Chase Webster

Chase Webster's world teems with friends and acquaintances. Most are real. Some aren't. (Take, for instance, that peewee demon in the TCC grad's latest novel, Eat'em.) They all feed his hunger for writing. 

Social interaction's "a great way to build as a writer or a journalist," said Webster, who plans to graduate from The University of Texas at Arlington in 2011 with a journalism degree. "You have to know how people act, what they say, how they think." 

Webster found fertile ground at Southeast Campus for nurturing an extensive social network as he moved toward his Associate of Arts Degree. "TCC is a great environment," he said. "I couldn't walk down a hallway without bumping into someone I know." 

Perhaps most importantly, he met English Instructor Yvonne Jocks. 

With encouragement in Jocks' creative writing course, Webster wrote his first novel, LA Fisher, a crime story published by Amazon.com's vanity operation CreateSpace. 

As an aspiring journalist, Webster covers architecture and sustainability for UTA's student newspaper, The Shorthorn. Journalism's appeal, he said, "is the amount of work and growth that is forced upon you on a day-to-day basis. You can't beat the interview process. You get to talk to a lot of great people." 

Meanwhile, Webster sees commercial value in Eat'em" that should attract an agent and a publisher. "The story chronicles the coming of age of a man named Jacob and his best friend, Eat'em, a foot-tall demon that sold itself into slavery to Jacob when he was a boy." 

Prior to taking Jocks' course, Webster had written stage plays, screenplays and part of a TV series, but "I'd never written a novel. Now, I can't stop."

- By David House