The Greatest Adventure is What Lies Ahead

When I was eleven years old, I first read JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit. And almost instantly, page by page, and word by word, I fell in love with Middle Earth, fantasy, and stories in general. At thirteen, I wrote my first short story – 14 pages long, when the assignment only called for 2 – entitled The Case of the Purloined Pussy (about a stolen pet cat – don’t get any funny ideas!). Senior year of high school, I put together a one hour James Bond spoof film for my Speech & Media class. After graduating from Ohio University, I wrote, directed, and produced a full-length independent feature film: Eclipse.

When I finally hit thirty, I hadn’t done much of what I had set out to do in this life. I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t famous. I hadn’t traveled the world. I hadn’t gotten published. So a couple years later, I moved to South Korea and began this very blog site in the hopes that it would become my online portfolio and help me get freelance work as a writer and editor. A couple years into the blog, I finally finished and published a middle grade novel called Don’t Mess with Coleman Stoops (available on Amazon!). I lived in six different countries on four different continents and visited almost thirty others in the time I was an expat overseas.

I fell in love and brought my beautiful wife Jen with me on all of our new adventures. And boy, did we have some adventures! However, as the theme song of the cartoon version of The Hobbit I loved so much as a child exclaims: the greatest adventure is what lies ahead.

Oh, the Places We’ve Been!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, family and friends, one and all… It is the most amazing privilege and pleasure of my life to announce that Jen and I are about to embark on the most important adventure life can throw at you… parenthood. We are expecting our first baby!

I cannot wait to meet her and I cannot wait for all of you to meet her. But with her birth comes a shifting in priorities. With family, a full-time job, and other writing that’s more important than a blog, as of spring 2019, Lost In Translation will officially be retiring. The articles I’ve written will remain online for your reading pleasure (as well as the photography), but I will not be updating it anymore. The time that I spent on the Internet and playing video games will transition to baby-time. But please continue to look for my novels on Amazon as I get them out there, which I will continue to do as time permits.

Baby’s First Photo!

Needless to say, Jen and I are beyond excited for this new chapter in our lives to begin. It really will be our greatest adventure yet!

Signing off…

-Justin