Everyone has a story, and everybody is interesting. I have a gift for digging that out. I will be compiling them here for your reading pleasure. As one SUKI fan put it, “…it’s unbelievable how you just never know what somebody has been through in life…” Believe me, you never know the impact your experience may have on someone else.
If you’d like to contribute your story, email me at: cfwinn@readsuki.com
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Meet Chas:
Chas’ first official statement about telling his story here came in the form of a Tweet: “My story? I was born cold, naked, and hungry… from there, things got much worse :) HA”
Fortunately for us, Chas was willing to elaborate.
He grew up on a small farm in Georgia in the 1950's. His neighbors were miles away, so his playmates were his five siblings and cousins that would visit occasionally.
Who knew that Clyde, one of the cousins, would be instrumental in creating the author we know Chas to be today?
Chas described to me what went down on the family farm: "Clyde would always badger me to tell him a ghost story. He would challenge my creative skills by picking a normal every day object and expect it to be the 'haunted' item of the story I would make up. Once I remember him using a roll of toilet paper as the object, and I came up with a yarn that scared him so bad that he wouldn't use a toilet for weeks afterward.
His mom, of course, told my mom to stop me from doing that anymore which, of course, made me do it even worse with each opportunity. I grew more proficient in my fiction and my cousin's nightmares kept getting worse and worse as I honed my skills.
That is why today, I prefer writing mystery with a psychic twist rather than Stephen King styled out and out horror. My cousin still reads my stories but prefers the old blood and guts horror like I used to tell him when we were kids. Recently, I started a three book series called STRANGE SHORT TALES, in which I lean towards the short stories of supernatural things more in line with the tastes of my cousin."
Chas didn't start his career scaring the pants off of any other children though. He started in Electronics Engineering for the Department of Defense while, at the same time, he wrote for several military news prints and related papers. "It was all coats and tie type material, but I always found a way to sneak a wise crack in somewhere, and the readers seemed to love it."
Between 1996 and 2002 he worked for CNN and MSNBC as a Content Moderator. He passed the best quotes on to the TV producers or even to the reporters that were on the air. "I got to meet some awesome people, including Stephen King and Ted Turner. I became good friends with the Executive Producer of ABC's Nightline news program as well. My best moment on the job was when I talked (online via MSNBC) one on one to Tom Clancy for fifteen or twenty minutes. I discovered that he is a grumpy but very likeable person."
To read about his past and to engage in witty banter with him, you'd think Chas' life was pretty straight forward and basically happy... talented kid gets cool jobs, then further develops and eventually profits from his gift for storytelling...so, did he go on to live happily ever after?
Chas' story is far from over...
Find out the rest and meet Chas' demons at: http://www.readsuki.com/whats-your-story/
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