I'm A Writer!

Hello and welcome to my website and blog. This is my central online hub, where you can keep up-to-date on all of my creative endeavours. If you’re familiar with me, you probably know that I’m a musician, but you might not be aware that I’m also a writer. I’ve written two science-fiction novellas (about 25,000 words each), with a third on the way to complete the trilogy. I'll be publishing those soon so stay tuned for updates on that. I’ve also got several other writing projects in the works, so now seemed like the right time to launch this site.

What can you expect? Well from this site, you’ll be able to see info about all of my ongoing musical projects, as well as info announcements about my writing. This blog in particular will be my main way of announcing things. I’ll also be posting essays about things happening in my world, random thoughts, and reviews of books and other media I consume. If it’s on my mind, you can expect to read about it here. If that sounds fun to you, then be sure to keep checking back. I plan on updating this frequently, and I’ll be making announcements on FB, Insta and Bluesky when I post a new blog, so be sure to follow me on the socials if you don’t already.

So for this inaugural blog post, I thought I’d go into my journey to becoming a writer. This is something that has been in my mind since I was very young, although I never treated it seriously until the last five years or so. And, as it is with music, writing runs in my family. My grandfather, Robert Sutherland, is a published author of several young-adult mystery novels, many of them being historical fiction drawing on his experiences in the second world war. His books were published through Scholastic, and later through Harper Collins, and were translated into several different languages worldwide. His daughter, my mother Ruth Sutherland, has also been a writer since I was a child, and my step-mother, Carol Greene, has won awards for her writing. So this is something that has surrounded me for a long time.

Back in high school, I wanted to be a movie director, but when I finally got to film school in the mid 2000s, I discovered that my real passion was for music. This derailed my ambitions around film, and I focused all my creative energy on music for the next two decades or so. I don’t regret this at all. I met my wonderful wife, Amanda through music, as well as some of my very best friends. Throughout all this, storytelling has been a big creative driver for me, and my main outlet for that was my original music. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of weird spacey stories that I can base songs around. In fact, the idea for my first novella came from a story outline I wrote back in 2012, which I had originally planned to use as inspiration for songs that I could bring to my band, Toadhouse (check the music section of this site for more info on that).

For years, the idea for turning this outline into a full book lived in the back of my mind. Life went on, and I didn’t give that idea a huge amount of thought until the world ended in 2020. Amanda and I moved in together in Dundas, ON, and while my job went fully remote, she was an essential worker at a construction site in Toronto. This meant we were waking up at 5:00AM to get her to work on time, and my work didn’t start until 8:30AM, so I suddenly found myself with several hours to kill in the early weekday mornings. With the help of some writing advice videos on youtube, I got my thoughts organized, and began taking this time to write. After many stops and starts over the course of a few years, I suddenly found myself with a finished book.

The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write, and this feeling has only gotten stronger. The world has changed since then, but my love of writing and creative drive never went away. Managing this with day-to-day life has taken some work, especially because I never lost my passion for music and still play regularly, although I’m no longer in five bands. I’m not a full-time musician, so this is a relief, and I feel good about being able to focus on having just a few musical projects. At this point, I’d like to think I’ve found a great balance, and I’m in a position to thrive creatively. That's what this blog is going to be all about.

So, now that you’ve read the nutshell version of my writing journey, I hope you can look forward to seeing what I come up with. 2025 is going to be a big year for putting my creative babies out into the world, both literary and musical. After working hard all the way through 2024, I’ve accomplished some things that I’m very proud of, and I can’t wait to share them with you. This is the place to be to keep up with them, and with me, so stay tuned!

Or don’t… whatever...