Hello, I would love it if you took a moment to check out my GoFundMe campaign: GoFundMe
Your support would mean a lot to me. Thank you so much!
– Mark Hastings
Author
My Poem “The Spirit of a Poet”
Right from the start
it was the words of The Bard
that started the spark
that grew into the light in the dark
that is the poetry of my heart
and the gift that I use
to leave my mark…
I will bow before the master of language
that is William Shakespeare
for as long as I live and breathe –
and whenever I write a verse of poetry
I will always remember where I was
when I first read the Sonnets of The Bard
and the spirit of a poet was born within me.
Rest In Peace, William Shakespeare
My Poem “The Wolf Within Me”
It was about three years ago,
around this exact same day
and month of the year,
when I decided to write a poem
for Halloween called “The Wolf In Me”;
however, to my amazement, what was
supposed to be a poem slowly but surely
grew into becoming a short story,
a novella, and then ultimately
a short novel capable of standing
on its own and filling an entire book –
and this story was the first chapter
in the tale of Olivia Hunter:
a young woman burdened with a curse,
a secret, a gift, a spirit within her
capable of transforming her into a Wolf,
because the secret that she lived with,
alone, was that she was a werewolf.
When I first began writing “The Wolf In Me”
I had no idea that it would ultimately be what it became…
when I first began Olivia Hunter‘s journey
with her I was just as in the dark about
where her story would take her,
because there was no plan as to the direction
of every twist and turn…
when I first began writing, imagining,
and bringing to life the world,
the characters, and the story of
“The Wolf In Me” I felt myself
be carried away and compelled
to write more, to know more,
and to find out more about
what was going to happen
and where Olivia’s story felt like
it was telling me – the writer – to take it…
when I first began writing “The Wolf In Me”
I began to feel more and more –
the more that I wrote –
that I could be a writer
who explored and exposed different worlds
and different depths of life, of people,
and fully investigate subjects like
identity, change, life, loss,
and those things that are important
to everybody’s daily lives
and their state of mind.
Since I finished writing “The Wolf In Me”
I have written many other things –
short stories, poems – and I even wrote
and published a sequel to “The Wolf In Me”
called “The Wolf In You”;
however, for some reason, from time to time,
in my mind I am drawn back to the thought
of the character whom I imagined,
thought about, lived, breathed,
and wrote about, every day until
I had to say goodbye to her
and let her story speak for itself –
and I silently wonder how she is,
where she is, what she is doing,
and if one day Olivia Hunter may choose
to inspire another story about her
that speaks to the spirit of The Wolf
who I believe resides within me.
My books “The Wolf In Me” and “The Wolf In You”,
as well as all my other books of poetry and stories
are available to buy online from Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, and The Book Depository
in Paperback and as an eBook.
Happy National Storyteller Day!
The Wolf in Me – “One Year Later…”
Hi there! 🙂
It has been a year to the day since my first novel, The Wolf In Me, was first published – and to mark the occasion, I thought that it would be fun to draw a sketch of my novel’s protagonist, Olivia Hunter, and also to the continue her story, in a way, in the form of a short journal entry that she would have written one year after the events that took place in the story that I wrote about her life and her struggle with finding her identity while also blessed with the gift/the curse of becoming a werewolf. The Wolf In Me is essentially a story about someone going through an extreme existential identity-crisis, you could say? However, it is also a story about survival, about loss, about actions and consequences, about spirit, and about holding on to and using the strength of your mind, your body, and your soul to overcome any and all of the testing situations that we all find ourselves in from time to time.
So, here is Olivia’s short journal entry, “One Year Later…”: *spoilers ahead for The Wolf In Me*
Happy The Wolf In Me Day! 🙂
-Mark
My Novel ‘The Wolf In Me’ is out now!
“This is the tale of Olivia Hunter… this is the tale of how she lived, how she died, and how she was reborn. This is the story of an ordinary young woman propelled into an extraordinary world.”
My novel ‘The Wolf In Me’ is out now! And you can get a copy of my new book and my first novel from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes&Noble, The Book Depository, and many other online book sellers, in paperback and as an ebook!
You can also listen to me talking about ‘The Wolf In Me’, what it’s about, and why I wrote it:
I hope you enjoy reading my new book and my first novel!
-Mark
