Middle School The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson was really when I started writing teen/YA stories. This humorous series is about a teenage boy, Rafe, and his struggles with school, and life. His home situation, and personality are relatable for a modern day reader. The series shows him being a goof off, struggling with his identity, his talents, and kinda being the man of the house.
When Middle School The Worst Years of My Life series started coming out I was in middle school. It made me laugh and I felt like the main character understood my drama with middle school. It was one of the first books I read during that time where I felt that way. I read most of the series and I wondered at that time why there wasn’t more books that wrote about those problems. My stories started to be influenced by the series; writing more about teenage life, and struggles.
By the time, I was reading the Middle School The Worst Years of My Life series, The Skateboarding Dream was already an idea in my head. I had started drawing early versions of the Skateagy Comic. I was skateboarding and dealing with my own teenage struggles.
The series, IFunny, also by James Patterson came out around the same time as Middle School the Worst Years of My Life. IFunny influenced me to want to put more humor in my books including The Skateboarding Dream. I knew humor was something to work on for my writing.
In the next post, I’ll do a little conclusion to this post series and introduce the next topic of posts.
