My World

My world began in the shadows of the rubber factory smokestacks in Akron, Ohio.

Back then, pollution control was unheard of. I credit tire manufacturers B.F. Goodrich, Firestone, Goodyear, Mohawk, and Seiberling for spewing the noxious fumes that no doubt played a pivotal role in the development of my warped sense of humor and equally warped imagination. Thanks, guys!

So. If I had to describe myself in three words, I’d say I’m a “fugitive from reality.”

I’ve always been drawn to the dark, the fantastic, and the just plain weird. As a kid, I was forever on the lookout for ways to divorce myself from the dreariness of living in a world where there were no dragons to play with.

Found a lot of them, too. All legal. Well, most.

Reality is highly overrated. Trust me.

Not much has changed since then. I escape reality every chance I get. The difference is now, I record my trips into unreality.

My books are mixed-genre, or mashup. The genres and sub-genres of science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, romance, horror, and whatever else my deviant imagination dreams up, rolled into one story. Not all at once. That’d be an interesting project, though.

How did I come to write mashup?

WTF is Genre?

When I started writing in earnest, genre was something I knew, yet didn’t know. The obvious ones, mystery and horror, yes. Beyond that, things got fuzzy. So, I took my cues from the bookstores I haunted. The genres I loved to read — science fiction and fantasy, in case you hadn’t guessed — weren’t separated like they are today. The books were lumped together as scifi/fantasy.

Can’t tell you why, but I assumed the two were a single genre. I was surprised to learn they were not. I was even more surprised to learn the common wisdom that science fiction and fantasy did not, could not, and would not ever mix. Welp, I’d already done it, so… *shrug*.

But that was years ago, and time has proven the naysayers wrong. Now, there are plenty of authors like me, mashing every fiction genre under the sun to create the most fascinating and memorable stories. We’re a tribe.

Welcome to our world.