In 1985, squiggly and nasrty, I was born to two Californian liberals. Twin brothers followed me a bit later on. My dad graduated from the Pacific School of Religion, a place he now regards as “the most liberal place on earth,” and became a pastor. But to me, he’s always been a pastor. Round about 1990, he could no longer resist the gospel, and left liberalism behind him forever.
Between the ages of three and five, I wore a Superman costume and proclaimed to my parents that I would marry the little girl across the street. I guess she missed that part, since I’m still waiting for her to call me back.
When I was sixish, we lived in Evansville, Indiana. There, I enjoyed wandering in the church graveyard. My third time exploring there I was chased the whole way home by an angry goose. On my eighth birthday, I got a shiny red bicycle, but I let my younger brother ride it first. He lost control and rode it down a hill and straight into an oak. The bike was ruined, but we all were fascinated (including him) with the blood coming out of his nose.
When I was nine, we moved to State College, PA, which I loved dearly. My friend Tom had a farm three houses down from us, with a three-legged cat, a musty barn, a cow pasture, and a kiln for making clay art. We helped his dad rebuild the barn, we dared each other to touch the electric wires of the pasture fences, we made grotesque clay statues which his dad gracefully glazed in the kiln - and a three-legged cat was just cool. And one day, me and Tom decided to run away along the creek and see if we could survive in the wilderness. We were found about an hour later, but we both agreed it was quite an excellent adventure anyways.
Around 1999 we moved to Marietta, OH. I was about 11 or 12. We lived behind 120 acres of forestland, and everyday my brothers and I would wander them in search of fossils and crawdads. One year we found a deer that was dying from broken legs - it had been hit by a car - and we watched a policeman shoot it. Then we watched a friend gut it, and we ate the good bits on the grill. All in all, we agreed it was sad, but approved its deliciousness.
I wrote my first story in Evansville, called “Sharky Saves Laura,” about a friendly shark who rescues my childhood friend from drowning. Illustrated by yours truly, which meant the shark looked like a banana with teeth. It got second place in the library contest my parents entered it in. Since then, I’ve never looked back, though I did look slightly to the left for about seven years when I wanted to be a movie-maker. Right now, I’m working on a fantasy series called “The Word and the Sword saga,” and an untitled Vampire stand-alone. This doesn’t include my frequent dabblings into free-verse poetry.
So now you know a bit about me. But not really. I didn’t even have time to tell you about the laughs around the fire, the beginning of my Star Wars obsession, or the kids at my church who dubbed me “Story-Guy,” because every Sunday while their parents were chatting, I was inventing and telling them stories, sometimes with characters of their choosing. Which, of course, gave birth to “The Humorous and Glorious Quest of Goldie Locks, Superman, and Bigfoot, to Rescue Gandalf from the Clutches of Sponge Bob Square Pants.”