BLOG 1: Meet the Author of Pages and Pixels
Before I start my story, I should explain the purpose of these blogs. While Pages and Pixels is to be the hub for original articles covering gaming, TV, film, literature, and pop-culture news, it is also the center for my personal posts, keeping readers up to date with my unpublished projects and upcoming releases (whether they are on or off-site). The blogs will be more reflective, a way to connect with you between articles; They are, essentially, a bridge between my portfolio and journalistic endeavors, merging my love for all forms of storytelling into a personal journal. In addition, my blogs will give glimpses into what inspires me and the few things that drive me into writer’s block. This is a way to counter that, to challenge me to keep writing even when I am stuck on a short story, play, or chapter of my book, so that even on the more difficult days I am growing, writing, and moving onward. I want to use my first-ever blog to introduce myself in greater detail than any other part of this site explains. Yes, I am an avid writer, reader, gamer, and general enjoyer of TV and movies, but it goes so much deeper than that.
So, let’s look back to when there was no keyboard, no Pages and Pixels, only a backyard filled with magic.
The first thing you should know about this backyard is that the magic wasn’t made up. It was real, or at least that’s how it feels looking back now. For every bit of the fake economy we created, the plethora of papers we burned through keeping track of different spells, the now-decaying NERF swords we wielded as though we were warriors preparing for war. We, as in my cousin (Catherine) and I, were not just imagining these worlds; we lived in them. In the dry, cloudless California summer, we would take a break from playing Minecraft or Skyrim to play in the piles of dirt and scattered rocks that made up the yards of my childhood home. The opening between two rocks was the door, the third rock was Catherine’s bed that looked over the impassable ocean that was the street I lived off of, and the fourth, looking at the dirt and sparse trees, was my own bed—because being younger, I always got last pick. I was used to this, seeing as I was the youngest in my entire family (including most of my extended family). Yet with Catherine, I never felt like I didn’t belong or like I was too young. She was only two years older when everyone else was at least four or five. Now, that time feels negligible, but for six, seven, and eight-year-olds, it felt like infinity. That’s besides the point, it only matters because many times, while the rest of the cousins were grouped together because they were older, Catherine and I were left to hang out and entertain ourselves. We were locked into these stories together. This meant that when we did hang out, we not only had the boundaries of the rooms flushed out, but we also had new names, infinite powers, heroic quests, and mighty villains to overcome. We were in our own little corner of the world for hours at a time and, to this day, I can remember almost every single story:
1) A plane crash that took us away from our normal lives and forced us to adapt to the island, like characters out of Lost, only we were here for a purpose. This island was not just some abandoned land, it was a beacon of powerful magic, hidden and lost to the outside world. It just so happened that our parents had once escaped this island, long before we were born, and we found ourselves there then to unveil their mysterious past.
2) Two teens turned into werewolves (because Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf were not just popular at this time but actively celebrated in our houses) who had to avenge their parents after a rival pack killed them for what they knew.
3) Us being recruited by the government after our high-profile parents were taken out. Not only were we avenging them, but we also got bad-ass futuristic suits that would have made Iron Man jealous.
4) Simple shop owners, who tanned leather and forged steel like no other and tried to live off scraps before becoming thieves when night came. When the shop wasn’t enough anymore, we turned to heists, aiming higher until we found ourselves messing with the wrong people—the Crown.
5) Inheriting a Book of Shadows (yes, like the one from Charmed) from our recently deceased parents only to find a hidden message from them that they did not just die but were murdered for being witches. After unlocking our dormant powers and wielding swords like wands, we hunted down the demon that took our family, all the while filling out the rest of the book of shadows with more spells and monsters. I remember this one especially because we printed out actual paper, some filled and some blank, so that we could actually refer to it while we played.
If you couldn’t tell, we were quite invested in the many storylines we invented, and they all had one thing in common… missing/murdered parents. Just kidding. Even though they all weirdly do have that in common, what stuck with me the most was the magic of these moments, whether it was literally or metaphorically. Almost every story had us being the heroes or anti-heroes of a new world and while the list could go on, I’ll spare you for now. What’s important is not what these stories were (although I would be lying if I said some of our adventures did not inspire some of my bigger works) but rather what they became once Catherine had left my house for the day. I would turn to the little MacBook I inherited from my grandfather, and type for hours every tiny detail of the trials we faced, the characters we met, and the small victories or losses along the way. Each day became a chapter in the books that were our magical adventures. I was writing before I could fully read on my own. And I’m not exaggerating either. I’ve read some of those stories back and I’m surprised they let me major in English Literature or minor in Writing. Still, I looked forward to every time we would hangout, excited for the next chapter to unfold.
