An Introduction

An Introduction

My name is Warren Bull and I’m honored to join the ranks of Writers Who Kill. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. Unlike Ramona Long, who I can personally attest is a wonderful editor and teacher, I don’t have much academic training in writing. In fact the most recent class I took in creative writing was in the seventh grade. It was a very good class but that was a while back. If I remember correctly, I rode a Pterodactyl to school and then back to my home cave.

Since the seventh grade I’ve been educating myself about writing. I wrote plays that neighborhood kids put on for other neighborhood kids. We sold tickets. (A sure sign of an aspiring author.) My mother encouraged me to write. She kept spiral bound notebooks full of my writings. On my first visit home from college I was mortified to find that she had showed my letters home to everyone in the neighborhood.

During the summer after college and before I got a job, I sent off a series of short stories to Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. The highlight of my early efforts was a personalized rejection letter from the editor of AH.

Writing was always a part of my education as a psychologist. In graduate school I was accused of plagiarism by a professor who said about a class assignment I handed in, “No graduate student could write this well.”

At an early job I worked with another psychologist who published a novel with an e publisher. I thought, “I could do that.”

My first fiction publication was the novel Abraham Lincoln for the Defense which came out in 2003. It’s out of print but available on Smashwords http//www.smashwords.com//books/view/13700. Since then I’ve written essays, memoirs, and more than a dozen short stories. I’ve won four awards for short fiction including the Missouri Writers’ Guild award for best short story of the year in 2006. I am currently working on a short story collection titled Murder Manhattan Style.

You can go to my website http//www.WarrenBull.com to find free short stories and other examples of my writing.

I am currently recovering from a second bone marrow transplant for multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer.) Luckily, I have a loving wife, a supportive family, great friends, health insurance and excellent medical care. Following each transplant, I lost and then eventually regained the ability to write fiction. I have only recently completed a short story based on an idea I developed after the transplant. It feels great to be back.

I have not written a blog before. Please let me know the sorts of things you like to read about.

Warren Bull