We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Philip La Croix a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Philip, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I have taken many risks in my lifetime. They are an inherent part of my day job which, oddly enough, is actually my Knight job. Fighting with real swords, jousting, jumping off horses at a full gallop. These are daily tasks for me. That being the case, it goes without saying that this profession has a shelf life. I’ve always known that I would need to find a new career eventually, and at one point, I thought the decision to leave the knight-life behind for a new adventure had been made for me.

For the past ten years or so I have been sowing the seeds to finally become a published author. I had been writing fiction in what little spare time I had to help hone my skills, but it had always taken a back seat to everything else in my life. Nevertheless, I always had a new story on the back burner in my mind. One day, just before the pandemic hit, I was riding a particularly high-spirited horse who reared up, lost his balance, and fell over backwards on top of me, landing straight on my knee. Miraculously, I had no broken bones, but I still needed advanced reconstruction surgery to replace all the tendons and ligaments of my knee. For many (including myself) it was believed to be the end of my knighting career. Then the lockdown started.

I was very fortunate to still be paid my entire wages while recovering at home and used the time to write “The Best Laid Traps.” Once it was finished I knew it was the one I would finally chose to try and get published. In order to help the best chance at success, I knew I was going to need to open myself up to professional criticism; and in a best case scenario, opening myself up to the rest of the world.

As well as being landed on by a horse, I’ve been hit with swords, shields, bucked off and slammed on the ground, etc.; but to me, nothing was scarier than taking this story, that had sole existed in my own head, and letting it out into the world for all others to see. However, this is an absolute necessity if I wanted to succeed in this new career.

The first time I got my manuscript back from a professional editor, she ripped me a new one telling me everything that I had done wrong both in the story and in the writing itself. I’m not going to lie, I felt gutted. It felt like I had climbed the highest mountain I had ever seen in my life, only to find that I had only reached the lowest peak. I felt a little disheartened until I realized that she had done EXACTLY what I had paid her to do; what I needed her to do.

I wanted to begin my writing career by putting my best foot forward, this person was trying to hand me the tools I needed in order to do so. I listened to what she had to say and made the necessary changes to send it into the next round of editing. I had to step out of my comfort zone again risk getting torn apart again in order to get a better product… and I did. However, as I was going through the edits, I found that it was morphing into something better than what I or my editor had in mind in the first place until I ended up with a product that was better than I could have hoped for. This process was like pruning a fruit tree in order to help it grow. The only thing was that I would feel the every snip and cut in order for the tree to reach its full potential.

Every time I submit new work, I choose to take the risk of emotional scarring in order to help my stories, and myself as an author, grow.

Philip, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always been a performer in some way throughout my life. I even went to Cal State Fullerton to further my acting training. While I was going to school I needed a job to help support myself. That was when I got a job as a sound and lighting technician at Medieval Times. For my first day, they had me sit down and watch the show. As I looked down at the knights, I thought to myself, “I want to do that!” So, I did! It was just supposed to get me through college, but I graduated with my bachelors in the theatre arts back in 2011 but kept going with Medieval because it was just too much fun.

One day I had a particularly vivid and scary dream that I decided I needed to get down on paper. I had already fallen in love with fiction and this was my chance to “contribute a verse.” (Thank you Walt Whitman)

It was a disastrous attempt, but it showed me that writing was the ultimate performance piece. Not only do you have to think and act in a believable way for the characters you create, but you have to create the entire world and series of events around them to paint the picture to keep the audience’s attention.

I wrote a few books and short stories before finally breaking through and being published, but each was a great learning experience to help me on my way.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Well, obviously the ultimate goal is to be able to completely support myself with my stories. Being able to bring home the money is an unfortunate necessity in this world, so if you have to do it, you want it to be by doing something you love.

Beyond that, however, is the need to share these stories with the world. I have tons of what I believe to be great story ideas and I feel it would be a shame to not share it with all others who would listen. Especially in a current society of reboots and remakes. I’m not against these things, but I feel we all need something new as well as remembering the glory days.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I absolutely love it whenever someone tells me about having a particular emotional reaction to something I’ve written. I love hearing, “So and so made me so mad when…” “It blew my mind when…” or “So and so was such a BAMF.” To know that people are having actual connections with figments of my imagination blows my mind and shows me that I must be doing something right.

Another thing that I love hearing is when someone tells me that they couldn’t put my story down, It (thankfully) is one of the most consistent things that I keep hearing. I have had multiple women, who don’t normally stay up past nine in the evening, tell me that they didn’t get to bed until four in the morning because they kept telling themselves, “One more page,” or “One more chapter.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.philiplacroix.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philip.lacroix_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Philip.Lacroix06
• Other: Amazon author profile: https://www.amazon.com/Philip-La-Croix/e/B0BZ96F56V/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1