How to Succeed at Fiction By Failing: Part Three

Sequels usually aren't this good.

New here? This is Part 3 of 3, start here.

Something told me this would work.

From the moment I set that pencil to paper, sketching out the first picture of Wendell, I knew it would be a success. He had the right name, the right age, the right intent and need for growth…everything was perfect…to create an epic adventure to share with the world.

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That’s why I turned my back and screwed it all up.

It’s taken me until now to realize how powerful fear can be. But not the fear I thought it was:

• The fear that I couldn’t draw the pictures.

• The fear of not being able to write the story.

• The fear that people wouldn’t like the story or the artwork.

• The fear that people wouldn’t buy the eComic at all.

• The fear that I couldn’t be consistent enough to make it work.

No.

The genuine fear…was that I would succeed.

What would I do if everything went right? If after all the pain and pressure and pushing past all the nay-sayers and roadblocks, I actually made it all work, and the comics took off?

If it all did work, the only place to go from there might be down.

Oh, criticize me if you wish, but that’s where I felt terrified. I’d been used to struggling. Been used to fighting for my life, to be seen, to stand up under the weight of criticism and mockery. To getting up one more time than someone knocked me down…

So what would I do if there wasn’t that fierce opposition?

The thought made my hands shake.

…then they broke.

The End of Wanted Hero

Distractions can put a stop to our progress if we’re not careful.

I was never careful.

The story changed when I started to admire people online. You know those intense rabbit holes we get lost in from time to time, where you look for a DIY project and end up watching the latest bad auditions on American idol instead?

Yeah, that’s when I discovered some amazing people in real life, who I thought would make amazing characters in my comics, and if I was lucky, sell more comics. So I reached out, pitched more than a dozen folks, and got a ‘yes’ from everyone. That’s when the Nethinim came to life. A group of characters, meant to be myths and to stay in the background, now took a front-row seat next to Wendell in the comic books.

Nethinim were meant to be a myth referred to by others, nothing more.

With each issue, those real life people told their circle of influence, and my readership grew.

Yes, that’s a good thing. Did I technically hurt anyone? No. But I should have done this for more honorable reasons. I should have been a better friend to these people I admired and wanted to promote to the youth of the world.

I think that might be why Karma showed up, noticed I hadn’t been returning her calls from our last date, and exacted a petty revenge.

…and my hands stopped working.

Literally one morning, I woke up, went to grab a glass of orange juice from the counter…and the glass shattered on the floor. I’d lost the fine motor skills of my hands and could no longer make comic books. Concerned, I set an appointment with a neurologist, and went in.

My father drove me and sat in the waiting room…a small closet with three chairs and a coffee table scrunched up against our shins. The doctor walked in, towering over us like some bald-headed cave troll in a white lab jacket. Guy had to be close to seven feet tall. With a low, gravel-rich tone, he grumbled, “Jaime? Jaime Buckley?”

My dad peeked over at me from behind the magazine. “He’s not calling my name.”

I gulped and stood up.

The doctor put a hand out as I approached the door.

“You need to know three things before we got back. First, I’m going to insert a lot of needles into your hands, arms and back. Second, it’s going to hurt like hell …but if you move or flinch, we’ll have to start all over again. And third,” he leaned down to smile into my face, “I love my job.”

I gulped again.

He wasn’t kidding. When he was close to the last five needles, he inserted one between my fingers and I cried out, nearly bouncing off the table. The doctor grunted, swore something in a language I didn’t recognize, and started yanking the needles out. He started over, as did the pain.

This time, I gritted my teeth.

Turns out that car accident killed 29% of the nerves in my back and arms, and there was nothing they could do for my hands.

My world caved in on my hopes, and depression set in. Without a single word to my readers, I stopped drawing Wanted Hero and walked away.

I needed to look for a job.

How Fiction Can Feed A Family

Drawing was my whole life. It’s what I had always done, and all I truly wanted to do. It was my way of connecting with people. So it came as a complete shock when I went to an MLM meeting and found my new purpose. All I was trying to do was get out of the house to shake off my depression.

