“I remember spending hours and hours of time in my bedroom as a teenager, writing short stories, novels and screen plays,” he said.
After receiving a laptop as a gift, Schulz loved to “make things happen”
“I would be in my room evacuating cities, manipulating the weather, creating communities and societies, and even conjuring up characters with magical powers,” he said.
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READ NOWEventually life got in the way and Schulz turned his passions towards performing drag, leaving his love for words on the back burner.
For eight years, Schulz’s alter ego was the Fabulous Panache, a local drag star who toured the country as hostess for the Vaudeville Circus.
Eventually the character overshadowed her creator and Schulz became determined to find himself again.
“It did get to the point one day where I sat at my dresser, lifeless, holding back tears, because I was forcing myself to pursue something I no longer had interest in doing,” he said.
“Being a very creative person, I have always tried to initiate new things and break outside the box – but Panache was very much holding me back… I had stuff to offer too.”
Schulz is now the marketing and events manager at the Cannington Agricultural, Horticultural and Recreational Society and oversees the creative side of the annual show and the change of pace has reignited his passion for literature.
Glitter, Blood & Tears is a non-fiction novel that follows Mathew, a drag queen who has lost hope and is taking matters in to his own hands.
It is all at once horrific, heart-warming and harrowing and readers will love and loathe the characters.
“My hope is partly that this story, should it reach far enough, becomes partly a bible to those in the world going through issues which both I and others have gone through yet come out the other end just fine,” Schulz said.
“I hope that it can provide some guidance to ‘in the closet’ men, some education to gay teens not yet experienced in sex, and some enlightenment to the importance of never hiding who you are, but being proud of it.”