SAN ANTONIO – Preparations for the San Antonio Book Festival are well underway.
It is an annual event that draws thousands of bookworms to the downtown area in the name of learning and literacy. The event will feature the work of several local, regional and national authors.
One of those authors, Johnny Compton, likes to write horror novels.
Compton said he sleeps better at night knowing somewhere out there, someone else isn’t.
“The first time somebody reached out to me on social media and said I gave them a nightmare, I wanted to run a lap around my house to celebrate,” he said.
Compton has been working on novels and short stories for years, writing about things like a haunted house built to spite a neighbor and vampires living in the Texas Hill Country. He says that what really spurred his love of writing was reading.
“My parents always had books around the house, so that really contributed a lot to how I was introduced to the fun and joys of reading,” he said. “Now, I’ve got books all over the floors in my house, but I’ve had to buy like three legit, large-sized new bookshelves just to try to accommodate how many more I’m getting.”
Compton says it makes him feel happy that so many people in town are getting ready to celebrate authors’ works while learning more about writing. He says the first step to becoming a writer is easy: put words on a page.
“I’ve had some people come up to me and say, I want to be a writer. And I ask, well, what have you written? And they’ll tell me what they’ve written. You don’t, you know, you don’t want to be a writer anymore. You are a writer. Once you start writing, that’s what makes you a writer.”
The San Antonio Book Festival starts on April 12 at the Central Library and UTSA Southwest Campus.
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