Alec Pangia Books

I have just come upon an interesting question: How do you use music in your writing process? Well, I'm sad to say that instead of just giving a one-sentence answer and letting everyone move on with their lives, I am instead going to adapt the question and talk about the role that music plays in my life, because honestly, it's an important one. Oh, those long, long days come to mind where I know exactly what I want to write, know the exact scene that needs writing, rewriting, editing or deleting, but I just can't quite get my fingers to fall upon the keys. I'm too busy thinking about TV shows that I like. I'm too busy staring around the room at all of my electronics and thinking of how much fun I would have if I just decided to play hooky for the day. Worst of all, I get distracted by another story in my head.   There is a task to be done, a story that needs attention, but my mind just wanders wherever it wants, and trying to grab it and anchor it back cr...

I was recently asked the following question: If someone gave you a free plane ticket, where would you go? Folks, if someone ever asks you that question, do the following: Confirm whether or not you get a roundtrip, because there’s no use getting a free plane ticket if you have to pay for the trip home! For now, let’s assume that the trip is covered. I can just get on a plane, go anywhere in the world that I want, and come home on the next flight. Hmmmm… I’m stumped. I have always been a person who loves to travel. As a child, I was brought to three amazing places by my amazing mother and had a delightful set of adventurous experiences. The three times I have traveled out of the country are as follows: Once in grade school to Cancun, Mexico; once in high school to Amsterdam, Holland; and my personal favorite, once in grade school with my mother and my brother to Rome, Italy! Needless to say, these three trips were amazing . I met a wide variety of people, saw incredib...

Awhile back I wrote a post about three members of the family—Sophie, the Labradoodle, Abby, the Akita/Whippet mix, and Joey, the Yorkie Poo I inherited from my grandfather.  But not long after I wrote that post, a new member of the family appeared. As an early Christmas present in November 2017, my mother brought home a puppy and said, “I found the perfect dog for you.” I had never had a pup of my own, only dogs shared by the family, and the little guy my grandfather left me. The pup that jumped into my arms that day was a half German Shepherd, mixed with Labrador, Staffordshire, Bulldog, Boxer and Chow Chow... a total mutt! But when you see her, you see that predominant German Shepherd she gets from her father. I named her Maggie and fell in love within the hour.   Maggie has been here for a year-and-a-half, now. She came to me at 5 months old, with a birthday in June. Soon enough, she will be two years old. Maggie has a number of goofy habits. She likes t...

STORYTIME! The year was 2016. After I left my first part-time job at Stockton University, many things happened. I was trying a few different jobs, among them recording high school football games and shelving at the Ocean County Library. But the job that made me the most money was serving at the country club down the road from my house. Waiting tables was something I always dreaded, due to the chaotic nature of the industry and my aversion to being overwhelmed with disorganized tasks, but I bucked up and did the job as best I could. In 2015, my grandmother died. It was the first major loss I had felt in my adult life, devastating in many ways, and an important learning experience. Later, in 2016, right in the middle of our story, my grandfather, too, would pass away. The years of 2015 and 2016 were the years I learned about loss, and went through many different stages. First, there was grief. During a few weeks off work, I felt no desire to get out of bed, rolling out ...

Greetings friends. So not long ago, a friend and I went to see Sweeney Todd at a small theater in Vineland. Indeed, the bloody revenge play is something that I found interesting the moment that I first laid eyes on it. There was just one problem. When the film version first came out—and as I was unaware of the original Sondheim stage musical—I avoided it for years. It looked too darn gory! And I was pretty timid when it came to dark stories in dimly lit places. Now, not only do I love it, but it influenced my debut novel, Barker’s Rules.  So how did a timid guy like me come to love Sweeney Todd and write Barker’s Rules? I believe it has a lot to do with Sweeney Todd being a revenge play. Revenge plays typically feature a protagonist who has been wronged, who seeks to kill a certain someone by the play’s conclusion, thus making that target the story’s antagonist. Much of the mainstream audience seems to agree that murder is wrong, to be moral is to b...

For me, life has always been systematic. In September, you go back to school. At the end of October, it’s time to trick or treat. From November to the end of December, the holidays consume all. At the end of May, it’s time for summer vacation! And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you celebrate your birthday. Until I turned 21, I unknowingly regarded each of my years as the latest in a cycle of favorite occurrences. These cycles came to be the defining aspect of my life, even after graduating high school, as I went straight into four-year college, straight into another systematic routine. Then, when I finally joined the mainstream workforce, I cruised right from August into September and nothing changed, whatsoever. That gets you thinking. Life changes. Systems eventually end. Routines change. And as you grow older, you acquire new things to look forward to. With that said, there is one system I have begun in my early adulthood that (so far) seems to be forming in...

Someone asked me the other day, “Alec, what are your favorite foods?” and I groaned. The reason I groan at this question is because whenever I list my food choices there is usually a moment of silence as they realize, “Alec, that’s not very healthy.” Well, let’s hit the ground running. I’m 26 years old. I attended college from 2010 to 2014, living out of a few cabinets, a toaster oven, and the local cafeteria. You can imagine what my food choices were during my time in college. Surprisingly, NOT RAMEN NOODLES. My, oh my, it feels good to finally tell someone that. Of all the clichés I embody in my life, the college kid with ramen noodles is not one of them. Sadly, that doesn’t mean I sought out healthier options. Fast food chicken sandwiches were my primary nourishment. Other times I stopped by the nightly café with the roommates to pick up some Papa Johns chicken strips. Fried chicken, fried chicken, and more fried chicken. But all was not lost! I occasionall...

Debra could not sit and wait for the police to find Melanie. Debra could not stand still while her daughter got farther and farther away. But all the same, Debra was trapped, every lead turning up nothing. There was nothing to do but sit and home and wait. So she tore the house apart, searching for anything the kidnapper might have dropped, left behind with her. She even started rummaging through Melanie’s room. And that was when she found it. It was locked up in a box. Sitting on top of the green folder, a large “A+” written in red at the top. The interview had been conducted by a gifted student taking a media elective. And on that sheet, reading one word at a time, Debra could hear her daughter’s voice again. Q: If you had a free day with no responsibilities and your only mission was to enjoy yourself, what would you do? Melanie: I would go somewhere amazing and take pictures. The park, the city, or maybe travel somewhere new. I’d love to go to other countries and ...

I wrote my first book at the age of fifteen. I was a sophomore in high school, sitting in my art class when the idea came to me. Three months later I had an unreadable and completely unworkable draft of a book in my hands. However unreadable, it was a completed manuscript, and it stood as a testament to the career I would one day choose, the work that would become the focus of my college education and the sum of my daily life for years after graduation. I’ve talked a few times about my life as an aspiring writer and all of the things I have learned along the way. What I have not spoken much about is the time before I was fifteen and all of the little breadcrumbs along the pathway that led me to choose writing. Before I was a writer, I was a cartoon fanatic. It was Disney films and cartoon shows day in and day out. Some of my favorite Disney films were Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and so on. My favorite cartoon was Dragonball Z. One thing they ...