About Me

I wrote my first story at the age of eighteen. I had a work/study job at the college computer lab, and, after completing all of my tasks of refilling the printer paper and testing the mice, I sat down and slipped a three-point-five inch disk into the drive. The Word Perfect screen greeted me with a blinking cursor, waiting. Each day I typed out a few more paragraphs, maybe a scene. I'd been reading R.A. Salvatore, and, not surprisingly, wove a tale of elves, wars, and magic swords. I printed the three hundred page manuscript on a dot matrix printer, three hole punched it, and slid it into a black binder. The story rode along with me and five friends in a sixteen-hour road trip to St. Louis, giving me the perfect captive audience for reading my first draft. As I lay in the twilight sleep one experiences while nodding off in the passenger seat of a car sometime past midnight, a muffled pop, like a distant balloon rupture, jolted me awake, the buzzing glare of fluorescent lights stinging my eyes as the red illuminated letters of the gas station congealed in my vision. Our car was parked next to the pumps and forty feet ahead a truck driver stood outside his cab trying to get my attention. “Get out!” he yelled, pointing at our car’s hood. My gaze followed his finger. At first it was hard to see, like a trick of light, but then it brightened as if a candle had been lit near the seems under the hood. Flames sputtered there. A panic washed over my travel companions as we all registered the danger and the car devolved into a pushing chaotic mess with car doors flinging open and occupants spilling out onto asphalt. Fire blossomed behind us as we scattered towards the convenience store. “The keys!” one of us yelled. I turned and saw the campfire that was the car’s hood and its proximity to the gas pumps. The driver, panicked, threw the keys too high and they clinked onto the overhead canopy. The rest of us fetched extinguishers from a stunned mini-mart clerk and sprayed the car fire. It was like spritzing an inferno. As we depleted the last extinguisher, a line of red flashing lights snaked down the dark country road. Fire trucks wheeled in and firefighters spilled out, advancing on the blaze with water streams. The engine’s flames burst into the car’s cabin and, with a whoosh like something from the movies, a fireball billowed out of the windows, the car’s tires bursting and rocking the vehicle. When the firefighters dropped their hoses and ran, I thought, so should we. One of the fleeing firefighters climbed in the firetruck, revved the engine, and mashed the gas pedal. The firetruck lurched forward and crunched into the back of the Monte Carlo, ramming it clear of the gas pumps in a vortex of sparks and smoke and leaving it to die in the farthest corner of the parking lot. The firefighters regrouped and resumed their aqua assault. In the distance, dozens of sirens filled the sleepy town as a cavalcade of red and white flashing lights announced the arrival of the calvary. Additional firetrucks, paramedic units, and support vehicles swarmed the station. Their combined efforts reduced our car to a steaming metal skeleton. We stood there in shock, paramedics interviewing us as our world faded to a muffled din of idling truck engines and strobing red lights. Three hundred miles. We were stranded three hundred miles from home. No one was hurt, but there was one casualty. My story sat in the backseat.

I tried not to think of this as a sign.

But there was still the computer lab, and the blinking white cursor, and stories to be written. They weren't very good, but I had fun writing them. I submitted a few to magazines, and like most starting writers, got the polite rejection notes. I completed my degree in mechanical engineering and went on to become an engineer, a husband, a father. The stories took a back seat as life churned on.

One of the perks of being a dad is that you get to tell many stories. Not just stories that you read, but stories you create. Each night when I tuck my daughter in to bed, I say, "What should our story be tonight?". She gives me the setting, "A little girl and a cupcake factory that's gone crazy." It's a little like a Whose Line is it Anyway sketch, creating the scene on the spot.

And it makes me think of that blinking cursor, and all of those stories I wanted to tell.

So, I opened up my laptop and started pecking away. Technology has changed since those three-and-a-half inch disk days, and now I can independently publish. I'm stepping up to the plate, taking a swing at the ball, and seeing how far I can run.