We present to you writer Casey Hamilton. Casey is the one of author panelists set to appear at the forthcoming Artists in the Afternoon: Prose, Poetry, & More on Saturday, September 3, at the Metropolitan Library, 1332 Metropolitan Parkway SW, Atlanta, GA, from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
“Writing has always been my passion. It’s the one thing that makes me feel most like myself,” said Casey Hamilton in a PrideIndex interview when asked about his writing journey.
In 2013, the Baton Rouge native / Southern University alum followed his dreams and created a YouTube gay web series, JUDYs.
His debut novel MENAFTER10 follows a group of young, Black gay men looking for meaning, identity, and connection in the digital age.
Is this book based on real life experiences of author Casey Hamilton? We shall wait and see what he has to say on September 3, 2022.
Website: www.recreationaldrama.com
PrideIndex (PI): Tell us something about yourself that no one else knows until now:
Casey Hamilton (CH): My favorite thing to do as a child was to go outside and… think.
PI: Name of book(s) you plan to sell:
CH: MENAFTER10.
PI: Who is your target audience?
CH: Gay men
PI: What is the central message you desire to communicate to the reader?
CH: How hard it is being Black, gay and online.
PI: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
CH: Since fourth grade. My teacher gave us a relatively simple creative writing assignment, which was pretty much busy work, and I turned it into a fully, fleshed-out fantasy epic with unicorns, a princess, and whatnot. I realized that just having the freedom to write a story about anything, where anything could happen that I do or don’t want to happen, was so endlessly exciting to me.
PI: Where do you find your inspiration?
CH: I’m a person of passion, so I try to only write what I feel a fire for. In the case of my first book, MENAFTER10, I felt the story was so necessary and said so much about what I’ve seen and experienced in my life that I couldn’t leave this Earth without writing it. I think writing from a place of passion is very important because writing is hard, and there are days where you want to quit on a project you’ve started. If you truly love what you’re writing, then that passion is going to immediately rule out any notion to quit and keep you committed to realizing the story to completion.
PI: Why did you write this book?
CH: I was at a really low point in my life. I was burned out, depressed, and I felt like I had nowhere to go. I needed to work through what I was going through by doing what I do: creating and writing. I felt like I was writing the book that I wish I would have had when I first started out as a Black gay man because I learned the hard way how hard it was to just exist, really.
PI: How do you nurture ideas from brainstorming until they come to life on paper?
CH: Once again, I let passion rule me when it comes to writing. A book-in-progress should really by the writer’s best friend, in my opinion. When you spend everyday writing, even on the good days and the bad days, the characters feel like family or friends to the writer. Once that happens, you naturally treat them with that same kind of love and care. So, it’s mostly really just about discipline and developing commitment to the characters, the story, and the book itself because once I commit to something, I see it through, and I don’t handle it recklessly just to subvert expectations or achieve some forced plot point. I do what feels natural for my characters and story, not what I want a character or story to do.