This was my start. This is my story. Not that I played some silly games with my cousin when I was little, but that I had become so shaped by them that I could feel the glass holding my soul start to crack when suddenly the time we usually spent outside was spent doing homework. Or watching her go to high school and start doing more on her own or with friends. Or when she eventually got her license and I was stuck at home, usually alone. Or as I listened to her talk about which college she wanted to go to and what she would study. Each day, each month, each year felt like it was slowly chipping away at the bottle while I tried to hold on to those memories. And while we remain close to this day, I look back and think that one of those days after playing in our made-up stories, we went back inside and never returned to them again. Many of them will always be unfinished. Despite this, I remember almost every word of our adventures.
Fortunately, I did learn how to read, and instead of backyard adventures, I found books. And not just any books, fantasy novels. While our days in the sun were done, I still found a way to dive into magical worlds. Of course, many of these books were recommended to me by Catherine. Perhaps the most poignant series of my childhood is Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. These books were so crucial in my story, but we’ll see that soon. Until then, Rick Riordan’s books and the many young adult novels of the 2010’s became a solace for the growing absence I was feeling. I found myself in these characters, the ones who were often outcast by those around them. You see, I had always felt like I didn’t quite belong, and it wasn’t just because I was the youngest or because I was the only boy out of an entire generation of girls. No, it went much deeper than that. Everyone always commented on my friends, how they were all girls, and pressed me for which one I had a crush on. I should have known when that answer changed every week that they were never more than scapegoats to hide that when I watched Star Wars, I noticed Anakin Skywalker not Padmé Amidala. Or when my sisters put on Vampire Diaries, I was locked into Stefan and Damon and Klaus instead of Elena or Caroline or Bonnie. One memory that stands out is being twelve in the theaters watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, getting just as excited as all my sisters and their friends when the “golden trio” emerged from the water after falling off the dragon escaping from Gringotts. I was always keenly aware that the conversations I wanted to be a part of were the ones my sisters had after the weekly release of Teen Wolf, Vampire Diaries, or Grey’s Anatomy. At this age, these were the things I noticed. Not only was I confused by these TV shows and films, but found that books and video games were just as confusing. When reading Percy Jackson, I wondered why I was always related to Annabeth. Or when I played Sims 3, why I made female Sims so I wouldn’t feel guilty for marrying and starting families with the male Sims.
While that feeling was always present, it peaked in 2013 on the worldwide release of the House of Hades. I just have to say, Rick Riordan had pre-teen me locked in. I was ready for every book in the epic adventures of Percy Jackson and his friends and this specific year, I remember my dad ordered two copies of the book months before its release. As soon as they arrived, my dad delivered me my copy, and my eyes were temporarily glued to the page. I was ready to figure out what happened next in the series I had always loved. I read for hours, barely stopping to eat until I reached a part in the book that made me put the series down for five years… If you were a kid going through this same self-discovery, or you’re a fan of the series, perhaps you know where this is going. If you don’t… well, let me fill you in.
When the group faces a temporary “wall” in their quest, the answer awaits with a certain God of Love and Desire—Cupid. In this chapter, narrated by Jason, Nico is forced to confess he had had a crush on Percy since Titan’s Curse, and, in that moment, I was forced to confront that stirring feeling inside of me. When Nico finally cracked, admitting he liked Percy and not Annabeth, I put my book down. I closed it. And I didn’t return to it for five years. I was so scared of how I saw myself in that chapter. Scared that a book could feel so real and personal that I almost hated it. Resented it even. So, I closed House of Hades. Put it away. And along with it, I locked that part of myself away because it was a secret I never thought would come to light. Or at least, that’s how it felt. I didn’t look back for some time, my fear deterred me from reading or writing or imagining the worlds that were so much more welcoming than the one I was in.
From 2013 to 2017, my sophomore year of high school, I harbored those feelings inside until eventually I finally shattered—a broken bottle that could no longer carry its secret message. I came out to my mom one night when the rest of my family was away; my dad was off on a business trip, one sister was away at college, and the other was abroad in Europe or Asia or wherever it was at that time. In hindsight, I feel silly that I was so scared to come out to them, and yet, the years leading into that moment were the most difficult of my young life.
