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Ian Rose Castro (he/they) is a queer Latine author who grew up on Long Island. He was an avid reader as a child, but as he grew older, he often wished he could see more characters like him and his friends in the books he read. He had always loved creative writing, so he decided to try writing his own.
Ian graduated from Drexel University magna cum laude with a B.S. in Music Industry, dual minors in Communication and Business Administration, and a Certificate in Creative Writing and Publishing. He loves to listen to music, binge trashy TV, and cuddle with his dog.
I first devised the idea for It Could Always Be Worse when I was a junior at George W. Hewlett High School. In fact, Woodview was loosely inspired by Hewlett and the surrounding area (although really, the series could take place in any affluent Long Island neighborhood).
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I wrote a brief outline but then quickly forgot about it.
A few years later, I was attending Drexel University in Philadelphia when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. During quarantine, I found the original outline and wrote a few chapters between online classes. Then in-person classes resumed and I put Woodview Stories on the backburner while I focused on completing my degree.
Shortly after graduating, I showed my mother what I had written. She encouraged me to take some time off before getting a "real job" and said she would support me while I focused on finishing the book. Within a year, I not only finished the first novella, It Could Always Be Worse, but also wrote a sequel, and got halfway through a third. I also outlined ideas for over a dozen more.
Around the time that I was finishing up the third novella, I realized that the first three stories actually told one complete, larger story. So I decided to revise and rework them into my first full-length novel My Side of the Story. I plan to continue telling the stories of these characters in future novels.