If a reader reads my books, I want them to get swept away into another life, a life-changing adventure. I like grandiose things to happen, world-changing events. But I also like to focus on ordinary people, realism, and how a normal person can change and be important. Although some of my characters are superheroes, they are not the main characters, they are the side shows.

May latest have been the Black Magic series, which is intended to be a science fiction, despite the name.

I joined a writing meetup group and during one meeting we were discussing the difference between sci-fi and fantasy. I argued that they were fundamentally the same, as was even historical fiction. They are all fantasy, with just different wrappers. In Star Trek, they slid a lever on a machine to make people apparate and disapparate. But it was just as much hogwash as in the TV show Bewitched, where a woman twitched her nose and did the same thing. Even a historical fiction was mostly fantasy, just placed in an actual setting, but the characters are all fantasy representation of real people. Did the real person actually say and do everything the character in the book did? No. The characters are representations of real people, but unless you're writing a history textbook, you can make them say and do lots of things the actual characters likely never did.

So Black Magic was intended to be a short story that was a total fantasy but with a strong science fiction wrapper. Even one of the beta readers said he wasn't sure what genre he would classify it as, sci-fi or fantasy. Of course, it's pure fantasy in my mind, but written as a sci-fi.

I currently have 3 of the series published, 2 more books in draft stages.

I started writing in 1999, while living in an apartment in Winnemucca Nevada. Back then there was no such thing as E-books so I was never thinking my writings would get published. I was just writing for myself. Then Amazon started their E-book outlet, where anyone could publish anything. This meant a lot of rewriting, adding dialog and cleaning it up. The Darkmatter books are huge, averaging over 300k words each. This would never be publishable outside of the E-book world.

I spent 10 years on that Darkmatter trilogy, then decided I was done writing. But then I became interested in the Japanese Touhou series, which is mostly fan-lit and I wrote a 330k novel about that, although I didn't follow the Touhou canon very well.

I always had stories in me. I never considered becoming a professional writer (although I write technical reports for my day job). My annual sales would perhaps buy one dinner. But just having someone read my books is a thrill. Each download is a treasure.

My review typically mentions the typos -- sorry. But people do like the stories. The first review I ever got was a five star, the reviewer said they couldn't put it down (they mentioned they were about halfway through Micah, probably just before I killed off the main character that the reviewer liked). That one review really lifted my spirits, that I really could do this.

I first started publishing on Amazon, their digital text platform. That was a mess. There were several authors named Scott Thomas and I think all my royalties (probably 10 or 20 bucks worth) never made it to me. I could never see the sales stats, although I know friends and relatives bought a few copies.

With Smashwords, I can just provide the word doc and so it's easier to keep cranking out revisions. The Smashwords Style Guide was also helpful and they actually respond to email questions. No such thing that I've seen at Amazon. I've since delisted with Amazon completely.

It's a hobby. I like to lose myself int the characters and what they are going through. I find writing a story to much more gripping than reading one or watching a movie. When writing, I really have the characters in my head and are feeling what they feel, whether good guys or bad guys.

When I'm really into a story, writing is all I want to do, immuring myself in it. I wrote Valkiree in 14 days. I lived and breathed that story, dreaming about it at night.

If someone else reads it and they too like it, it's gravy. It's all about the story, the money is nothing, so all my books are cheap. I tried setting my Sakuya book to free to boost sales, but all the retailers delisted it and even after resetting the price, the sales never came back.

Everything. I'd set my books to free but they wouldn't get distributed. Just having other people find value in my stories is a thrill.

When I got my first sale of the Darkmatter trilogy, after spending 10 years writing it, it was quite the rush. Somewhere, there was someone who was experiencing the world I had created, the world that I had relished for perhaps 10 thousand hours. I wish I could talk to them, ask what they thought of it, what parts they liked and what were the bad parts. But alas, I have no way of reaching out to individual buyers.

I just watched the first copy of Black Magic being sold. I hope they don't mind the typos, it a 1st edition. Some people can blow by them, for others it's a show stopper.

I have a novelette, Champ, that is ready to go. It's just missing a cover. Its a sci-fi, about 300 years in the future. It's a mixture of Space pirates, a cavewoman, Nazi's and a hyper PC-correct society.

