Hello, my name is Gabriel Fowler, and as some of you may have guessed, I’m a writer. Though this will be similar in some ways to my bio, I want this to serve as a true introduction to me for people who don’t know who I am. I started writing before I actually knew how. I would speak and my mom would write it down. In this way, I wrote my first piece: a poem. I may end up sharing it on here eventually, but that’s for another time.
To take a slight detour, it’s important to know that around the age of seven or eight, I was introduced to video games. My first game was Final Fantasy X on the PS2 and my second was Dark Cloud 2. Now, I was a dumb kid who didn’t understand how RPGs worked, so I never made it very far, but I loved the worlds, and the stories, and watching the demo cutscenes play out. At the time of all this, I was in second grade and we had been given journals to write in. The teacher didn’t really care much what we wrote, just that we were writing. So I wrote about my obsession at the time, Dark Cloud 2. I wrote the story as best I could considering both how young I was and how little of the full game I had actually seen. When I reached the end of my knowledge about the game, I continued, making up the rest of the story and trying to bring it to a fantastic conclusion. Now, of course, because these games earned a T from the ESRB, my teacher was a little worried and this led to no small number of meetings as well as probably being a contributing factor in my expulsion from that school.
After leaving my first school behind, I was homeschooled by my mom. She did a fantastic job sticking with me and getting me to focus on the skills I would need the most. She taught me science, world history, and math. I think we both hated math the most. The one thing I don’t really remember her teaching me was english or literature (possibly because I was so advanced), but that didn’t stop me writing or reading. My next big writing project was trying to finish writing the Harry Potter series before J.K. Rowling. Mind you, this was before the last two books came out so I was trying to write book seven without book six existing yet. I only got a few chapters in before I found out all my work was for naught because one of the characters I had predicted being important was killed off. This was the last time I wrote seriously for awhile.
At around age 12 or 13, my mom realized that she really couldn’t teach me advanced math and tried to find a place for me to go to school. We settled on The Crefeld School. In order to get in though, I needed to show that I was on their level since I had been homeschooled for so long. So what did I do? I wrote a kick-ass essay about world history and got in. That school, The Crefeld School gave me some of the best experiences I ever had. My teachers, barring one or two that I didn’t care for, were all fantastic and we remain friendly even after I graduated. But this isn’t about that, this is about writing.
I started seriously considering writing as a career in the ninth grade. I was in a study period, but didn’t feel like doing any of the work I had. I had my computer open to Google Docs and needed to both have fun and look busy, so I started a short story. It was a flawed little story about teenagers going into the afterlife to forestall the degradation of the human soul. Of course, the short story didn’t stay short. It turned into a 30+ chapter story that ate 2 years worth of study hall. To Lisa (if you’re reading this), the teacher who was running that period: I’m sorry for wasting so much time, and thank you for providing the environment that got me where I am now.
After I was done with that story, I decided a new story in a new world would need to happen. During a trip to Surf City with my mom, we started talking about the earliest versions of my current novel, The Chimera Project. We talked about early concepts for the main characters, Animal and Megan as well as some of the overarching themes I wanted to explore. It took the rest of the summer for that idea to percolate and in December of that year, 11th grade, just before school let out for winter break, I started work on The Chimera Project.
The question remains though, what will you find on this blog? Here, you will find my short stories, poetry, and some opinion pieces on video games, writing and damn near anything else I’m thinking about, as well as info on The Chimera Project as it progresses. I hope you find something to enjoy here.