A Family of Strangers
A Family of Strangers
Please make welcome, Casey Bell. Welcome to my blog, Casey. Shall we have a chat?
My name is Casey Bell. I am a multi-genre and multi-medium writer. I have published non-fiction, fiction, children’s, teens, and adult fiction books. My latest book series, American History, is a nine book children’s book series that celebrates American inventors and innovators from diverse backgrounds.
Has writing always been part of your life and when did you “know” that it was time to start writing your first book?
Since I could write, I was constantly writing something. I wrote my first song when I was about 7 years old. I would write in journals, I wrote commercials, game shows, talk shows, and tv shows and then perform them in my room. I would even sometimes record them on cassette tapes. I wrote skits, poems, and plays, not realizing I was a writer. I did it for fun. My English scores were low in school, so I never thought of being a professional writer. In 2002 I saw a film on Lifetime television and decided to write my version of the film as a book. Because of my lack of English skills and my lack of knowledge on publishing books I contemplated on writing it. By 2003, by faith I decided to start writing it and by 2016, “A Family of Strangers,” was written and published.
How difficult was it writing your first book?
My first book I started writing was “A Family of Strangers.” It was not my first published book. It was the most challenging book for me to write. I kept getting writer’s block. The problem was the ending is so shocking and unbelievable, I did not want to get to it quickly, yet, I did not want to take too long either because I did not want to bore the reader. The challenge was finding content in between the middle of the book and the end without it being too short or too long. I solved the problem by writing the end of the book and then writing backwards to the middle.
Have you ever wanted to give up and what stopped you?
I never wanted or did give up on publishing books. Although “A Family of Strangers” took me fourteen years to finish, I wrote and published other books withing that time. I did give up on A Family of Strangers at one point. I decided to let it go. I ended up putting the story in my other book, “Essays of Dysfunctional Families: Literary Betrayal.” I don’t know what “it” was the made me continue. I remember not being satisfied enough with the story being in another book. No matter how much I lied to myself that I was okay with giving up on the book, I was not okay. I decided to pray and ask Holy Spirit for help and I heard His voice say write it backwards. Write the ending and the rest will come to you. And that’s what I did.
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