I first started writing back when I was in grade five. I never finished the project I was on, but then I was really young back then. I had this really epic story I was working on involving ninja's in the early part of my time in high school, but I eventually went a totally different direction later on. I never finished it, but I never got rid of it either. Once I'm done with the series on the Comp-Terx and Zoadiuns, I plan to get back into that.

The first story I ever wrote was about birds. Back in grade five, our new teacher read us a fictional story in which birds were displaced from their home because of human development. The question was posed, what if they were to fight back? I blurted out, "Let's find out," and I began to write about how they had finally had enough and were going to fight to keep what was theirs. For the most part, I was using world war II movies as inspiration. In my head I pictured ducks in particular with steel helmets and machine guns taking off from a long dirt run way, bound and determined to stop humans from destroying their homes.

Probably not, but the first book I remember reading on my own and not for school was Ender's Game. The movie version was okay, but in order to do the whole book in the movie, they'd need about another hour on screen. But I was truly fascinated and drawn into that book. I was already hooked on science fiction, that simply set the hook in a little deeper, and helped encourage me to write something of my own.

I write until I'm done. I just start and keep going, no regard for chapter breaks what so ever. Once done, then it's all broken up into chapters. Of course, some times it doesn't work out all that way as chapter breaks can seem a little awkward in my books, or chapters tend to be really long, however, I can't write chapter by chapter. Now with the chapter breaks, I do a read through on my own. This is followed by printing the whole story off and placing it into a binder. I then sit down with my wife and read it out loud to her, chapter by chapter, with a highlighter and a red pen in hand. This process usually takes several days as I can only read two or three chapters to her at a time. This reading out loud allows the pair of us to actually hear it. Doing this allows me to catch a repeated word in a paragraph and get instant feed back. Sometimes what I've written is not as clear as I thought when I first wrote it, so reading it out loud to someone helps get that noticed. Afterwards, all the highlighted and pen marks on my hard copy find their way onto the computer. This is where I give myself two or three days to be away from the story, to clear my head for a bit. Then I do one final slow read through, hoping to catch anything I may have missed previously.

That's pretty much the process when it comes to the actual writing and getting it ready. But as for while I'm writing, I need the right music to be playing. Something to help set the mood, but also something I know inside and out so that it's not a distraction. So new music is out! I always have a list of events in my head that I want to accomplish for the story. There are two kinds of events: Permanent and floating. Permanent events must happen at a certain time and place, and they cannot be moved. Floating events are things that must happen, but as to when, it just depends on the moment. So from start to finish, I'm writing filler to get to the events that must happen, and a lot of the time, I have no idea what's about to happen. I simply let my fingers fly across the keyboard and I read it as I type it. This has resulted in my having to cut out a scene here or there because it didn't really work. I think my biggest cut was around five thousand words. It hurt to do that, but I had to concede that the scene(s) in question held no relevance to the story. Of course I have come to the conclusion that this process of mine takes me longer to get a project done than I would like, but I refuse to change it. There have been, from my point of view, too many really good scenes have been produced by just letting the story write itself at times.

Issac Asimov, Timothy Zahn, Orson Scott Card

I work for a printing company. They print newspapers, flyers and commercial booklets. When I'm not working or writing, I like my games. I tend toward games that require a lot of strategy or pre-planning, and a little World of Warcraft for something a little different.

Because of my writing style, just letting my fingers sly across the keyboard until I get to a key moment I have a planned event for, my greatest joy of writing is the unknown. The majority of the humour found in all of my books thus far have come as a result of no planning. Without warning, a moment in the story will occur, and then suddenly I find myself laughing because of what I just wrote. These moments where something I never intended in the first are wonderful and surprising. That's why my greatest joy of writing is the unknown. Besides, when you start a project, you only have so much of an idea of how it's going to go, so again, until it's finished, more unknown.

The latest book (when this was written) is about wrapping up the saga. There are, in my mind, certain questions that need to be answered. However, some of these questions I've noted from talking to others who have read my series thus far, don't know that these questions need to be asked. Which is fine, as it will allow me to fully show the scope of the entire story line and just how complex it all really was. I just hope that I haven't over done it.

Not the kind of question I would expect to find in an interview, but I guess it makes a little sense in the case of an author. My desk contains binders with earlier projects printed out for my reading out loud portion of my writing process. There are several old game CD's laying around, because these are my favourites and I like going back to them from time to time. There are several note pads with notes, some for a few games I'm playing and one with some notes on the current project I am working on. There are several pens, lots of AA batteries (alive and dead) for my wireless mouse. There's a calculator on my desk that I can find easily, and one calculator that I know exists within the pile but is currently classed as "whereabouts unknown". On the very top of my desk are all my BattleTech miniatures I own and are in various stages of completion. Most are painted and sealed, a few need to be sealed, and a few more are only primed for painting.

Or you can have the short answer...take a snow globe and shake!

In all honesty, it's my computer. I know most people can't stand the computer for reading, but I find it works just as well as anything else. I guess for me, because I have A.D.D., having the ability to go from my e-reading to something else totally different from that is a real advantage for me, and it most likely the reason why I enjoy using the computer as my device of choice.