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Thomas Ferreolus, adventurer and great outdoorsman, proudly served during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Loving a good cliffhanger, he continues to write fiction in the Pacific Northwest, where he now resides with his beautiful wife and family.
The earliest spark for writing came in junior high school when I always felt the urge to entertain people with laughter. It was a coping mechanism for dealing with divorce and the sudden poverty that struck my family, but that’s a whole different topic best saved for my psychotherapist. It all started when I wrote a very long, off-topic paper filled with profane expletives. It was over fifteen pages, and I wrote it on a Sunday, the day before it was due. My teacher criticized it for many reasons, but my saving grace was the effort I put into the story. She said, ‘I’m giving you a C plus because this is the most work you have done all year.’ Looking back, I wish I could apologize for my unruly behavior as the class clown. Honestly, I was just a handful of rebellious trouble in the eyes of the teachers.
This may sound like a joke, but breakup poetry also played a role in my writing journey. Hey, breakup poetry is serious business, and when I saw the scene with John Cusack in the 2010 film Hot Tub Time Machine, I nearly died laughing. The movie is about a group of guys who travel back in time to rewrite their own history during a ski trip they took in the 1980s. Jacob, played by Clarke Duke, confronts his uncle Adam (John Cusack) after his failed attempt to reconcile with his first love, forcing him to relive the breakup once more.
“You’re writing breakup poetry," exclaimed Jacob, as he found his uncle drunk back in the hotel room.
“OK. I’m writing breakup poetry! Now get out of here... because my heart hurts...” Adam replied, drunkenly, while taking a hit from a bong.
This deep connection with the scene and dialogue is one of the most humane things we can all relate to. Again, I regress by exposing my personal breakup poetry phase, which should be kept private for now, and only for my psychotherapist to analyze. Hehe!
Despite my difficult school years and failed relationships, art and photography guided me to create images on canvas, celluloid, and digital media, eventually inspiring me to write novels. Though I was a terrible student growing up, my mother recognized that I had a little artistic talent developing inside me. She always encouraged me to take it seriously, which eventually gave me the courage to major in Film and Multimedia. Two things I discovered about myself in college were my natural aptitude for biology and astronomy, and my love for writing screenplays. At Columbia College Chicago, I was studying to become the next Oliver Stone, a renowned filmmaker known for movies like Natural Born Killers and Platoon. More specifically, I admired the Director of Photography on many of Oliver Stone’s films. In particular, John Alcott inspired me greatly. I immediately enrolled in Columbia College's Director of Photography program after watching the 1990s movie, The Doors. This might seem silly, but it's true. There, I found the challenge of writing screenplays addictive. After graduating, I was sidetracked by 9/11 and gave up on the dream of filmmaking, instead becoming a medic in the Army and fighting the war on terror. Now I often wonder what life would be like if 9/11 had never happened.
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