After having been an Army infantry officer leaping out of perfectly-functioning aircraft, a teacher of Crips & Bloods on a wagon train, and Chuck E. Cheese, adding 'author' to the list is almost anti-climactic. Yet here we are.
A native of dead-flat Illinois and now a permanent fixture in the Rocky Mountains (there's some culture-shock for you), I write mostly fantasy and sci-fi, despite making my high school English students scribble non-fiction essays until their brains bleed. Do as I say, not as I do.
Sitting alone in my library writing is about as splendid an activity as someone with Asperger Syndrome could wish. My beloved and long-suffering wife gets stuck in the living room with the basset hound more often than she'd wish, but at least the TV talks to her more than I do.
BRIMSTONE AND LILY, JASPER'S FOUL TONGUE, and JASPER'S MAGICK CORSET are the first 3 books in my Legacy Stone series. They are snarky seriocomic YA takes on traditional quest-lit. The idea started as 'swords-and-sorcery Huck Finn' and took off from there. They include a mind-bogglingly bizarre collection of things: shape-shifting swords, Civil War battles, magic cannonballs, combat pelicans, Captain Nemo's sub, kindly Arab terrorists, swimming trees, cyclopean ogres, zombies, lady ninjas, and poop monsters. BRIMSTONE AND LILY won the Bronze Medal in Sci-Fi/Fantasy at the 2010 Independent Publishers Book Awards.
I began as a playwright (have to make use of that theatre degree somehow), so I also have several books of plays out there. They've been produced in the U.S. and Europe. Nearly all of them are history-based: American Civil War, 17th century France, and 19th century American west. I cleverly managed to put a fight scene into every one of them.
My present addiction is Steampunk, both as author and performer. I teach Bartitsu (Sherlock Holmes' martial art, an actual Victorian discipline) at conventions. PARAGON OF THE ECCENTRIC, my prequel to Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS, won the 2013 Colorado Gold writing contest and is finally available on Amazon.
I do write stories. In fact, "The Day the Earth Couldn't Stand Still," about Broadway musical-loving nanobots in the President's brain, won the Colorado Short Story Contest.
