Yes. I think I was about 5 or 6 years old. My brother, sister and I were huge fans of Star Wars. I still am a gigantic fan of Star Wars and can roll with anyone when it comes to trivia. I've read most of the novels, own the scripts and still collect the toys. Wow, I sidetracked myself faster than Han made the Kessel Run. Anyway, the first story I ever wrote was considered what is now called "fan fiction". It was an adventure story with side adventures of Luke Skywalker that took place between films.

That's a tough question for any writer. It's so varied. I've been a single father for 14 years so my writing schedule constantly shifted, depending on what I did with my son. So I've started writing while he was in school, around my work-from-home graphic design business. As far as how I come up with content? Well, I'm a movie buff and I've read and written a lot of scripts, just to know the ins and outs of how they tell stories on the big screen. That being said, I tell stories a lot like movies (so I've been told) and I try to adhere to the 3-part script structure used in scripts. I make a loose outline in that structure and start writing. Character names, etc come as I write, because most of them have names that mean something to the story. It keeps the pace even and it makes it fun to read, in my opinion.

I don't remember just one. But I remember being in elementary school up in New Jersey and they had this thing called the BookMobile that came around occasionally. We'd get the order forms and the teachers would send us to this book trailer and I can still remember the smell of the ink on the pages. I still remember that sensation when I step into a bookstore as an adult. So I'd beg my parents for anything I could squeeze out of them.

If I had to pick one? It was most likely Star Wars related. I was a fanatic and still want to be a Jedi. That movie series shaped my imagination. George Lucas inspired me to tell fun stories and I carry that feeling to this day. As I grew up, the works of Philip L. Dick, Piers Anthony, Hitchcock and John Carpenter played a huge role in rounding out the stories I like to tell.

As a graphic designer, I try to make my covers dynamic but true to the source material. I like relatively simple elements that stand out, like in the Chambers-Riggs series and Fractured: Athena Rising. For Lankyman, I chose to go in the route of a poster from the old radio days, since the story is a modern day radio adventure in novel form. For Freakshow, I needed a lot of pictures to denote the many flash fiction stories within the collection. Flash Fiction Freakshow was written with a theme and a narrator, so I took Benjamin Blasko's theme, which was something like a carnival barker, and designed the cover accordingly.

I love the Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony. I also love Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick. I love writers who take someone and break them down into something almost primal and then set them in a place where you have to dive in to get into their world.

As far as the Incarnations of Immortality (there are seven of them), they helped me see how an author can interweave a giant story that arcs over seven novels, all while dealing strangely with forces that we all know: Death, Fate, Time, War, etc. That series took human conventions and conceptions and turned them into a science fiction fantasy epic that blended seamlessly together seven times over. It's incredibly underrated as a series.

Besides comic books, I like to read classics. I'm known to settle down with some Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson. And I'm a big fan of the 90's genre of "Splatterpunk" and will reread John Skipp and Craig Spector whenever I can.

As of right now, it's my phone. I have a difficult time keeping many things in one place at one time and decided that my phone did everything all in one spot. Now if I can get people to stop calling me while I'm reading! Just kidding. It's all good but my phone is the way to go for me.

Managing my websites and doing it the old fashioned way: handing out business cards and meeting people. As an author, you need to be your own brand and there's no better way to do that than to let people meet you. They meet you? They meet the very tip of your imagination.

I don't have a desk. I have a laptop on my coffee table, which usually has a Dunkin' coffee on it. Sometimes I will sit at my art desk when I'm not drawing or painting. On that I have two Funko Pop figures watching me as I work (X-Wing Luke Skywalker and Roger Rabbit). What can I say, I'm a big kid in most ways and even a little Pop figure can slip your mood into an imaginative state. Don't judge me! Haha. Just kidding. Seriously, get something to make you return to when your imagination soared. You'll be happy you made the small choice to do it.

I grew up in New Jersey and had two siblings. I was always outside playing and coming up with my own adventures, complete with characters and story lines. My friends and I would be out from dawn to dusk and in between was nothing but fun and exploration, unless school ruined it, then we'd work around it. But doing that and always playing was freeing. You could be whoever you wanted and since I watched so much TV and movies as a kid, the two just blended into what I've always wanted to do: entertain people with my stories.

For fun? As a child. But my first novel was in 2007, which I mostly wrote because I was working from home and decided that it was time to stop talking about it and start doing it. In doing that, my son was inspired to write at a young age and now he's writing his own material and starting on his passion much earlier than I did. Sometimes life gets in the way, but it's all experience to infuse into your material. Bottom line? Don't ever give up on what you're passionate about. Just do it.

My latest book was The Legend of the Christmas Stone, which was written as a young adult adventure that deals with family, loss and the meaning of Christmas. Again, if you look at my previous answers, you'll realize that I like to play around with conventions myself. It's a lot like Operation Mistletoe, but that was written solely for twisted adults who like twisted, dark humor. Christmas Stone was a straight adventure story that played with that grey area of imagination versus reality and the dreaded age where you teeter on believing and not believing in Santa Claus.

My current project is a supernatural young adult novel that's based in the realm of Lovecraft and Poe.

I love to tell stories. I could have sent Mistletoe out to see if I could land a deal somewhere but while I would be waiting, other stories were climbing out of my head. Once I start writing, I keep going and to me, banking it all on one title stifles the other stories that I want to tell. My goal is to someday be noticed by a publisher, but at the time, I wanted to share my story. When it was done, I wanted to keep telling more and I couldn't do that if I was in "waiting" mode for a big break.

Just keep pushing yourself forward and things will start to happen. I still stand by that.