Thinking I wanted to be a writer, I went to college for Creative Writing after high school but dropped out when, after my first two years, I had learned nothing about actual writing. I did not end up pursuing writing full time. It can take decades to become a recognized author and people often don’t realize that some of their favorites, folks with eight or ten novels under their belt, still work a day job as their primary source of income. Instead I went to school for computer animation, another field I did not end up working in. In addition to self-publishing, I occasionally contribute 3D content and writing to indie computer games.

As a boy I was very much a fan of fantasy and sci-fi. I was also something of an English nerd and the freedom of being a writer of long-form fiction appealed to me both as a career and as a way to be your own boss. In college, in addition to several short stories, I wrote a full length fantasy novel about two brothers separated early in their lives. One rises through the ranks in the military and the other becomes a rogue wizard studying the forgotten magic of an enemy race presumed extinct. A letter written to my favorite sci-fi author led to this novel being reviewed by an actual publishing house. They concluded that it was technically flawless, but unengaging.

I first became interested in Lovecraft and his contemporaries when I was 14, and Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard remain two of my favorite authors. The uniqueness of Lovecraft’s world and worldview, of cosmic dread and a whole pantheon of horrors and otherworldly entities, is incomparable. The key to his fiction, and in my opinion the key to the best horror–period–has always been that which is not explained. Our own imaginations will always provide the most unsettling options for filling in those cracks. Dread, of the incomprehensible, of the fate worse than death, is what captures the reader.

My book of short stories requires less of a commitment, and is cheaper! Remember though that if you’re not satisfied with an eBook purchased through Amazon you can always get a refund, so it’s not really a risky purchase.