About The Author

“Who am I?” is a question that has stumped scholars, philosophers, and politicians since the dawn of time. Thankfully, I’m none of those things. I’m a writer – which basically means that I have thoughts on the topic. Whether they’re amusing or not I’ll leave to your sensibilities, but they will at least be authentically About The Author. Of that, you have my word.

Short answer – I am a writer. I’m a father of five who writes in the wee hours of the morning. During daytime hours I am a technical salesman who helps to design and build food and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. It’s hard to divorce oneself from one’s roles, but I like to hope I’m a critical and divergent thinker; a creative person who loves to solve complex problems. That creative drive is what fuels my writing.

Long answer (for the curious, intrepid, or masochistic among you) – I’m a nerd. Always have been. I’m the oldest of a giant, loud, messy, fun homeschool family (I have 13 brothers and sisters) and grew up in the Midwest. My Dad was in the US Air Force when I was young. We moved a lot, even lived in Tokyo, Japan for 3 years. But we settled in almost the dead center of the country many moons ago. Moving so much contributed to a very low friend pool. So also did my own neurological disorders. Books were both a safe space and a constant source of companionship to me as a child.

Anything that was science fiction was thrilling. From Jules Verne to Isaac Asimov to Frank Herbert and everything in between, I was fascinated, enthralled, enraptured – you get the idea. I love science fiction deeply. All of it spoke to me – the innovative thought of futurism, the organic evolution of dystopia, the meticulous detail of world-building, it was all intensely invigorating. I read voraciously, sometimes multiple books in a day (I read really quickly), and soon became convinced that I should join the ‘club’ by writing my own books. I knew what a good book was verses a bad book. How hard could it be?

I tried to write my first book at 15. It was an allegorical science fiction fantasy that, in hindsight, was well beyond my abilities. I poured my heart and soul into that ambitious project for 18 months. At the end of it, I had 200 pages of handwritten story in spiral bound notebooks.

Everyone hated it. I showed it to many people, and (outside my family) the best comment that I got was the following: “wow, you have some really good ideas in here – you should give this story to someone who can write.”

Ouch. I accepted as fact that I could not write and moved on with my life. But it galled me that something that I had always scored very well in academically was so far outside my grasp. So, I practiced. Constantly. I always threw my writing away or deleted it after I wrote, but I worked through writing guides and manuals as I sought the ever-elusive narrative perfection that would finally allow me to communicate effectively with whoever was listening.

Eventually, I got better. I didn’t know it at the time, oddly. In some silly way, all those harsh criticisms from my childhood never really left my mind. I knew I was practicing; I should have assumed that it was going to result in growth. I kept writing and discarding it. For ten years. It had become a hobby for me, one that I enjoyed, but it wasn’t about the final product as much as it was about the process of creation. It was as if the final painting didn’t matter, only the process of mixing the colors and watching the form and shape grow into something useful before tossing aside the finished product as garbage.

The change from ‘I can’t write’ to ‘maybe I can do this’ was sudden, like a burst of sunlight into an old, forgotten crypt. I found a folder of short stories in a discarded external hard drive. To my great surprise, as I read through them, I found them to be very good. I showed them to others. They agreed that the stories, against all odds, were excellent.

I didn’t immediately set out to write a book. I just kept at the short stories. A few months later, I had a short story that I wrote in a single night in a hotel in Houston, Texas on a road trip. That story, however, refused to be finished. It wormed its way into my mind, so I kept letting it spill over onto paper. By the time I looked up, I was fifty thousand words deep into what was clearly becoming a novel. That’s how HOLD was born. A short story that wasn’t content with its transient life. It demanded more, and I finally had the belief required to ante up and grit through the process of its birth.

Honestly, it wasn’t until I was almost finished with the fourth book in the Ion Heroes Series that I ever said the words “I am a writer” out loud. I still said things like “I like to write”, or “I’ve written a couple of novels”. Even after all that hard-won evidence, I still didn’t believe that I was a writer.

Make no mistake, writing does not come easily to me. It is a hard fought, unnatural, otherworldly experience. I also love to forge knives and tools with a hammer and anvil. Writing reminds me of that. It’s a hot, sweaty, messy process. It often results in things that surprise even me. The key is to let the story shape itself under the hammer without losing sight of the final goal. That’s why I love it. Writing, to me, is as much about problem solving and discovery as it is about saying what I ‘want to say’.

My biggest hope with my writing is that it ignites thought and elicits questions in your mind as you read. I hope that my passion for knowledge and understanding is evident. More importantly, I hope that it takes you on a journey that awakens ideas and dreams inside you in new ways. I hope it befriends you as the books I love befriend me. I hope you laugh and cry. I hope, in some small way, that it moves you.

Because that is writing. Because, as I can finally say with confidence, I am a writer.