What would she say? What would all my family say? I constantly asked myself.
The one thing that ran through my mind was that my mom was a religion teacher! And the one thing I took with me from the small, private middle school I once attended was that men and women were made for each other. That’s how every story went. Every movie on the screen. Every TV show that I knew of. Every book that I read. Except, at the time, The Heroes of Olympus. Of all the media I knew at the time, it was the only one that had something like this. Something I had never seen, understood, or even knew the name of yet. The summer before I came out, I watched YouTube videos of people’s stories coming to terms with who they were and slowly felt like maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to feel. I remember watching Connor Franta on YouTube talk about his journey to self-discovery. Through his videos and in his book, I found a little part of myself that I had been hiding since I closed House of Hades so long ago. When I finally got the courage—not long into my sophomore year of high school—it felt like all of the last few years were crashing down in front of me. Yet when the time came, I didn’t even need to finish my sentence. My mom finished it for me. And the relief I felt in that moment was a different level of freedom. I was out, and while the journey was long, it continues to this day. Still, I was finally able to breathe. Before, I was Annabeth in The Titan’s Curse holding up the sky in Atlas’ place, but now I shared that weight with the people around me, and life was not so burdening.
In 2018, one year after coming out, I returned to The Heroes of Olympus series to finish what I had started.
Two weeks.
It took me two weeks to finish not only the five books of the sequel series but the five books from Percy Jackson and the Olympians, too. If the year before had taken that pressure off my back, 2018 was the year I learned how to celebrate who I am. It was not quite the turning point yet, but I was getting closer. I could feel the life I had lost returning to me piece by piece as I healed from the mental scarring I had done to myself.
After that, the last few years of high school flew by. I wrote when I could, but nothing ever stuck. I picked up books but never committed to more than a few chapters of the stacks, which I was collecting. I was still hesitant to face the larger purpose of books as a medium and still feared what kind of stories I wanted to write because I, more often than not, felt excluded from fantasy narratives. Now, fortunately, fantasy is an ever-expanding genre and more diversity is introduced to it every day, but at the time, it felt so tight and restrictive that I struggled against the boundaries set both historically and personally. Then, 2020 came, and, like everyone, I was displaced even farther. Sure, I was slowly finding myself, but that was almost entirely thrown away when the world shut down. I was graduating high school that year and had just chosen which college I was attending, but that was quickly thrown on the back burner when I decided to take a gap year. While the world had no signs of returning to “normal” (whatever that even means), I thought it was best to delay. I put myself on pause. Part of it made sense. Online school was not my forte. I had difficulty focusing on class already, and it was made even worse when Zoom let me play video games discreetly while teachers and professors droned behind my screen. In other ways, I grew so much and learned so much about myself, and in the end, I could not be gladder I took that gap year. I don’t think I would be in the same position I am in now, had I not made that choice.
Still, I had a lot of learning to do. Over the gap year, I had somehow decided I wanted to go to college to study Biology. Not only was I in the entirely wrong subject, but I was also a pre-dental, ROTC student… yeah, let that sink in and take a sigh of relief with me now.
Phew!
Most fortunately of all, that path was short-lived. After I met my now partner, Chase, I came to realize I was treading these paths for other people more than I was doing it for myself. I had known him for about two months at this point in my story when he turned to me, in my ROTC Army uniform, and asked something along the lines of “Do you feel like yourself?”. This was the second time in my life I had ever shattered like this, only this time it was because someone was finally being honest with me. Chase saw through what I was doing when no one else did. He listened to me, heard me complaining about these classes and my fear of getting shipped far away after graduation (like so many of the upperclassmen ROTC kids talked about), and asked if I was happy with where it would take me.
I wasn’t.
And not only did he see how unhappy I was, he also recognized that I was most like myself when I was writing. Chase saw the way I talked about fantasy books and movies and wondered why I was trying to make science work when almost every moment of my free time was spent developing this massive story and world that I had started the summer before college started. As soon as he asked this question, I broke down in tears. Within a week or two, I dropped ROTC and decided not to pursue biology or pre-dentistry, because I was finally able to admit to myself, to him, and to everyone else that, that path wasn’t for me. I had been questioning it since I started, so why was I trying to make it work? Chase and I spent the next few months together introducing each other to the many fantasy stories we had grown up with. I read to him, every night, a chapter of Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief while he read to me Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. It’s crazy to think that at this point, I had never picked up one of Tolkien’s books or watched the iconic movies that accompanied it.
