I wrote my first story when I was 5 years old.  Well, actually I dictated it to my older brother who wrote it down onto some drawing paper that we folded in half to make a booklet.  But I drew the pictures.  The story was about a monster that hatched out of an egg at breakfast one morning and was later scared away by a brave 5-year-old with a flashlight.

That was in Pennsylvania, the land where I spent most of my life.  After college I experienced periods of exile.  I went to seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota but returned three years later to look for work as a pastor.  Instead I found a new ministry as a librarian and writer, both of which brought me to Kansas City, Missouri where I now own a house.  It feels strange and sort of treacherous to own land in Missouri and not in Pennsylvania, but I’m trying to deal with it.  I think of my house as a Pennsylvanian colony in the Midwest.

Writing

I wanted to write since I was a kid.  I loved writing so much that I no longer try to keep count of how many stories I started but never carried past Chapter One.  Still, writing was always a love of mine.  Even in college and seminary, I would write fictional beginnings to essays or term papers to give a proper setting for the explication I was about to give.  My first real attempt at writing a novel came during my first week of finals in college.  Bible majors have few finals, in case you ever wondered.  So while everyone I knew was stressed and staying up late cramming for weighty exams, I snuck off to the computer lab to eat Kit-Kats and write about a disgraced submarine captain and his search for redemption.

I became a professional writer in 2005 when I was paid the princely some of $15 for a book review of The Da Vinci Code.  It might have been $1,500 for the way it made me feel.  Over the next two years, I published a number of reviews and group/individual study guides for SEEK magazine (now titled In Part), a quarterly publication of the Brethren in Christ denomination.

And Now?

In my current life I work full time as a corporate librarian, and I fit writing in around the edges.  I still participate in Nanowrimo and Camp Nanowrimo.