A Journey From Literary Incompetence to… - Verlin Darrow

I began writing books in a campground outside Naples, Italy when I was nineteen. My waiting-for-my-potential-to-manifest girlfriend and I were trapped by a solid week of rain in an awful campground just outside the city limits. Sex workers burned old tires on the adjacent sidewalk to attract customers. I was cranky, bored out of my mind, and depressed.

The first novel that emerged from that twenty dollar tent was hideously amateurish. The quality of my writing progressed all the way up to just plain bad by the time I’d written a few more. That era of my life was characterized by an inability to learn much, since that would’ve entailed acknowledging that I didn’t already know everything.

I let go of writing while I focused on unsuccessfully avoiding work and trying to convince the world that it was fine if my unrealized potential remained unrealized. During that stretch I involuntarily accumulated life experiences that later served me well as an author. I drove a taxi, worked in a factory, suffered a road crew gig, failed as a carpenter, clerked in a hardware store, worked as a night janitor in a high-rise, lived in a women’s dorm, moved around the country, and blew up various relationships by engaging in self-centered behavior. Apparently, that latter item reflected my potential still awaiting activation.

Eventually I bowed to reality and attended college and graduate school, which temporarily emptied me of the internal resources I needed to keep writing. I morphed into a university coach and physical education. teacher after a post-graduate stint playing professional volleyball back in Italy. My time there was lowlighted by the return of depression. Almost no one spoke English, the housing they provided me was in a seasonally dormant seaside village with only stray dogs for company, I had nothing to read or any other medium at my disposal that wasn’t solely in Italian, and it turned out my brain wasn’t keen on learning a new language. So I began to write again in earnest to fill my leisure time and create meaning. The result? Another not-so-great novel.

Flash forward to being married and sitting in my living room with a wife and three dogs. One of them—Lamar—was an escape artist. No fence could restrict his nocturnal search for garbage to eat. As a result, his flatulence was epic. My wife said “Why don’t you write a book called The Dog Who Farted His Way to Mars?” So I did, cleaning up the title for young readers. I followed this up with Nightmares Are Caused By Bad Dust Bunnies. While I loved these and several other children’s books, the publishing world did not share my enthusiasm.

My depression finally forced me to seek therapy, and other circumstances conspired to pressure me as well to come out and play with others instead of hiding behind my walls. In just a few weeks of finally coming into direct contact with the world, I noticed there was more to life than mere logic and science, so I became an intense spiritual seeker. I embarked on an around the world pilgrimage and garnered a guru, who bossed me around for a couple of years.

Eventually, he sent me off to become a psychotherapist, where I learned about his particular psychological diagnosis, so I graduated myself and everyone else out of our community. I’d become a de facto assistant guru by that time, so people listened to me.

As both a therapeutic endeavor and following the write-what-you-know principle, I came up with a mystery in which someone went around bumping off gurus. A small press published this one, as well as a follow-up that delved a bit deeper into the psyche of cult members. At that time, I used a different pen name.

Once again, drawn by other interests (and the carryover of avoiding work), I let go of serious writing for a time. This era embodied a service orientation--helping troubled people as a psychotherapist and mentoring seekers who asked for help. Periodically, I’d manage to eke out forty or fifty pages of a manuscript before I gave up. When I picked some of these up years later, I hardly remembered them.

In the last twelve years, I've felt drawn to the keyboard again, and I finally hunted up expert help and put my nose to the grindstone. I’ve won three book awards, and now I have seven traditionally published mysteries and thrillers out there, including my latest—The Brighter the Light, The Darker the Shadow. I’m hesitant to say I’ve finally realized my potential, but…

Verlin Darrow is a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in La Selva Beach in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. He is a former professional volleyball player, country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, NCAA coach, and an assistant guru in a small, benign cult. A younger Verlin ran a punch press in a sheetmetal factory, drove a taxi, worked as a night janitor, shoveled asphalt on a road crew, and installed wood floors. He barely missed being blown up by Mt. St. Helens, survived the 1985 Mexico City earthquake (8.0), and (so far) has successfully weathered his share of internal disasters.

Verlin began writing novels when he was nineteen. The first one was hideously amateurish. The quality of his writing progressed all the way up to just plain bad by the time he’d written a few more. That era of his life was characterized by an inability to learn much, since that would’ve entailed acknowledging that he didn’t already know everything. Eventually, Verlin morphed into a simulacrum of a mature adult, and has published seven mysteries and thrillers with The Wild Rose Press. The three he submitted to book contests all won awards.

Find out more at https://www.verlindarrow.com.

Article published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - August 2026. Download the full magazine at https://www.relatable-media.com/the-relatable-voice-magazine.