I did not want to be a writer when I was growing up in Tappahannock, Virginia. I wanted to be a cartoonist, an astronaut, or even a weatherman, but definitely not a writer. Maybe I had some precocious sense of how much money writers, in general, make. Or, rather, don't make. Mind you, I couldn't draw, nor could I get two and two to equal four on an exam, but these other fields still seemed like more viable options. I did enjoy tracking hurricanes as they came up the mid-Atlantic coast. But, alas, I had a lot of growing up to do.

My creative energy found an outlet in roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons and, later, Call of Cthulhu. I worked in a papermill my first college summer, and during breaks I wrote up adventures for my friends on sheets of toilet paper. It was during this time that I probably first learned to appreciate irony, since I couldn't find any standard paper to use at a papermill.

College in Norfolk, Virginia, went poorly for me as the realities of majors like astrophysics, business and computer science thwarted my grand schemes of becoming the first man on Mars, or Warren Buffet. Later though, after leaving college, I would fulfill at one dream: to make video games.

Around early 1993, after ditching my fourth choice of major--this time Acting--I despaired, and nearly dropped out of college. My grades were dismal; my bills mounted, while my job prospects shrank; and I fought tooth-and-nail to convince myself I was not gay.

Somehow I ended up in Creative Writing 101. I grumbled all the way across campus the first day of class. Why had I signed up for this? As much as I hated writing term papers, how the hell would I do in a pure writing course?

Very well as it turned out. Like rubbing a magnet under iron filings, my brain cells aligned and sat upright, tingling through the entire semester. This was it; this was where I was supposed to be.

Good fortune was all mine when Janet Peery arrived on the scene as a new professor. If that first writing class was a magnet, then Janet was the north pole. A better mentor I could not have asked for.

An equally great influence entered my life around this time, too. Lyn Gardner was a graduate student studying writing. Some of our workshops were mixed, undergraduates with graduates, and she and I met during one. We quickly became friends, both of us sharing a love of fantastic writing--and by "fantastic" I mean both high quality writing and the speculative variety that causes the noses of many professors to tip suddenly upward, wrinkle, and sniff at the air, as if you just tracked in something unsavory on your shoe.

Lyn has gone on to publish many short stories, two of which have earned honorable mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Her critiques are scalpel-sharp; her advice can convey a semester's worth of craft knowledge in a single, candid comment; and her praise can push me from my ledges to prove to me that there are a pair of wings poking out of my shoulders--even if they are just chicken wings.

After college, I received another stroke of good fortune. I had played online text MUDs for a long time, and through one I befriended Brad McQuaid, who went on to help usher in the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) craze as producer of the PC game EverQuest. I landed a Web content writer job in 2000 at Sony Online Entertainment, the company behind EverQuest, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, and other PC, Mac, PS2, PSP, and PS3 games. I worked my way to senior editor for SOE, and I loved my time there.

I fell in love with my partner, Michael Kinara, in San Diego; we've been together six years. In 2006 I attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop directed by Jeanne Cavelos. I now live in New York state, working as a writer.