Yet there I watched people lined up, wanting to hear about a Money Merge Account, from a company called United First Financial, or UFirst for short. It was a chance to help people, and my mind saw all the possibilities online, using the skills I’d developed crafting my comic books.

My best friend almost gasped when I said, “I’m in.”

Little did I know this was the hard path the Universe would send me on, to get me back to Wanted Hero.

My skills in developing my website allowed me and my three partners to dominate the internet and all Google results. In fact, when UFirst said ‘no’ to my initial request for special positioning within the company, I showed them why it was in their best interests to agree with me. While sitting in the boardroom with the two owners, I pulled up the search results for their company under their own software terms. They were in ninth place.

The rest were mine.

When they asked what it would take for me to get those results for the company, I asked for my original placement for our company…and a job contract. I would build the SEO for UFirst over the next 90 days, for $87,000.

They agreed.

Cause, ya know…no one wanted to go to the library and learn how to do it on their own.

(wink)

On another occasion, I stopped by the head office and saw that one owner was frustrated and angry. The company was trying to take training materials and make them into a popular new thing called a ‘podcast’ for the agents in the field. Apparently, the company they’d hired took three weeks per episode, for a cost of $3500 each.

“I’ll do it for $1500 each,” I said plainly, “…and I can get an episode done in 72 hours, not three weeks.”

At first he didn’t believe me, but I explained I had all the equipment to make it happen. I’d created my own podcasts for kids with Wanted Hero (listen to a sample below).

Their legal staff had also trained me, so I was more qualified and able to find the correct edits than the hired company. He agreed when I offered to prove myself. I’d take one episode, get it edited, and if he liked it, he’d give me the rest of the training sessions or $1500 each. This first one was a ‘gift’.

I took the disc back to my office, got the edit done over lunch, and delivered it back to him before he left the office for the day.

He gave me the ten remaining sessions the next morning with a, “Damn, you’re good.”

Before the end of the workday, I completed editing, refining, and converting both tapes into mp3 and mp4 formats, and loaded them onto his personal iPod. When I showed up at his office, a satisfactory grin on my face (and one hell of a migraine from pushing so hard), he just laughed and shook his head.

He wrote me a check for $15,000 on the spot.

Money Often Brings Out A Person’s True Nature

I went from barely making a mortgage payment and having enough food on the table to making six figures a year. I’d become good at what I was doing. My partners and I, known as the Jubilee Project, gained a measure of fame in certain financial circles. In fact, what I was doing online was such an asset, my partners and I were soon brought into corporate meetings behind closed doors. They informed us about certain issues and challenges and requested our help to solve them.

Before long, they asked me to be an online hitman of sorts.

To go after certain companies and individuals who were stealing information from UFirst and using it. They shifted my role to focus on exposing the lies of competitors, so our mother company, UFirst, could thrive. I was ready to crack my knuckles and hunker down to an online war, but there was a problem.

Research, meetings and close listening showed us the opposing company wasn’t the devil.

We worked for him.

I don’t remember ever feeling so sick to my stomach, so angry, or wanting to drive my minivan into an executive building before. Luckily, my partners were more mature and calm than I. “It’s okay. Now we know. We’ll just resign and switch companies.”

Yeahhhhh, nope. Doesn’t work that way.

In fact, UFirst was so afraid of what we would do, what we could do, they went for our throats. They sued us, both our company and us personally. All but one of us lost our homes, our other businesses…and they kept hitting until they put our lawyer out of business. To this day, I remember taking the served papers and confronting the UFirst lawyer.

“We know we don’t have a case. Utah is a right-to-work state. But we have unlimited pockets, so good luck.”

Where was John Wick and his pencil at that moment, eh?

I went from six figures to bankrupt and homeless with eleven children before you could say, “Oh, shit.”

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Why Not Suffer For Your Own Dream?

If you have never been homeless, I don’t recommend the experience. Especially if you have a family.

We’ve done homeless three times.

If you don’t have enough love to drown out the hopelessness, pain, and suffering, bad things can happen.

At one point, I woke up with a terrified feeling wrenching my gut. I went from bed to bed, checking to make sure everyone was safe.

Someone was missing.

