About John C. Dupré
John C. Dupré (originally John C. Tremblay) is a science fiction and fantasy author from New England. He’s a graduate of University of Massachusetts at Lowell; and his first flash fiction piece was published in AlienSkin Magazine in 2005. Subsequent work has been published in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, New Realm (previously eFantasy), and Silver Blade.
When he's not writing, he enjoys reading, painting, building LEGO sets, and spending time with family and friends. Here's more about John's writing journey and his interests in his own words.
The Beginnings
I began my writing career as a young boy, typing the great American novel on my pillow at night before going to sleep. When I was in seventh or eighth grade, I wrote my first attempt at comical fiction. It was a very short and very silly story that poked fun at the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. I showed it to my brother and he rolled on the floor laughing as he read it. Little did I know it then, but I had planted the seeds for a life long journey of madcap storytelling. In high school I further refined my skills by writing humorous notes to my female friends. I created a character called the Naughty Nutty Knight and addressed the letters to the fair maidens, telling them of my adventures with my frenchy bread and the hamster that I rode upon. By Sophmore year, I had taken to parodying the poetry that we were reading in class. As I passed a poem to one of my friends, the teacher intercepted it and decided to read it aloud. He, along with the class, laughed... hard. Instead of getting in trouble, I was praised for my work, and created parodies for many of the poems we read that semester. He even commented on my report card about how my mock poems showed my understanding of the subject matter.
Novel Ideas
When I was 16, I decided to write a fantasy adventure novel for young adults. I wrote the entire thing out by hand and had one of my aunts type it up for me. Despite getting feedback from friends and a teacher, and despite working on it for over a year, I was never successful with it. I rewrote the first 6 chapters so many times that by the time I was done, the rest of the novel had nothing to do with the beginning. I had also started writing the first and second sequels to the novel and after all my revisions, they were pretty much useless too. Discouraged, I gave up writing for awhile.
Telling Stories
I didn't start writing again seriously until I was in college. I penned a science fiction story that was more melodrama than sci-fi. Other stories followed. I sent each one out to magazines, and each one came back rejected. The limited feedback I got was pretty harsh, but in looking at what I had written, I can't say that I blamed them. I was still very naive and thought that all it took to write a story was to finish writing it. I never realized how much revision was actually part of the process. In my late teens and early twenties I was introduced to the author who would change my writing for the better. I picked up Mort by Terry Pratchett, and was immediately drawn into his novels and his style of writing. I decided to give comical fantasy a try once again, and I wrote the original version of my short story, The Darker Side of Magic. It too was rejected by every place I sent it to, but it inspired me to keep writing comical tales.
Romps in Ratrilpot
After watching a special on television where the hostess changed her outfit between commercial breaks, I was inspired to create the vain and vindictive Queen of Ratrilpot. I drafted out a novel featuring the Queen and then started rewriting it, and rewriting it, and rewriting it, and rewriting it some more as I tried to figure out what kind of story I really wanted to tell. When I got stuck, I wrote short stories about some of the other characters in the world, planning to build up an audience for my novel through short fiction. In 2005 I had my first flash fiction piece published: "Mother Knows Best," featuring Lavender Pie. Over the next decade, I had another 16 pieces published in various online markets. I never gave up on the dream of having a Ratrilpot novel published, but I also decided I wanted to try out something new.
Killing Time
Even though I'd had some success with writing fantasy tales set in another world, I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something that was set in the world we live in. I took the mantra "write what you know" to heart, and started writing a contemporary fantasy tale set in New England, where I grew up. Autumn was the perfect time of year to set the story, as it’s hard not to think of New England without thinking of the Fall foliage. A desire to make the story “spooky” had me settling on Halloween and a big creepy hotel in the woods. From there, the novel took on a life of its own, with random elements from my younger days (such as the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller and my visit to see Phantom of the Opera at the Wang Theatre) inspiring different scenes and “set pieces” within the insane, impossible, hotel. I put the finishing touches on Killing Time at the Lingerroot Inn, entered it into Amazon's Breakout Novel Contest in 2014, and saw my entry make it to the quarter finals. I continued working on it and released it in 2016.
Instructional Videos
In 2023 I got the opportunity to speak with a class of students about inspiration and writing. I've been an award winning technical writer for many years, and mentoring is often part of my job, so I thought it would be a great way to put my skills to use and share what I'd learned. That talk inspired me to go broader, so I created an instructional video on the topic. It was a lot of fun incorporating different forms of creative elements to bring it to life, but also a lot of work because I decided to do it all myself: script writing, drawing graphical elements, being on camera, and editing the video. I created a YouTube channel to make the video available to the public, and over the course of the next year I created 4 more videos. I've got ideas for several more, but there's no end to the creative projects I want to work on, so for now I'm back to writing.
Paintings and Other Artwork
Back when I was younger, I pursued other creative outlets beyond writing. In 7th grade, I created comic strips featuring a bird-brained love bird, his impatient girl friend, and his mischievous and sarcastic pet turtle (who no one could understand). In college, I started painting and creating art on the computer. I'm still doing those things today as time permits, even if writing is my primary focus. But those skills have helped me work on graphical assets for my website, videos, and more.
