Sam Ruleman
Bewildering Stories biography
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My name is Sam Ruleman. I think it’s safe to say that I am very easily inspired by movies, music, and even video games. Since I was young, all these things kept congealing in my head, forming ideas one after another. Characters in fantastical lands, worlds of danger, and journeys of excitement. To be honest though, writing these ideas down into stories was never really my plan. I wanted to make them into video games.
That began to change when I was already late into college, working on my computer science degree. One day, a friend of mine approached and asked if I had ever played Dungeons and Dragons before. Of course, I’m a bit of a nerd, so I had heard about DnD, but unfortunately never really played it before. So, together with a few other friends, we began our first DnD campaign. Little did I know, that this alone would absolutely skyrocketed my interest in writing.
So on a late night in October, 2020, I whipped out my old laptop which could barely run Word, and just started writing. Fast forward a few months and I already had an outline for a book! A whole book! I couldn’t believe it. If I never went anywhere else with writing, I might’ve been fine with that. I was just proud that I finally sat down and did something. Put those ideas on paper (electronically, of course). But no, I went and turned that outline into a first draft. I liked it, but I wanted some outside thoughts, so I started joining critique groups; writing communities, where I formed new friendships and found mentors. I felt like I was finally breaking past some sort of shell that I never knew was there.
It was in one of these critique groups that we had a friendly short-story competition. Something small for fun, to get the creative juices flowing. With the theme of the competition being: misbelief/disbelief, I wrote “Sugarbomb.” Now, unfortunately, I didn’t win. But that was alright, because I loved the story. So much so, that I went back to it a short time later and prettied it up a bit; refined some edges, tweaked a few things. Then, in my excitement, I posted the story to Wattpad.
As a new writer, I didn’t know anything about rights, or publishing, or all that fancy complicated stuff. I just wanted to share my writing. So to say it hurt when I found I couldn’t submit to journals because I posted my story on Wattpad, would be an understatement. I removed the story off Wattpad, but I suppose it was already too late. That’s when I found Bewildering Stories. Your submission guidelines, and straightforward, easy-to-follow process, made the choice of choosing Bewildering Stories a no-brainer.
Copyright © 2023 by Sam Ruleman