Racing into the night, I screamed their name and then listened. Over and over I yelled, moving further away from my sleeping family. To this day I thank God I was on time. She was sobbing, curled up in the middle of the road, waiting to be run over.

If you ever encounter a homeless person, please, be kind.

I promise, no matter what they look like, they are hurting in ways you don’t understand.

We experienced sudden and repeating blows from life, making me believe once again that the Universe had something against me. But why did it hate my wonderful wife and innocent children?

I’d tried to do the right things, for the right reasons, but here I was, lost…without a job, or the ability to find one…and no idea what to do next. All the creative tools I had left fit into a simple backpack, where I kept my Mac laptop from Jubilee, and an external hard drive.

I also still had my company phone.

Thankfully, someone from church soon saw our situation and offered us a couple of rooms in their basement. My wife and I slid a small wall-to-wall mattress into the laundry room, the boys slept with grandpa in a small side room, and the eight girls slept in the single bedroom. What little we owned was in boxes, piled in a corner, next to a cooking stove. It wasn’t much, but we were safe, and we were together.

My depression got so bad, my wife asked me to take my oldest daughter out on a date. Barnes & Noble and then maybe an ice cream on the way home.

“Hun, we only have $50 left.”

My wife kissed me on the cheek. “You need to get out. She needs your attention and strength, so this is perfect. Just give me your word. Please, do whatever she asks you. No, don’t look that way…trust me on this.”

Do what a child asks me to do? What the h….. “Fine,” I grumbled.

When we got to Barnes & Noble, my favorite bookstore, my daughter brought me a small box collection. The packaging and artwork was magnificent. I’d never heard of the story before, but she insisted I buy it. Lucky for me, it was on sale. I still felt the pain of our last income leaving my wallet.

When we got home, my daughter thrust the books into my hands. “Read these,” she said through her beautiful smile.

“Me? I thought these were for you?”

“No dad, we bought these for you. Trust me.”

A bit pissed everyone wanted my trust, but didn’t want to explain, I went to lie down in my closet of a room to read. Each book was only 75 pages, but the art was magnificent, the story brilliant, and by dinner, I was done with the box set.

“What did you think, dad?” My daughter openly gave her mom a wink.

“I loved it. Fast-paced, fun, and I was shocked that as an adult, I enjoyed it that much.”

My daughter sat back on the couch and grinned. “That’s how you write.”

I scoffed. “Whatever.”

“It’s true, sweetheart,” my wife chimed in. “And I’m thinking, if we’re going to struggle to survive anyway, then why not struggle to achieve our own goals?”

That’s when my wife and daughter insisted that since I couldn’t draw comics, why not write the story as novels?

I took any job I could find, while writing freelance, and every spare moment I had, sat in a cement corner to write Prelude to Hero, my first Wanted Hero novel. To make the process less depressing, I’d snagged a free calendar from a local bank, ripped out two delightful pictures and taped them into either corner.

Next best thing to actual windows.

Trust me on this one.
It works.

I Say Unto You, Love Your Enemies

To this day, I don’t remember crying so much, or trying to be so strong when in the presence of my children. Prayer was a constant in my mind and heart, and when I had a private chance to drop to my knees, I stayed there. One afternoon, while my wife took the kids to a park, I poured out my heart and begged God to forgive me.

I should have been more kind, more charitable. Been a better Christian. My heart pleaded for deliverance, so I might better care for the blessing He had given me in a loving wife and family.

“Amen.”

My phone rang at my side as that last word left my lips.

“Brother Jaime, this is Roger Anthony.”

“Roger?” I was both confused and flabbergasted. This was THE man I was paid a small fortune by UFirst to destroy online. To ruin his reputation and hinder his progress in the financial realm at every turn. Sadly, I had done an exceptional job.

Then he said something that changed my life…forever.

“God tells me you need a job. Would you like one?”

I could hardly breathe, I wept so hard. The hand of mercy…a prayer mightily answered…from a man I had openly mocked and sought to harm.

It was a few moments before I could choke out, “Please.”

His voice was kind and warm, like a rising sun in spring, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m happy to hear it. I need a personal assistant, and I think you’re the perfect man for the job.”

