Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I live in Northern Colorado with my wife, two daughters, and old blind dog named Kirby. When I’m notworking myself to the bone teaching tweens how to play band and orchestra instruments, I camp with my family in my tiny trailer or travel to strange worlds in my head in order to write about them. If the weather is decent, you might catch me riding my bike or running because I am afraid of death, and I’ve heard exercise helps with that.
I began writing in 2016 after the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl. The absence of American Football in his life after that point left a gaping hole in my soul. I then proceeded to fill said hole with speculative fiction. It’s worked out okay so far, with my story, “The Musicologists,” being published in the anthology, Triangulation: Harmony and Dissonance, published by Parsec Ink, Geminus: A Novella, now available from Castrum Press, “Terror in El Pueblo,” featured on denverhorror.com at denverhorror.com/2019/08/26/terror-in-el-pueblo/, and “Canis ignis,” will appear in the December issue of Mad Scientist Journal.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My novella, Geminus, was inspired when I misread a movie description and thought it was talking about a virus that made people remember the future. It wasn’t at all the plot of that movie, but the idea stayed with me. I mulled it over until I created the twins in the book, one who remembered the past and one who remembered the future. (This one was difficult to write. Timeline issues are hard to manage.)
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
The short answer is that I’m always writing. I get up at 5:00am before I go to work and write for an hour every day. In the evenings, after my kids go to sleep, I take care of the business end. I submit stories, do editing, and spread the word about my books. Good habits require three things, a cue, a routine, and a reward. My cue is waking up. My routine is writing. My reward is writing. It’s a beautiful system.
What are you working on now?
I had an idea the other day talking to my dad. Someone wanted him to make their gravestone so they could use it as a sculpture in their home until they died. How effing cool is that? Next time I get a moment to breathe, that one is getting turned into a story.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Talking to everyone I meet.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Get a music degree. That’s where I learned grit, perseverance, and, most importantly, it endowed me with a growth mindset. I knew at first that I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be, but I also knew that the only way to get there was to keep at it. I went to my writer’s group like I went to viola lessons, to push myself to get better. To learn from everyone around me. Truthfully, I’m not all the way there yet. My vision of myself as a writer is not realized yet, and it may never be. But I’ll definitely be trying.
What are you reading now?
Kevin Wilson’s “Nothing to See Here”
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