I also have a manuscript for an adventure that takes place in 120,000 years in the future, during the next inter-glacial warm period. I might try to clean that up to get it more suitable.

Another project is more books on the Black Magic series, but that's going slow.

I don't read much anymore. I used to, I have a significant collection. But now that I write, I find myself always critiquing the work of others and can't immerse myself in the stories.

Clive Cussler, Paul Hogan, James Michener, Michael Crichton, just to name a few. I read one of Michael Crichton's books, probably Timeline, and thought, wow, this is crap, I can do this! I really liked Orson Scott Card's, Enders Game. he was clearly inspired. The sequels seemed like chores for him. I liked his notes at the end of Enders Game, where he mentioned the loose ends. That made me feel good, knowing the plot didn't have to be perfect to make a good story. I try not to write if I'm not inspired. Since I don't have a publisher breathing down my neck, I have that luxury.

Hopefully, I'm doing something up in the mountains, hiking, fishing, rock climbing, anything -- as long as it's not in the city.

At heart, I'm a rural guy and that's reflected in my stories. You don't want to be in a city when my leading characters come to visit.

Both my Darkmatter and Black Magic trilogies involve wiping out of the modern world and replacing it with an idealistic halcyon society. Total escapism. I'm creating the worlds I wish I could live in, where nobody is spending 40 hrs a week in front of a monitor.

First, I have to be inspired. Surfing the internet, or Deviant Art, is a good place to start. Find some art image, which talks to you. Makes you think about how the people got to where they were in the image.

With Valkiree, I say one anime image of two women, who were completely different, yet appeared to be friends. How could this have happened? I wrote a story to explain how that could happen.

With Sakuya Stood In The Road, I saw in Touhou that Sakuya, a human, was totally devoted to a blood-thirsty vampire, although not under any spell. But in the Touhou canon, it was never explained how that happened. So I felt inspired to explain how it could happen.

I've tried to outline a plot, but that becomes a lot of work and a bit unnatural. Instead, I develop the characters and let them do what they would naturally do. I only keep a very general plot in mind, how I want the story to end, which can change as the story progresses. If you want to enjoy writing, don't make detailed outlines. Create your world then go live it. Warning: this technique, although fun, can make for long rambling stories.

No. But I remember reading James P. Hogan's "Two Faces of Tomorrow" when I was a teenager. I really like that theme, about a computer that went sentient, out of control, and then became a friend of man. I recall trying to tell my mom about it, she was uninterested. That book was probably an early inspiration for my Darkmatter trilogy, although in Darkmatter the computer is totally devious.

I reread "Two Faces of Tomorrow" a few years ago and thought the writing wasn't so good. Like I said before, I can't seem to really get into another author's book anymore. All I see are contrived stories. I hate to think that my readers would feel that way about my books, but some probably do. If you can't immerse yourself in the story, what's the point of reading it?

I have always been a fan of science fiction, I have shelves of paperbacks. Thrillers and mysteries are not so interesting, as I prefer the more wild scenarios.

MS Word documents, after that PDFs. But I rarely read on a smart phone, mostly laptops.

Homemade: 4x8 sheet of lacquered plywood atop cinder blocks. Pine plank shelves hold software manuals, geophysical research papers, science textbooks. I have four computers, and several external hard drives to hold terabytes of geophysical data from all over the world. Under the desk is about fifty notebooks of class notes from 17 years of college. Also under the desk are stacks of math, physics and geology textbooks. Beside my desk are boxes of trade-show literature on geophysical equipment and my filing cabinet is full of case studies and various articles on geophysical methods.

I grew up in Phoenix Arizona, which is a desert city. For recreation we went to the mountains to explore the hidden places. Going places is a big part of my stories, it what's important -- going places and creating things.

I typically make my own covers, usually using MS Powerpoint. fancy covers (ie with Valkiree and The Elf War) do little to improve page views.

I would like to have custom covers, that really show the user what's inside, but I know that costs many hundreds of dollars and will never pay for itself. Therefore, I have simple deigns that hopefully relay a sense of the emotion (at least what I felt) in the book.