Fantasy Novelist
Let me begin by saying thanks for stopping in. I'll try not to ramble too terribly much.
My family served in the U.S. Air Force for most of my childhood, and we moved around quite a bit. I draw from my experiences growing up a perpetual outsider, and from my adult life as a social minority to appeal to the feeling of alienation and loneliness that many fiction readers endure on a day-to-day basis. Hope, betrayal, retribution, untapped potential and unlikely friendships are some of the more frequent themes in my work.
While I have more experience with fantasy than anything else, my style and skill are growing with every new manuscript I write. I make it a point to try out different genres and settings – to step outside my comfort zone and see what I can do. My gracious test readers (a scattered handful of good friends from around the country, who possess rare and invaluable insight, experience and education) kindly lend me their time as test readers and editors. Their advice and input are often hard to swallow, to be sure, but they help me exercise my voice as a novelist, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
One of the things I've learned so far about being a novelist is that it takes a lot of work outside the manuscript in order to make it to store shelves. I wish that I'd spent more time in college learning about the writing and publishing industry, but the process seemed terribly large and daunting. So, instead of learning about the business, I wrote. I found my voice and I wrote. Now, I have two complete manuscripts in varying states of revision and edit, and I'm working on a third. The publication process still intimidates me to no end, but I hope that this web page and my podcasting will help me attract attention to my work and attract people who can help me find my place in the publishing world.