Hello! My name is Riley Scammahorn. I am an automotive enthusiast and bookworm. Weird combo, right? I thought so too at first.

My love for books started back in elementary school with the “Magic Tree House” series and “The Series of Unfortunate Events.” It was very rare to see me without a book in those days. Unfortunately, my school was one of many that utilized the “Accelerated Reading” (AR) Program to encourage students to read. If you are unfamiliar with the AR program, it essentially categorizes books by reading level, and students are assigned to those levels. Once you read a book, you are tested on what you read. The better you did on the tests, the more “points” you got. At face value, it’s not a bad system, but the issue lies with the grading. You were required to get a certain number of points per month in order to get the grade. I wasn’t a bad reader by any stretch, but I was a very slow one. The constant struggle to read as fast as possible and still retain information swiftly killed my love for reading in the most efficient way possible. So I did what every boy at that age does; I switched to video games.

When it comes to video games, I primarily played racing games (shocker, right?). My first racing game was Forza Horizon (the original) and Forza Motorsport 4. I’ll admit, when it came to Motorsport, it was primarily my friends and I playing bumper cars on Daytona Speedway (and trying to make the most brutal head-on collisions we could), but the love of cars started growing with Forza Horizon. Within Horizon, I learned basic car parts, how to shift a manual transmission (with a clutch), and all the different types of cars. I’ve been playing racing games ever since.

Throughout middle and high school, my automotive passion blew up. I started going to races and car shows with my grandpa, I was in auto shop class in school, and I worked on my own car A LOT. My love for reading was still dead. I tried reviving it several times, but at that point, I was heavily into cars, and I was looking for a “Fast and Furious,” or “Need for Speed” -esque book. Couldn’t find one. So it stayed dead. From high school, I went to college and earned my associate’s degree in Automotive Collision Repair, and went to work at a dealership.

I quickly discovered that as much as I loved cars, the automotive industry was not for me. So, I found my way into the retail industry while I figured out a plan. Just like before, I tried to reignite my old passion for reading. This time, I was successful. I focused less on racing and just read something exciting. However, I still wanted a good racing book. So, I tried again. I did a bunch of research for fictional racing books, but could not find any (that weren’t in the romance/smut genre). I was getting frustrated. It was an itch that needed to be scratched, and nobody had a backscratcher. Then one night, it hit me. I said, “F*** it. I’m gonna write my own!”

I started doing research, outlining a story, brainstorming with family, and after a year of writing and editing, I self-published my first book, “Cutting it Close: Racing for Redemption.” Between trying to make my own publishing company to produce the book (which failed tremendously), and the overall production of the book itself, I lost thousands of dollars. Still, I was proud of my book. For a first-time writer (whose worst class in school was English), I felt that my 30,000-word book was impressive. So I self-published it to the world using Barnes and Noble Press (I tried Amazon, but their customer service was so abysmal that it wasn’t worth it). I also printed my own stock of the book so I could sell them in person at my local Cars and Coffee and a couple of school events. I managed to make a couple of hundred dollars back.

Years have passed since I released that book. I initially wanted to keep writing (I had the trilogy planned out in my head since day one of writing), but life definitely needed to take priority. BUT, I have circled back to it with a new plan! I’m going to write my trilogy as one long book and get it traditionally published. It’s a huge task, but I’m ready for the challenge (just like I was ready for the challenge when I initially started writing). I’ve also had a couple of other writing ideas floating in my head. However, the first rule of writing that everyone will tell you is to NEVER MULTITASK, and they’re right. If you start too many projects, you’ll never finish any of them, and what good will that do your readers? So, I created a plan. I will dedicate one week out of every month to write short stories of my ideas (like a TV show). Then the other three weeks are dedicated to my main project (the novel).

Thank you so much for taking an interest in me. I hope my story inspires others to write too. It’s not easy by any stretch, but it’s not nearly as difficult as people make it seem, either. Please enjoy my works as I’ve enjoyed writing them.