Look and Listen

Biography

Born in 1963, I had the great good fortune of being raised in a loving home with two wacky, wonderful parents and enough animals - mostly dogs, plus horses, chickens, ducks, salamanders, gerbils, and a goat - to fill up Noah's ark. While my first grade teacher informed my parents that I had a reading disability (my Dad's famous quote: "WHAT?!"), that turned out to be a mistake on her part. The most likely explanation is that I was asleep during the test. But the upshot there is that I became an avid reader, so much so that later on in school teachers yelled at me to pry my nose out of whatever I was reading at the time (Robert Heinlein, often enough). Later, in high school, I intermittently kept a journal, and by the time I was in college I was actually dabbling with fiction writing. I regret now not having taken more English courses - creative writing, in particular - but that just wasn't in the cards for me at the time: I was too busy learning Russian! I also joined Army ROTC and was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve at the end of my sophomore year. I'd always had a keen interest in military things, which is one reason that the military SF stories by authors like David Drake and David Weber have always been among my favorites. After college I wound up working for the Federal Government doing a variety of jobs, ranging from technical reporting and analysis to management. It was there that I met the woman of my dreams (and married her!) and her two wonderful boys, who collectively make up the center of my universe.

Inspiration

While growing up, Heinlein stories made up a good chunk of my bookshelf, along with Bradbury. A bit later, Niven and Purnelle took center stage. As an adult, I really dove into military SF by Drake, Weber, White and - more recently - Ringo's Posleen war novels. While I was reading, I was also keeping up on various sci-fi shows on the boob tube. While I was growing up, the original Star Trek was one of my "die before missing" shows, and I would also let my parents know - loudly - if I had to miss one of the Saturday morning "Science Fiction Theater" movies. My favorites as an adult have been Babylon 5, Above and Beyond, and - of course - the Sci-Fi Channel's incredible Battlestar Galactica (needless to say, I watched the original series, as well). But my take on science fiction and fantasy is really a blend of the two. My writing - exemplified in my debut novel "In Her Name" - doesn't focus so much on the science part of the story, but on characters and their relationships. Love, most of all, is for me the most powerful driver in any story: people are willing to sacrifice, to suffer, even to die for love, and so are the characters in my writing. To me, that's what gives a story the greatest depth and the strongest appeal to the reader.