For my first official post, I wanted you guys to get to know me as a writer, and what to expect from my “Into The Wolf’s Mind” column
My name is J.M. Wolf, but I was born Johnathon Marquez.
I was born in Chicago, but I grew up in Killeen, Texas.
My writing interest started around the time I was 12, but instead of writing stories, I was writing song lyrics. Writing has basically been a talent that the main people in my family possessed. My Mom had a poem that she wrote, published in a magazine in Italy. My older sister Melissa was studying journalism. She used to have a blog where she would write her pieces. Now here I am with my own column. Imagine that.
Originally, I wanted to be a singer/songwriter. I’ve been taking singing lessons since I was about 5, and every year I would wound up having a choir class. Singing has been a huge part of my life, and by the time I was reaching my teenage years I really wanted to start writing my own songs. Like most kids starting out, my writing skills were a mess, and none of my work really made any sense. However, I started improving as I got older. Now it got to the point that I was writing songs on a daily basis.
So how did I start writing stories? It was actually unexpected. It started when my high school friends and I were goofing off, writing role plays. I was actually enjoying the fact we were able to create a random storyline out of nothing and just continued to make it up as we went along. It led me to start writing my own stories over time, but none of them really stood out. Mainly because I was still so drawn to my music.
So when did I switch from wanting to be a musician to wanting to be a writer? When I was 20 years old I was engaged to be married. Long story short, the engagement didn’t last, and he apparently found love elsewhere 2 weeks after the breakup. I was devastated, and I completely lost my muse. It was a rough time, and it affected my songwriting. I hated every lyric I tried writing, and I didn’t have the same passion for it anymore. Nothing hurts more than knowing you don’t have a dream anymore. Nothing to hold onto, or to fight for.
Years later when I met my husband, I started feeling such joy in my heart again. I was singing more often, and I had the desire to start writing again. However, I still couldn’t write song lyrics. Last year, I was in the car with my husband and “Fallen Angel” by Three Days Grace started playing. And it was like, BAM! As I was listening to the words of the song, I started picturing a story in my mind. It was playing like a movie. I didn’t want the images to disappear, so I knew I had to put this on paper. That was the day my story”The Black Feather” was born.
I wrote the first chapter in two hours that same day, and even to this day, I’m still writing the story. I started doing research on fallen angels. I went deep into Christian Mythology and Demonology. I started looking up different publishing companies and meeting people who were authors themselves. I just kept going. I had this urge to turn this story into a book series and get it published. That was when I realized that I have a dream again. A dream to be an author.