Please welcome joshua Marsella to the Writer's Journey Blog this week.
Joshua Marsella is a Maine native, a husband, and a father of two boys. Growing up in a single-parent household with two olders in a small town, he loved to be outside roaming and exploring the surrounding woods and cemetery that abutted his home. He always loved books but having undiagnosed ADHD he never had the necessary attention span to sit and read. In high school, he learned he had a passion and talent for writing and would often write poetry in his free time.
Upon graduating high school in 2002, he served in the Maine Army National Guard including a one-year tour in Mosul, Iraq from 2004-2005. After his return, he worked various jobs including as a cemetery caretaker at Togus VA in Augusta, ME. Later, he left his job at the VA to attend college full-time to study mental health. He currently works full-time as a stay-at-home dad with his two sons.
For most of his life, he struggled with his ability to focus on reading, finishing only one to two books each year on average. That’s until something clicked in the fall of 2019 and he suddenly wanted to read all the time. The more he read, the more the idea of writing his own stories became interesting to him. Later that year, he read the book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Inspired by the idea of ‘writing what you know’, he started brainstorming ideas he could use for his first short story as a fun, creative outlet. Having always enjoyed writing he’d never considered the possibility of doing it in a professional capacity.
The idea for his debut novella SCRATCHES came to him while driving home from a book signing in in Bangor Maine in December of 2019. Loosely based on his childhood experience, he thought it would be a good place to start. Write what you know.
In February of 2020, he purchased a laptop computer and started writing my first story in his free time. Originally intending it to be a short, the story seemed to be writing itself with ideas coming to him at all hours of the day. Once he finished the first draft and received positive feedback from his wife, he started researching what he could do with it. That’s when he began to look into the publishing process and what his options were.
Overwhelmed with the idea of waiting to submit to a traditional publisher, he found out about self-publishing options and knew this was the route for him. By May of 2020, he was comfortable with the quality of the manuscript and felt it was ready to be published.
Since then, Joshua has had short stories featured in a couple of charity anthologies with indie presses. He is also writing short stories to be featured in a solo anthology he hopes will be self-published later in 2021. His next publication, SEVERED, a prequel to his debut novella, is scheduled to be released in February 2021. He is also planning a third book for the series that will likely be released in 2022, bringing the trilogy to its conclusion.
Joshua’s work can be found on Amazon and is also compiled on his Linktree website for easy access.
Joshua Marsella LinkTree
Click the cover for more.
COMING SOON!
