How did we get here?
Well, almost 14 billion years ago, the universe came into existence.
Some time later, I was born.
I was raised by my single, working mother, as well as my grandmother, in a small town named Ravenna, Michigan. My father had limited involvement in raising me, but my grandparents and aunt on his side of the family were more than happy to pick up where he left off.
My grandmother on my fathers side of the family was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer when I was sixteen years old. Despite being given an estimate of six months to live, she instead lived for three more years. Her strength pushed me to ensure I graduated high school.
Following high school, I began attending a remote college for video game design, due to my desire to stay close to my family. Within two years, my life was upended entirely. The 2008 economic recession hit, and since the person co-signing my loans was my single mother, the loan companies decided to turn me down for any more student loans. I was left with most of the debt for a college education, while not actually having the degree.
During this time, I began to embrace both my desire to write and my passion for building worlds. I began writing for various websites, such as Pixel Related.net and TalkingAboutGames.com (both now defunct.)
I also found myself creating notes about stories and concepts I would like to explore. However, with the burden of student loan debt and needing to work multiple jobs at a time, my time to actually forge these worlds was limited.
Later, I would be hired at Brilliance Publishing. Brilliance had previously been a Christian audiobook publisher, exclusively. However, once they were bought by Amazon, they expanded into other genres, as well as print books.
I originally worked in the Returns department. During this time, I was blessed with an exceptional boss. She was the first person, in my adult life, who seemed to see something more within me waiting to come out. With her guidance, I became the team lead of the department.
Then, she convinced me to move far beyond my comfort zone and to apply to become an audiobook proof reader. I hopped on the opportunity, and was hired into the department. Over the years, our team grew smaller and smaller, similar to how many other teams were being expected to do more work with less people to handle it.
During the COVID pandemic, I found a new freedom in working from home. Then, I was approached about an opportunity to work for Amazon Publishing proper, in their Content Quality department. Again, this was a massive leap for me, and I wasn’t sure of how it would play out.
Yet, for the next couple of years I gained a newfound level of peace in my life. I had married my long time fiancee only a few years prior, and it had truly felt like everything was beginning to click.
A day after I expressed this to my therapist, I was called into my weekly meeting with my boss. There, I learned that higher ups within Amazon had decided they no longer felt the need for an English language focused content quality team, and my job would be phased out.
I was given two months to look internally for other employment, and at the end, I could decide to take a severance package or to try and pursue a new career within Amazon.
Only a few years prior, I had considered leaving Amazon entirely on a whim. What if I took all of my 401k money, which had accrued a decent amount of cash, and focused on pursuing a new career? What would it feel like to be my own boss?
But what would I even want to do? For the longest time, if a boss would ask me what I wanted to do with my job, I would simply come up blank. I never wanted to work in an office, but had always wanted the security a job like that would offer. Now that security was completely gone.
I wanted to own my work, for it to be on my shoulders. Somehow, in all my years, I had never taken my history of writing and my desire to build worlds and tell stories, and combined them. I knew I had built several road maps within my head of stories, characters, locations, and had planned out these massive worlds. But actually putting it into practice? That was something I was unsure of myself on.
After several discussions with my wife, I knew I needed to take the bet on myself. I decided to pursue becoming an author full time.
Since the end of 2024, I have been in various stages of completion on several long form stories, as well as a number of short stories based upon ideas that would pop into my head.
I take my inspiration from sci-fi classics like Star Wars and Dune, horror novels from authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, as well as my personal history and experiences I’ve lived through.
My first novel, Martinville, was inspired by the likes of the Silent Hill franchise, as well as my desire to talk about being queer in small town America, especially in one as filled with bigotry as my own.
At the end of the day, we all only have this one life to live. We will be remembered by how we lived it and what we tried to accomplish in our lives. This is my journey, and I hope you will join me on it.