God Does NOT Hate Us

I will praise Roger M Anthony, and love that man with all my soul, for the rest of my life. He taught me about people. How valuable they are, and how you can love AND like absolutely anyone, if you know how to ‘see’ them. Take the time to hear another’s story, the choices they made, and how they came to this moment in time. Chances are great you’ll find compassion within you.

Roger started my healing by forgiving me.

We became the best of friends, and I made sure he could count on me. Yet he never knew about our living circumstances…until they flooded.

In the middle of a meeting with the board of directors, my wife called.

There had been a flash flood near the house where we had our little basement space. The clay ground didn’t absorb any water, causing the runoff to fill the window wells until the glass shattered. Our entire living space filled with water, mud, and an overflowing sewer. Our few belongings now sat in the water calf-deep, and she didn’t know what to do.

“I’m so sorry, I have to go. My home flooded.”

Next thing I knew, the owners of the company were getting into their vehicles and heading over to assist me. One look at where we lived, and peering into my daughter’s bedroom where the eight girls crammed together, two of the women started crying.

“You live…here? Like this??” Dianna asked me.

I nodded.

“My friends don’t live like this,” sobbed Glenna.

I shrugged. “I can’t afford anything more.”

That’s when I noticed my little boy wading thigh deep in the muck. He just stood there, watching all the adults trying to bail water back outside, or moving boxes away from the moisture. I went to him and kneeled down in the brown water.

“What’s wrong, son?”

His gaze shifted to me, worry apparent on his face. “We’ve been naughty, daddy. So, so, so naughty.”

I frowned. “Why do you think that?”

He pointed out the window, where friends had placed stakes into the ground, supporting wood planks to redirect the water still falling from the sky. “You said the people around Noah were naughty, so God flooded them…and LOOK,” jabbing his tiny finger at the sky, “WE’RE FLOODED!“

It took me a few minutes to explain the differences so he could understand and believe me. That this wasn’t rain from God because we were naughty, but water into our home because men didn’t build the house or grounds properly. A nod from mom backed my explanation, but he didn’t stop crying.

“Emergency meeting,” called Glenna. “I propose taking a portion of owner wages to increase Jaime’s income specifically to enable him to rent an appropriate house for the needs of his family.”

In less than 60 seconds, my wages doubled, and by the end of that week, we moved into a farmhouse.

We were happy, safe, and we lived there comfortably.

Until Roger died of cancer.

The greatest man I’ve ever known.

Homeless, Take Two

I remember the last time I saw Roger, and kissing my dear friend on the forehead. Here was a man so strong in his late 60s, that he could climb up the circular staircase outside his home faster than I could run up the stairs on the inside. Yet in a matter of months, he passed, leaving his wife in charge, whose entire support network was in Australia, not the USA.

The business closed, and I was once again without a job, and without a way to pay $2150 a month in rent. As with the first time, friends and family wanted to help, but couldn’t…so I called Ondi, my closest friend. I told him we were three days from living under a freeway.

“Don’t be stupid. No, you’re not. You come live with me.”

“You have a tiny house, you don’t have the room,” I sobbed.

[Hey, he knows me,…and I can sob manly tears, so shut up.]

“Then we roll out sleeping bags and use the floor. So what? You’ll be warm, fed, and with people who love you. That’s what matters. Come live with me and heal, okay?”

You have to understand my friend.

I’ve met no one as kind, as gentle and thoughtful as this man, except my mother…or Roger. We are diametrically opposite to each other. When I asked him why we were best friends, having almost nothing in common, he replied, “When we’re together, I feel like a whole person.”

Yeah.

Being rude to Ondi is like kicking a puppy.

…you’re just evil.

So we put our belongings in a storage unit and drove an hour south. As we pulled up to his home, our only vehicle gave up the ghost. Lisa, his wife and another best friend, hugged my sweetheart and took the children inside. When Ondi tried to guide me in, I pulled away.

“I’ve been through this before,” I said soberly. “We need to have an understanding.”

“Okay?”

“This is your home, not mine. I will obey your rules, as will my family. If you have any problems, I want your word that you’ll tell me, and I will correct it. Assign us chores and duties in the home, so there is no burden upon you or your girls. Because when we leave, I want it to be a tearful goodbye…because we won’t want this situation to end.”

