Introducing Myself: Author, Screenwriter, Gamewriter, Journalist, Publisher

I'm new to the Steemit arena, and so I've decided that the time is right for me to introduce myself to the Steeming community. This will also be a valuable introduction to various teams that I work with that do not know just how much I am involved with.

So let's get started. This is me, introducing me.....

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Shaun, the person

I am born and bred in South Africa, and have never travelled outside my country, never having the means to do so. I was born in Ottery, but grew up in Vredenburg along the west coast until I was about 13. Then we moved to the City, which has always been too busy for me.

In school I was always fascinated with writing and storytelling. I drowned myself in fantasy novels, while enjoying horror in the forms of movies and games. This sculpted the imagination that would lead to me specialising in fantasy and horror projects, while trying other genres out just to see if I can.

I was always an introvert, even since the tender age of 6. My parents tried to organise me a birthday party, which I escaped quickly to hide in my room rather. My life has been a rollercoaster ride, which I will not share hear due to the sensitive nature of many of the incidents. Yet, it has helped form the man I am today.

It's hard for me to make true friends, but when I do I hold onto them as much as possible. I've moved more than 20 times in my life, and making friends became a chore when I knew it was fleeting. Now that I am married with two children and more or less have more control over my own life, it's easier to make true friends knowing I am more likely to keep them. Strangely, it's easier to make friends with people overseas than locally. I guess cause then I don't actually have to make plans to visit any of them. Yes, I love my home and I'd rather spend a weekend locked up in my house than going out to party.

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Shaun, the author

https://celenicearth.wordpress.com

I started writing my first jottings when I was 16 in 1996, following the divorce of my parents. It was a hard time for me, which found an outlet in poetry. Between 1996 and 2003 I had written over 500 poems, which I am still planning to publish in one volume. During 1998 when I was in matric, the final year of school, that I started drawing plans for novels and stories I wanted to write at the back of examination papers that I had finished early. It was only in 2002, when I was 22 years of age, that I would start writing the history of my first epic fantasy series, The Celenic Earth Chronicles.

It was in 2006 when I decided to take my writing seriously and finish the first novel in that series, Shadowolf Volume 1: The Windfarer. It was taken up by an American self-publishing company called Raider Publishing International and published in 2007. Shadowolf Volume 2: The DragonRider was completed in 2007 and then published by Raider in 2008.

As I was using the bonus I was received at the end of every year by my employer for these services, and since Raider was starting to show bad signs in terms of our working relationship, I decided to not publish Shadowolf Volume 3: The Sadgi with them even though it was completed in 2008.

My career picked up at this point and I started studies towards a degree in construction management, facilities management. I dropped my writing to focus on my studies and also to sort my life out, since that too was dwindling into the abyss. Social media and chatting platforms opened up, and I found that I was quickly becoming addicted to discovering the whole wide world and the vices that came with it.

It would only be in 2015, when my studies came to an end, that I decided the time was right to republish the first two novels and publish the Sadgi. This was largely motivated by the fact that my request to write Silent Hill fanfiction novels was approved by Konami distribution agents here in South Africa. So I approached local publishers, African Publishers (Pty) Ltd, and once again paid to have all three books published.

Silent Hill: Betrayal was published in 2016, but we'll get to that in the publishing section....

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Shaun, the screenwriter

https://www.stage32.com/profile/544422/shaun-jooste

I started my screenwriting experience in 2015 when I read through David Trottier's Screenwriting Bible and obtained Final Draft 9. After studying the book and teaching myself how the craft worked with lots of internet research, I started my first feature film screenplay, a space travelling science fiction film called "The Space Drifter". I became a member of the Writers Guild of South Africa and registered the script.

A month after completion, I submitted it to the 2015 Cinequest Screenwriting Competition where it was recommended by the judges as "having solid bones and great potential", and would have made it to the top winners list had the competition not been so fierce. In 2017, it won 2017 Logline of the Year Award during the Crime/Mystery Film Festival.

The reason it has not been produced yet is mostly my inability to market myself properly or to get the attention of the top script head hunters in the industry. Also, with how busy I've been, I have not been sending enough queries out for the script as I should have. My attention has moved away from screenwriting for a while.

That has changed though. This year started with me turning my attention to the film adaptation of Australian author Lynette Greenfield's drama novel, "The Day it Rained Forever", and the film adaptation of my own novel, "Silent Hill: Betrayal". I also have a thriller called "The Writer" I want to work on, and a crime tv series based in South Africa.

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Shaun, the publisher

http://celenicearthpublications.wordpress.com

When Silent Hill: Betrayal was ready to publish in 2016, I had a big decision to make. Entrust this golden gem with a self-publisher, or just publish it myself. I had learnt quite a bit about publishing from my experience with self-publishers and realised it was not as hard as many had made it out to be. So, being the autodidact that I am, I set about learning the entire process and established a publishing label, Celenic Earth Publications, to publish under. The entire Celenic Earth Chronicles was published again, this time under my own name, as a test run, and then Silent Hill: Betrayal was published.

In 2017, through many contacts I made at the beginning of that year, I decided to establish anthologies of short stories with writers new to the publishing arena. Celenic Earth Anthologies quickly grew, until I scheduled two anthologies to be published every month. CEP became a mechanism to not only publish my own stories, but anthologies too.

By August, I realised just how big CEP could become. It branched out into several divisions, each with their own focus, namely books, games, movies, music and comics. I developed an operating model whereby each section could support the other. Book writers are provided opportunities to write for games or films, game writers offered opportunities to write short stories, etc. It then became imperative to register CEP as an official private company, which was done at the end of August.

Together with all this, Guinness World Records approved an official attempt at the record for the Most Authors Contributing Towards an Anthology of Short Stories. The record at that time was 50 writers, and we accomplished 108 writers. We are busy with the verification process, whereby we need to sell 1000 copies, and anyone can assist with this endeavour on our order page, available through your preferred retail online outlet. (http://bit.ly/2DUl08o)

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Shaun, the journalist

https://airentertainment.biz

My journey into becoming a journalist or article writer started when Andi Hodgetts interviewed me for Pulse Entertainment for the new gaming division that had started up. A few weeks after that, my performance led me to becoming the Head: Gaming Division for Pulse E. It was not long before GameTyrant snatched me up, and thereafter GeekTyrant to write about gaming news and other entertainment.

After a few months of writing for Pulse E, things fell apart in the management of the site. Andi and I pulled out, with the remainder of the gaming writers we had brought into the team joining us. Andi and I decided to start our own gaming news outlet, so under Celenic Game Studios we established AIR Entertainment (Announcements, Interviews and Reviews).

As you can see, at this point I was rather busy and had a lot going on. By December 2017, I decided I needed to cut out a few things, as my novels, publishing company and own gaming news site was being neglected to help other sites and people along. So I pulled out of GameTyrant and GeekTyrant to start 2018 fresh with my own work.

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Shaun, the gamewriter

http://www.antreya-chronicles.com/shaun-m-jooste/

At the beginning of 2017, I joined Antreya Studios as a creative writer for their upcoming epic fantasy MMORPG, Antreya Chronicles. We've developed the first part of the game in terms of the main plot and some side quests, which then became a published novel, "Heroes of Antreya: The Journey Begins". There is still a long road ahead, I am enjoying writing for this game immensely.

Recently, I've been requested to be involved with a game currently in development by another game development studio, but I cannot share any details on that as yet.

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Conclusion

So that's me. I was going to write a small article as an intro, and then felt it was an injustice to myself and what I have accomplished in the last few years. I hope you have all enjoyed reading this about me, and hope to hear from more of you in my comments.