I started writing for fun right after I graduated from college. I was trained as an engineer but always loved words and writing. I guess I've written a dozen books or more and it's just always been a blast to tell a new story and watch people read it and enjoy it.

Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector is number two in a series that is still ongoing. It's about a military organization called United Nations Quantum Corps and how they have to fight off new and emerging threats coming from the world of atoms and molecules. It's a new medium and theater for conflict. Amazon Vector is about an Asian criminal cartel called Red Hammer. The bad guys have created a nanobotic means of changing our climate. They're doing it for ransom but they're also unwitting accomplices of an extraterrestrial intelligence that helped seed life on Earth a billion years ago and saw their efforts get off track. Johnny Winger and his soldiers (some of whom are nanobots themselves) have to fight this threat.

I read some good things about Smashwords and was intrigued. I had never published anything big before. I have lots of books completed, some better than others, and seeing how e-books are really exploding, I wanted to be part of the new wave.

Smashwords has taught me a lot about the details of getting a book ready for professional publication...particularly in the digital world. I make my living another way than writing stories (actually I do a lot of tech writing in my job) but I always have tried to take a professional approach to storytelling. Smashwords has shown me how to develop the discipline necessary to be published in this new format and that will translate well into all my future efforts.

There are many joys I get from writing. Just developing the idea and plotting out the story is lots of fun for me...doing the research, learning new things. The writing can be a slog sometimes, but I'm pretty disciplined about it...doing a page or more every day no matter what. But seeing your work completed and published and available for other people to read...there's just no feeling like that.

My fans and readers are everything to me. I've already sold some copies of my first book (Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor) and knowing that people have actually paid money to read something I wrote is just such a blast. My readers help keep me honest and on task. Knowing that no matter what I am writing I still have to tell a good story is great discipline, especially when I'm stuck on a plot point and don't know where to go next. I ask myself: what would a reader want to see here?

I am actually working on another episode in the Tales of the Quantum Corps. This one (Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone) is number five in the series. The first two are published on Smashwords and the first one is already in the Premium Catalog. I do have a destination in mind for this series...not to give anything away. But the bad guys from another world are coming to Earth...to fix what they started a billion years ago.

I have many. In science fiction, I always loved Arthur C. Clarke for his almost poetic style. I actually met Sir Arthur once when I was in college. I like Kim Stanley Robinson for his detailed stories and strong sense of place. I like Tom Clancy for his direct style and details from the politico-military world. I steal shamelessly from every author I read...and most authors do.

Wondering what the day will bring. And knowing that each day is a gift...don't waste it. You won't last forever. Get up and go out and live life!

I work full time as a technical writer and tech rep for a company that makes packaging materials (cartons) and packaging machinery worldwide. I have done a lot of customer training on our equipment all around the world. People are so interesting...I often find my characters come from real life people I have known. I also love to swim and work out a lot...I'm an oddity...I enjoy exercising. Writing is very sedentary so that helps me out. I work out plots and ideas while doing laps in the pool.

Mostly over the Internet. I have an ebook reader so I go to the retailer's web site for new books and products. This new medium seems to have an almost limitless future...I think we're just scratching the surface of its possibilities.

I do and I would pay to keep it from being published. Right after I graduated from college I wrote about a fictitious college where everybody was in a bad mood and didn't know what to do with their lives. I don't even remember the title now....

I am very disciplined. I have a set procedure for expanding my outlines and developing characters and their backgrounds and doing research. My process works very well for me. When it comes time to write, I often lift sentences directly from my outlines and just expand on them. One key for me: you have to live in the story, which I why I like to write something every day. You have to be among your characters and deal with their problems and sort of inhabit this imaginary world you've created. Which makes things interesting for my wife sometimes.

My mother loved books and read to me from a very young age, so I was exposed to words early. I still remember some of the nursery rhymes and Childcraft stories from the 50s that have stayed with me all this time. There was one about an elephant and a telephone where everything got mixed up...I can still recite lines from that.

That's a tough one. I have to think about what I see in my mind's eye when I think of a story. So far, I have been doing my own covers but I expect to take advantage of a professional cover designer for later books. Often, when I create a cover, it's a matter of cobbling together pieces that I have imagined and trying to make them work together. I am not really an artist, but once in awhile, I have a strong image in my mind of what should be on the cover. Making that image come to life is another matter though.

The Hunt for Red October (Clancy)--love the details. Always been fascinated by submarines.

Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars (Robinson)- strong sense of place with very memorable people in the stories

Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke) - such an eerie locale and place...Clarke can make it come alive, no matter how bizarre

The Guns of August (Tuchman) - love the detail and the author does a great job of imbuing the story with a sense of impending doom.

I read a lot of history and science books and articles. I love science and like to know more about everything...physics, biology, psychology. I particularly love to read articles, journals, even stories about what the future will bring, especially ones with predictions. I have my own ideas about what the future will bring and I often work that into my books.

I have a new B&N Nook...just getting to know it.

I'm new to Smashwords so I'm still learning this aspect of the business.

Generally pretty neat. I am a neat freak. Drives my wife crazy...she is not. My desk reflects my personality...everything in order, easy to locate, all papers and folders at right angles from other papers...that surely is a sign of Obsessive-Compulsive personality.

I grew up in Atlanta and around the southeastern U.S. Southerners are just naturally storytellers...I do have some in my family, but no published authors that I know of. Just don't confuse me with Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor.