The World Hero Race

“If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” 
                                                                                                          ~Toni Morrison

I used to hate writing. 

I never liked writing essays and projects in elementary school, probably because I was never very good with grammar or writing.  I'm still not great at it, not even when I'm talking.  Just to warn you if you're a grammar nazi; the site is probably filled with grammar mistakes.  I can detect a limited amount of mistakes in my writing, but the sentence structures and the wording I can't detect, along with other grammar sins I often commit.  Grammar has always been one of my worst subjects; my friends still correct me today.

The one thing I did excel at in elementary school was spelling....and reading.  I loved reading literature; mostly fiction.  The usual school textbooks bored me, since I'm know to be easily bored and equally distracted.  During my early school years, not many stories caught my attention and actually entertained me....until I was introduced to the fantasy genre in middle school.

“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”

                                                                                                                            ~Goya

My parents had suggested that I try reading the Harry Potter series, by J.K.Rowling in my fifth grade year.  By that time, the fourth book of the series had just came out, and the series was slowly gaining popularity.  I had heard of the books before hand, but it didn't interest me because it had the protagonist as a boy.  As usual with kids, they often pick out the certain things that relate to them.  Considering I was a girl, I preferred stories with a female protagonist that I could relate to.  But when my parents suggested that series, I decided to give it a shot.

I was thoroughly hooked into it just from reading the first few pages. No other type of story seemed to captivate me before.  I was overly fascinated with the way magic played a major role, the way the plot line flowed with even greater suspense and action...I couldn't put the books down.

I proceeded to a similar story, although I can't remember what series it was.  But whatever it was, it also grabbed my attention and pulled me in.  By then, I finally figured out what genre these stories were categorized as: fantasy. I tried reading books that were more out of that category, but they never hooked me as the fantasy stories did.  Fantasy seemed like the only genre that really had my full attention, what entertained me the most. 

It seemed like the fantasy genre was my only comfort zone in literature.  I loved all the suspenseful plot lines, the "good vs. evil" themes, the different mythical creatures, imaginative worlds, the overall flow of various styles of magic.  I could never put any fantasy book down.  But it wasn't until around the seventh grade that I would start to like creative writing.

“With an open mind, you can create a whole new world.”

I was only nine and in the 4th grade when 9/11 happened.  For me, it was just a normal Tuesday morning like any other school day.  I got up, and got ready for school as usual...but that morning, I had somewhat of a sixth sense.  Somehow I knew that there was something oddly wrong that morning, just as I woke up.  Something was different to me than all the other mornings.

I could hear the TV in my parents' room.  That was the first thing I noticed that was strange.  This might have sounded normal, but to me, it wasn't.  Every morning, I woke up to the sound of the shower running, or my mom getting ready for work.  The TV was never on in the mornings.  At that age, I was always curious about everything, as any young child was.  So I wandered into my parents' room to figure out why the TV was on, and noticed the second thing that was out of place; my dad was still there.  He was always gone and at work by the time I woke up in the morning.

The news broadcast was on the TV.  I could clearly see the two towers on the screen, one of them already on fire.  My mom, busy getting ready for work, noticed my presence and said that I could watch the news for a little bit until we left for school, so I sat down in front of it, my curiosity still going as to what was wrong.  I gained more information as I listened; the airplane crashing into one of the towers....But in the next few moments, I actually witnessed horror play out across the scene.  I actually watched, live, the second plane crashing right into the second tower.

Everything seemed to freeze...then hell broke lose.  Even the reporters seem to panic.  Then more breaking news came in, reporting that a plane had hit the Pentagon.  No one in the room said anything, but I could guess what was running through everyone's heads that split second: what the hell was going on? How could three planes crash into three buildings within a small space of time?  There was absolutely no way in hell that the three plane crashes were all coincidental.  One phrase that I heard stuck out the most from that broadcast: we were under attack...

I didn't understand it at first, but I did when I watched one of the towers collapse.  Something had clicked in my nine-year-old's mind; there were people still trapped in the towers.  No one said anything at school....not one of the teachers.  Later that afternoon, as my mom explained about terrorists and that they were the ones that did it, I realized that the world wasn't as peaceful as I thought.  Over three-thousand lives were lost in cold blood; people were killing others because they wanted to or they "thought" it was right.  I never thought that the evil stuff that I saw in movies was actually real.  But the one thing that stood out the most was that I realized there was nothing anybody could do about it.  No one really had the strength or the power to stop huge catastrophes like this within a few seconds.  We could predict or prevent them, but what if we never saw something like this coming? Then how can anybody survive something this big?

That's when I started daydreaming about me saving the world from these or natural disasters.  And over the years, my imagination for it grew and my sympathy for disasters increased as well.  Even now, everytime I hear or learn about a natural disaster, such as when two firestorms swept through most of my county in three years, I get depressed....because it makes me realize that I don't have magical powers to stop these disasters, and people's lives have to start over from them.

But after realizing that there was no way I could gain magic to actually save the world, I decided to write about it as a keepsake for when I was older.  By the seventh grade, I had fallen in love with this childhood dream.  I couldn't let it go.   Despite the fact that I knew it couldn't come true, a little part of me still wanted to hold onto it and cherish it for the rest of my life.  It had expanded that much that I just couldn't forget about it.  And with my favorite fantasy authors as my role models, I decided to try and follow in their footsteps to writing a brilliant work of fantasy and to use it to show others what the world is really like out there, and that it's not as peaceful as we think.

This is why I write this series.  It is not only to entertain audiences with a more hilarious twist to a hero's lifestyle, but to show that even someone little can still do great things for the world.  I'm writing for my dream, for others....and for the world.

I am creator.  I am alive and writing.                                                                                                                    ~The Author

Email: worldhero21@cox.net

Series Webpage: The World Hero Race DeviantART Page                                                                                       Author's Webpage:  worldhero21