Ondi gave me a hug. “Agreed.”

People who knew us never understood harmony like this was possible. Most can’t do it in their own family. We heard a few rumors and lies spoken about us, but that’s what jealous, ignorant people do. We ignored them. Working together as a family, we moved into a new home less than one mile away roughly a year later.

Both families cried.

…because we’d miss each other.

The Final Fall

Telling my entire story would take a complete book, but the next decade was hard for Wanted Hero. I struggled to make a living, which turned my attention to profit, not truth. If it wasn’t for God’s mercy, my artistic talent, my oldest son and the united efforts of our whole family working together, we would not be here now.

I had written eleven books for Wanted Hero. There was an audiobook, a popular card game, and I’d even started building an online world for readers to meet their favorite characters. When funds got low to publish, I made a deal with Death, asking him to sell immortality for cash. Yet nothing…worked.

I’d sold around 24,000 copies of Prelude to a Hero, and that book had remained in the top 20 books in its category on Amazon for over three years.

Our game, GoSmiley, based on Wendell’s animated shirt, had sold thousands upon thousands of copies on Amazon.

Yet something was always wrong.

Always off.

Until one man came into my life and showed me the problem.

He was kind, polite, and never insulted me. I don’t know why I listened, or why I gave him so much credibility, when all I had was his word. But I listened, I let him convince me, and after all I’d been through, after all I’d accomplished, for right or wrong, I believed him when he said the problem was me.

He told me I couldn’t write.

Not sure how to explain, but it was weeks before I could take a breath without pressure on my chest. My mind fractured into a million pieces as I tried to make sense of my whole life, before this new truth that I could not write. What’s worse was the sheer terror I felt…because I no longer had a purpose…something I was always so sure of.

But I knew one thing for certain: I was never meant to be a writer.

On June 1st 2022, I began pulling everything I had written and published from the internet. Every website, blog post, book, short story, game…except for the Prelude to a Hero audiobook (Amazon, your 7 year contracts suck) the Wanted Hero Chronicles of a Hero series was dead.

“But I don’t want to die…

I don’t even want to be marginally hurt!”

- Wendell

Success Is The Purpose Of Our Design And Creation

It took me an entire year to learn about myself. To crawl out from this black hole of despair and self-loathing.

To heal.

I have a loving wife, amazing and supportive children, kind friends and yet, without a purpose that is my own, I’m hollow. Writing Wanted Hero is what I do, despite being able to fulfill roles such as a husband, a father, a grandfather, a brother, and a friend..

The stories are in my mind, and mine alone.

Why should one opinion, or even a thousand negative opinions drown out the tens of thousands who found happiness in the stories offered?

After countless hours pondering on my life and these situations, I realized the Universe had to break me.

…because I wasn’t listening.

There is a story in me, and it’s always been there. Novels, short stories, novellas, and games include hundreds of pieces that offer the story. A story that must be told in its entirety…and in its truth.

That’s where I varied from the path. I stopped telling the truth.

Instead, I went after the money, or the popularity and attention, taking a thumbs up over an open heart. All the while, I sacrificed my time doing the least important things because I felt busy.

She doesn’t know this, but when I felt my lowest, and I lacked even the desire to live, I heard the loving voice of my sweetheart. The love of my life, whispering to my broken heart, scooping up the fractured pieces and holding them tenderly in her hands.

“Just be you, my love. Just be…you.”

That’s when I let go.

I don’t honestly know yet what will happen, but here’s what I believe NOW…and what I WANT…

I want to tell you a story.

It may not be perfect. I can’t even guarantee it’ll be good.

But I can promise you here and now that it will be honest. I’ll share the complete story to the best of my abilities with whatever talent I have. It’ll take some time to tell it. That’s why I chose substack. It fell in my lap less than two weeks ago, when I needed to share these stories.

It’s how I found you.

That’s got to mean something, right?

So here’s to fresh starts. To the Universe not giving up on a soft heart and open mind. Well, cracked-open, anyway. Here’s to wanting to do the right thing, for the right reason…with a desire to bring happiness and perspective to the lives of others.

Here’s to Wanted Hero.