This was my turning point.
Not only sharing that kind of moment with someone so dear to me, but having my eyes opened to just how powerful and intense fantasy could be. In all my years of writing and reading, I felt like I was in the shallow end of a pool. There was so much there, so much to see, and yet I was only knee deep in the water while I was aiming for the deep end. I was working on languages, maps, and developing cultures and unique architecture for each of my own made-up cities, but I felt like I was doing far too much. Why would anyone want that? I asked myself. That changed when I was introduced to Tolkien and realized that not only was there someone else who had committed so much of their life to developing a massive high-fantasy world, but that people loved it. In fact, some people even devoted their lives to telling the many stories of Middle-earth on YouTube (a different story), and suddenly I was entranced. Having all these pieces fall together felt like a sort of magic in itself. My worldview widened overnight as I found myself going down rabbit holes of research for my own stories and worlds and committing to the largest narrative I had ever worked on to date.
That small writing idea I played with when I first met him, turned into an anthology of history; I started collecting journals of brewing ingredients for different medicines made up of entirely unique and magical flora and fauna; I was doing math (!) working on conversions rates of a made-up currency, drawing maps and trying to figure out scale, tracking a logical path through this world that my characters could take and how long that would take them.
My college might not have had a creative writing major, but I tried my absolute best to gear my English degree and Writing minor into what I needed it to be. At every step, I signed up for writing workshops and challenged myself to write fresh stories, plays, and more (many of which you can find in my portfolio) while, at the same time, I wrote and developed the world where my first book now takes place. Midar might have been fantasy, but it has become a second home; I know the roads and cities almost better than I know the streets I now live by. The world and its history are constantly growing, changing as bits and pieces of the narrative fall into place, but it’s tangible. It’s an entire book. Over two hundred thousand words of a world that I have written and am eager to share. So, in the end, I made Pages and Pixels, not just as a home for all those other creative endeavors, but to track my progress with Midar. And to keep those who have been on this journey with me in the loop as the stories develop and as I look for a home for this novel. It’s only a single book now, but I already have the outline of a second, the ideas for a third, and so much more in store for the world of Midar and the story of The Last Celestial. Who knows, maybe I’ll post some stories from the same world as my book or just give you a few sneak peeks into the journey Ciaran goes on. Maybe by the time it finds a home, those names will all be changed, worked on, improved. No matter what, I accept this quest with enthusiasm.
Personally, I cannot wait to see what comes next. I am constantly surprised by just how fast things change. Through Pages and Pixels, I hope to not only share and write more consistently, but I also seek to challenge myself as a writer, playwright, and journalist. My mission is so much more than being published—it’s only a piece of the quest—as I also seek to find ways to make fantasy more inclusive so that when another young kid reads some of my stories, they can find that they belong in this world as much as I did. As much as you and me both do. This is part of my development, housing all the drafts I’ve spent countless hours on in the form of my portfolio, but also a journal as I keep writing, and the hub for news and articles on media I find interesting. If any part of that excites you, then I want to invite you to join me on this quest as I battle through drafts and revisions while writing new content all along the way.
On that note, I am excited to start this journey. This first blog represents the beginning of a new era for me. One that shows me committing to making my dreams a reality. One that never ends, but constantly evolves as I do, as my writing does, and as the world changes around us. If you have made it this far, I want to thank you. This type of writing is entirely new but simultaneously exciting and promising. A year ago, I never imagined I would be sitting where I am now, writing a blog. In fact, if you told little me just how much I have accomplished thus far, I would have thought you were lying, but now I could not be prouder of where I am. For now, I’ll leave you with a small question to think about: What kind of content would you like to see? Or see more of? So far, the content is rather limited, but I have lots of ideas and writing to share, and I would love to know what kinds of things YOU want to see. Would you like more short plays? Comedies? Dramas? Would you like a peek at the larger project I’ve been working on? Let me know in the comments (either here or on Instagram!) and I will take it all into consideration. Until next time, this is G.P. Cassara with the promise of plenty more to come ;)
