start out an incredible track star?  Again, no.  In ninth grade track, Vanessa had just come up from modified track and a different coach (a very, very good one mind you:)  Vanessa was very excited about being a member of the 1600 relay.  In my last fifteen years of track, JT has had some legendary 1600 relay teams, and the record set by one of them is very impressive but that year, no one wanted to do it.  I allowed Vanessa and some of the other young girls do the relay for a few meets and it was painful to watch.  Finally I took her aside and said, “Vanessa, I’m not going to put you into the 1600 relay anymore, until you’re faster.”  “How fast do I have to be?” Vanessa asked earnestly.  At the moment her all out 400 time was 1:23.  I said, “You’ll have to be at least 1:15.”  I felt cruel saying that because the odds of her getting that in a season were very bad but that was the standard I set.  Vanessa did it!  You have to understand, the season was already past the half way point when I set that challenge!  Do you have any idea how hard it is to drop that much time in such a short span?  I was very proud of her!

The next year she lowered her time in cross country again and lowered her track 400 time to a 1:10.  That 400 time might not seem as impressive of a drop but the lower you go as a track athlete the harder it gets to improve.  The year after that we were running charity Saturday 5K together, and after the second mile she dropped me!  Off she ran, pulling away easily to place number one in her age group in the top three of the race!  Wow!!  She hit a 25:33 that year at sectionals on a difficult course!  That year in track Vanessa hit 1:06 at the sectional 1600 relay championship to help put her dark horse team into second place!  By her senior year I took some modified students aside and said, “Do you kids see Team Captain Vanessa?”  Big eyes and nods.  They all knew who she was and had a lot of respect for her.  I continued, “Well, she used to be one of the weakest runners I had.”  Looks of disbelief.  “It’s true,” I insisted, “Vanessa has forged herself into a great athlete, through a good work ethic and by not quitting.” 

In my first book, the members of the C-3 unit, are very much like Vanessa in skill level.  The reader can’t imagine the heights they are headed to over the nine book series because of how low... how below average they are in the beginning.  The coming of age story, where the young person works very hard is something that resonates with the core of our being... or at least it should.  In fact, even their position in the C army is low.  They are not in the junior RDU (the C army Special Forces unit) or even in junior infantry.  The boys of C-3 are so worthless, they have been buried in the “nursery” unit.  To be fair, unlike Vanessa, they have given up trying and have essentially “quit.”  They have powerful parents in the C army and those parents protect them from the consequences of their apathetic attitude in their unit.

Then Risk comes and everything changes.  Junior unit C-3 has several intense battles against the creatures of the dark (C children generally are kept out of combat at all costs, so this is highly unusual and is generated by desperate circumstances).  C-3 not only survives these encounters but thrive, becoming heroes.  They rise so much in stature that a rival LIGHT army, the Alliance, thinks that they are a covert C Special Forces unit.  One of those, taken from birth and trained for years to be ninjas, kind of things. 

Before my book was picked up by a small publishing house, my mom called one day all concerned.  “Adrian, we’ve got to change C-3's origin story,” she blurted out.  “They need to work in an armory or something!  No one is going to be interested in reading about a nursery unit!"  I understood mom’s concern and it had merit.  The first book is slow to get into the action.  The first real fight you get comes after the first hundred pages!  For an action story, that is a long time to wait!  I replied firmly, “No, it has to be this way.  Jesus said, ‘Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” (NIV)  “Mom, how can my guys be spiritual heroes until they learn to be servants?”  She agreed nervously but wanted my first book to succeed.  Years later she called me up and said, “Adrian, I just read book one again and I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.  It is great the way it is.”  That was nice of my mom to say but I understand why she was so worried in the first place!  Getting someone to read you is very difficult and you don’t want to give them a reason to put down the book.  Those who have finished “An Assumed Risk” have really liked it, (at least so far.  I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t... yet.  I’m sure as my readership grows that will happen:)  Humble beginnings make for a great story, showing how a hero battles his or her way to the top!  Vanessa, was not just a runner but a jumper too and she had to battle her way up to the top of that too.  I remember one meet at the beginning of her varsity career, we were at an invitational with only one jumping pit going (no comment:) and so I went over to watch Vanessa triple jump at the end of the meet.  She could only get 23 feet as an average then with a 25 her PR.  That would climb to a 31 her senior year at sectionals which put her in fourth place out of 18 schools in Class D, who could submit multiple jumpers!  I was very proud of that!!  From the bottom of the pile in ninth grade to top five in Class D triple jump out of an ocean of good athletes!  That makes for a good story!

Do all my books follow this pattern?  No.  So far just the C-3 series follows this from zero to hero format.  Little Wolf, from the book Wolf Hunting, has many skills before she is thrust into a terrifying adventure.  Myth, from Asylum, is the mystery character, who can do things that defy logic.  He is a teen out of his time in a fight he does not want to be in.  As powerful as Myth’s enemies are, they have no idea what he is, and how far out of their league he is.  Will, from the book American Fairytale, does do the training montage, but he starts out a very quick study and has many skills from a young age.  The problem is that despite he is an expert shot with a musket and a deadly with a cutlass, the weapons of the Revolutionary War time period, a templar knight retrains him to fight with different weapons.  Calder from “Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games” isn’t a fighter in the physical world but his virtual reality fighting skills are off the charts.  So far the boys of C-3 and the spin-off book, “The Princess of Ashes,” are the only characters that start at the bottom and climb to the top.

(Author Adrian Essigmann has a page on Amazon where all eighteen of his books are listed ((soon to be nineteen:)).  Type in Amazon Adrian Essigmann and click on the link that says, “Adrian Essigmann – Amazon.com” which should take you to his author’s page.)