Professional Life
I became a freelance writer through a somewhat circuitous route that involved several different jobs and some random coincidences. I never set out to be a writer, yet here I am. Sometimes Life puts you where you need to be. That’s good because my original plan was to become an astronaut. (I even went to Space Camp as a kid. Three times. Space Camp is an under-appreciated 80’s movie, by the way.) When the Space Shuttle program was scuttled, I was pretty darn grateful that Life had decided I should be a writer.
I freelance in many different niches including technical writing, corporate communications, marketing, personal finance, and the board gaming industry. My latest venture is writing reviews of Euro-style board games, and I’m beginning work on a board game related web comic.
I’m also a novelist. You can see my books here. There are other works in progress, as well, including more YA novels (contemporary and fantasy) and a fantasy novel for adults. I also have one short story contest win under my belt. Technically, I started writing fiction at the age of six when my parents bought me a child’s typewriter for Christmas and agreed to pay me a penny per page for any stories I churned out. Naturally, such a loose payment scheme led to much abuse and a lot of bloated and heavily padded stories. I hope I’ve learned to do better.
I’m a member of SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and I’d love to connect with other members!
Personal Life
As for life when I’m not writing, I’m best described as a latent geek. I always had geeky tendencies, but I tried to repress those for stupid reasons. (I wanted to “fit in” and being a geek used to be the epitome of uncool so I tried very hard to be popular and cool, with little success. Moral of the story: You can’t force yourself to be something you aren’t. As noted above, Life will often ignore you anyway and stick you where you belong.) Now I own it and fly my geek flag proudly. I play board games and RPG’s, read everything I can get my hands on (including cereal boxes at breakfast), watch movies in every genre except horror, and play with my dog.
I’m also heavily into sports. I’ve done marathons and 1/2 marathons and in my youth I was a figure skater and tennis player. There’s almost no sport that I won’t watch or try if given the chance. (Except boxing. That one does nothing for me.) My productivity takes a serious hit during the grand slams of tennis, the Olympics, college football season, and college basketball season. In other words, pretty much all year.