About Me

I knew I wanted to tell stories from the time I was a boy. I started writing when I was in middle school, inspired by several fantastic books and series (and a few movies) that sparked my imagination. By the time I was in high school, I had written over 1,000 pages of a fantasy trilogy. It was, admittedly, not good, as it was an obvious ripoff of both The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and was, shall we say, rather immature, but that experience was absolutely formative in my skill-building journey as a writer. In my senior year of high school, I started another book, this one called The Starcrest Stone, and I imagined it might be the start of a series of books about a group of friends from two different worlds who hop across dimensions, visiting at least one new fascinating world in each installment. 

I finished the first draft during my first year of college and subsequently made one of the dumbest mistakes of my life. Impatience had always been one of my character flaws, and rather than spend time editing, revising, and soliciting feedback on the story, I rushed to send off query letters to every major publisher of fantasy fiction I knew. To my surprise, after a few weeks, I received a letter from an editor with one of those publishing houses, telling me that my query had been passed to him for consideration. He requested my manuscript! My query letter, consisting of a description of the story and an outline of the book, was evidently good enough to actually interest a real editor. I was thrilled! I could be a published author by age 20! It could be a dream come true. The only problem...I knew I had gotten ahead of myself. In a BIG way.

The manuscript was not ready, and deep down, I knew it. I retyped the book (yes, on a typewriter) and sent it in. I probably don’t even need to describe what happened, but to paraphrase, the feedback I received was something along the lines of, “While you have an interesting idea here, you’ve seemed to sacrifice character development for plot.” 

Let’s just say that took the wind out of me. I went on to get my undergraduate degree in Mass Communication and English and a graduate degree in English, then ended up teaching English at the university level for just over 6 years full-time before transitioning to the corporate world and settling into technical writing and corporate training jobs. But the need to tell stories was always there, gnawing at me. Numerous ideas for books came to mind that I pocketed away for a later time. Finally that time came -– much later than it should have come. And here I am now, close to finishing my first real novel after all these years. The story I’m telling in this book is a deeply personal one and I hope it resonates with an audience. Beyond this “new” first work, I have many plans going forward and hope I’ll be able to bring them to fruition. 

 

Influences

I can’t talk about my love of fiction without mentioning the stories and authors who inspired me. So here’s a partial list of the biggest influences on my literary journey through the years. They're also generally in chronological order of when I experienced them.

• The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
• The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
• Star Wars (the original trilogy)
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks
• The Elfstones of Shannara - Terry Brooks
• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - Stephen R. Donaldson
• All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
• Edgar Allen Poe's short stories
• Jealousy - Alain Robbe-Grillet
• Dune - Frank Herbert
• Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
• Children of Dune - Frank Herbert
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
• Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
• Jazz - Toni Morrison