Growing up, I was a pretty standard kid. I started trending geeky early on though, and it only got worse from there. I blame the camping trips throughout my life, mixed in with adventures with friends early on, many involving braving the railroad tracks near my house. Then the influences came too quickly to stop them. SEGA, Star Wars, Mystery Science Theater, and, God help me, Lord of the Rings.

Writing was something that was always there. Well, I guess you can say storytelling was always there. (The stick figure picture books I made as a kid wouldn't exactly count as writing). In high school, I started writing short stories, joined the journalism team, and kept on working on books that would form some of the ideas of my later work.

I love to write stories that show something real. In life, not everything gets wrapped up in a nice bow. Darkness doesn't always get completely pushed back. Those kinds of themes are what the characters I create have to deal with. That's not to say there isn't hope either.