Welcome special guest: author Brian Paone ~ @BrianPaone242 @GoddessFish

Today we have author Brian Paone visiting.
What would you like to tell readers about yourself?

* Brian Paone was born and raised in the Salem, Massachusetts area. After almost 20 years of consistently writing short stories for only his friends and family to read, Brian’s first full-length novel, a personal memoir about his friendship with a rock-star drug addict entitled, “Dreams Are Unfinished Thoughts,” was published in 2007. Brian’s second novel, “Welcome to Parkview,” was published in 2010 and is a macabre journey through a cerebral-horror landscape. Brian’s latest novel, “Yours Truly, 2095,” was published in 2015 and follows a man who wakes up one morning, trapped in the future, to discover he’s been the victim of a time-travel conspiracy. Brian is married and has 3 children. He is also a self-proclaimed roller coaster junkie, and his favorite color is burnt-orange.

So, Brian Paone, what/who inspired you to become a writer?
* I think that is a dual answer. It would have been a handful of teachers starting as early as 7th grade up through senior year in high school who encouraged me to write short stories. But it wasn’t until I read my first Stephen King novel, The Dark Half, when I started thinking about long form writing. I tried to write a novel in high school in 1991, which even though I finished at 350 pages, it was terrible, and I went back to strictly short stories again. That’s where I’d stay until 2006, when I wrote what would actually be my first published novel.

When did you attempt your first story? What length was it? What's become of it?
* In the 7th grade. I wrote my first fictional short story called, “The Night is Long.” It wasn’t part of some homework assignment, or in-class exercise. I wrote the story over the weekend, purely because I loved to read and wanted to write something that was my own. The story was pretty long, it was about 30 typed pages (from a manual typewriter). I passed it out to all my friends in school and then let me after-school camp friends read it. After that, I never stopped writing. However I only wrote short stories from 1988 to 2005. I wrote probably 100 stories between 1988-2005. You want to hear something sad? Out of all the 100 stories I wrote, I still have 99 of them. Which one is the one that is missing?