In this series of guest posts, I have asked a number of writers and editors to share the price they pay for pursuing their creative passion or what they sacrifice–whether that is money, time or lost opportunities. It might be how they pay the bills that writing doesn’t, or how they juggle working for a living or raising a family with the time it takes to write or edit. The people who have contributed have shared their personal stories in the hope it might help those new to the scene manage their expectations, or help others dealing with similar things realise they aren’t alone. You can read about the inspiration for this series here, and if you want to be part of it please let me know.

Today we are featuring Greg Chapman: double threat. Not just a talented writer, but an award winning illustrator, too?! Makes me rather jealous. 😛

I don’t actually write what I want to write for a living.

I write in my spare time.

Writing and drawing is a part of me—if I don’t write or draw I feel like I’ve wasted the day.

Sadly my creative streak doesn’t pay the bills, so in order to feed myself and my children and pay the mortgage etc and my book-and-DVD-hoarding habit, I have to work full-time—like many other writers and artists. My wife also works full-time so, while we’re financially stable, I am time poor when it comes to being an artist and writer.

The irony is, my day job involves writing.

I work at a university, writing up media releases about student and staff achievements. I also use my design skills to create digital marketing. It’s a stable job that pays the bills, but I’d rather be at home writing stories and drawing.

Before I worked at the university I was a newspaper journalist for about 8 years. A couple of highlights included covering the tilt-train derailment near Bundaberg in 2004 and the Dr Jayant Patel scandal the following year. I didn’t do much fiction writing in those years. My family was still very young and being a journalist was very busy work.

Over time though the allure of covering accidents, murderers and child abuse in the courts wore off and I realised I had to do something that lessened the cynicism that was taking over my life. So I went over to the “dark-side” of public relations and corporate communications and returned back home to Rockhampton in 2008. The decision was a good one and I was able to dabble in fiction and drawing again. 2009 became a clean slate and I quickly joined the Australian Horror Writers Association and had my first novella published in 2011. The first graphic novel I illustrated came out in 2012 and won a Bram Stoker Award the following year.

I’ve never been career-minded person and I guess that’s been my downfall. If I’d taken my writing more seriously 15 years ago, then maybe I’d be more successful and not rushed getting my first novellas published years later. But then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten married and been the father to two beautiful daughters. 🙂

I see my working life and creative life as like an alter ego. I want to be Batman, writing novel after novel after novel, but instead I have to be Bruce Wayne.

At best I get to work on art projects in the evenings for 1-2 hours and writing during lunch breaks (except for the occasions I say screw it and sneak in a few hundred words while at work- shhh!)

I’ve always been a daydreamer and sometimes it gets in the way of my responsibilities. I’m still a big kid and I guess I always will be, much to my wife’s dismay.

Society hasn’t been constructed for the creative person. Instead of being an apostle to the imagination, we are slaves to industry. So I fear that I will always only be a dabbler. I’m still writing and drawing and being published—kicking goals as a dearly departed friend used to say. Really, I shouldn’t complain, but I just wish I could be doing it as a career and not as a “hobby”.

One day …. maybe, I’ll be Batman.

Greg Chapman is an emerging horror author and artist from Australia. 

After joining the Australian Horror Writers Association in 2009, Greg Chapman was selected for its mentor program under the tutelage of author Brett McBean.

Since then he has had short stories published in The Absent Willow Review, Trembles, Eclecticism, Bete Noire, Morpheus Tales, Midnight Echo, and the anthologies Sex, Drugs and Horror, Frightmares and A Killer Among Demons.

Greg is the author of four novellas, “Torment”, “The Noctuary” (Damnation Books, 2011), “Vaudeville” (Dark Prints Press, 2012) and “The Last Night of October” (Bad Moon Books, 2013).

His debut collection, “Vaudeville and Other Nightmares”, was published by Black Beacon Books in September, 2014.

He is also a horror artist and his first graphic novel “Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times”, written by Bram Stoker Award® winning authors Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, was published by McFarland & Company in 2012.

“Witch Hunts” won the Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel category at the Bram Stoker Awards® on June 15, 2013.

He also illustrated the comic series Allure of the Ancients for Midnight Echo Magazine.

Greg will illustrate a one-shot comic, “Bullet Ballerina”, written by Tom Piccirilli, for SST Publications in the United Kingdom. It is expected to be released in the first half of 2015.