I was raised on a small farm miles from anywhere. I lived on this farm doing normal farm work and going to school until I was fifteen, at which point I was moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a system shock to go from a rural life to a huge city, but I adapted quickly. After highschool I was on my own and lived on the streets for a time before finding myself in the home of a friend. His mother invited me to stay until I could get myself together and I did. From that point on, I realized that someone was watching out for me besides myself. Despite a heavily religous background, I was not sure if it was God, an angel, or things from the other side that were guiding my course in life. I did decide that I didn't like it and that I was going to make my own way.
I left my friends family home and went traveling on the renaissance faire circuit for a time. That was where I met my first wife. I actually met her at the first faire in Bristol, Wisconsin. We traveled to a couple of other faires together until it was close to time for our son to be born.
When it was time, my wife decided she wanted to be closer to her familiar territory. We went to Green Bay, Wisconsin which is where she had grown up. I took a job at a fast food joint until our son was born. After his birth my wife was ready to go. Arkansas was where the random point landed and with little actual preparation, off we went.
We lived in Madison County for a few years and bought a house in the little town of Pettigrew. I worked at several jobs over those years while she stayed home and home-schooled our son. After a wet winter followed by a wet spring, our house began to sink and fall apart. There were few options for work in the county, so I started working for Pappa Johns in Fayetteville, Arkansas. As quickly as we could, we found a duplex in town and moved. After a few years I took a second job as a newspaper carrier and then quickly was offered a management job there.
After taking the delivery management job for the newspaper, I started looking for a house in Fayetteville. It didn't take long before I found my current home. My wife started working at a thrift store and then decided to leave me and our son. A few years after that I met the love of my life, Lisa Mae.
Lisa and I were married at her grandfathers cabin on Bull Shoals lake on July 27th of 2007. It was the second happiest day of my life. The first being when my son was born. Since then my love for her has only deepened and my respect for her and her family grown.
Throughout my life I have been writing stories. I remember writing a long poem when I was very young and presenting it to my mother. She did something with it and after that I never trusted her with my literature again. I also never wrote another poem. I started writing short stories and hiding them in my room. When I would finish one, I would read it as if I had never known about it, and then burn it. This practice continued until high school in Milwaukee. In high school I wrote and read and hid my writings away in various places. It was more difficult to burn them there without drawing attention to myself. Then I discovered the shredder. I made good use of it. Once out of high school I didn't write for several years. Life was too busy. The next book I wrote was in Madison County after I got an old 386 computer from my wife's uncle. I wrote two books on that thing and then lost them when the hard drive corrupted. After I moved to Fayetteville I wrote another book and printed it out on an old dot matrix printer. I kept that story for several years until I cleaned out a closet one day and decided it had yellowed enough that it was time to get rid of it. That was before my first wife left.
These stories that I am working on now are the only ones that are still in existence. I published "A New Species" in 2009 through PublishAmerica. I am working on several others that I would like to publish when I am done with them. The love of my life, Lisa Mae, is very supportive of my writing. None the less, it is hard for me to make time to write. Life has a high pace and when I have time, there are other things I need to do.
Until I can get the next story out, "A New Species" is considered an "orphan" novel. Parts of the stories in the series "Descendants: Vampire Chronicles" and parts of the sister series "Descendants: Forgotten Blood" are posted on the site for all to read. As I get more accomplished, I will post it.