I actually enjoy Science Fiction and Fantasy most when it comes to my own reading. My father also reads a lot of the same and exposed me to it at a young age, so I think that was a big influence. Mystery is another genre I loved when I was young, but other than Tony Hillerman novels I fell away from it for quite a while. Today, I'm looking at mysteries and Noir novels from across the spectrum and amazed by all the diversity, and also exploring ways to combine all my genre passions in my writing.

My father read my sister and I THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS as bedtime stories when we were relatively young. From those books, I learned not only a thirst for adventure, but a real desire to try and build a detailed world when I do my own writing. I completely admire the depth of the storyline Tolkien wove and how it all comes together.

More stories in the Genre Fiction and New Pulp arena are now out from Pro Se Press in 2017. There's a suspense tale in EXPLORER PULP called "Hidden History," and a story called "Tropical Terror" in CRIME DOWN ISLAND which is loosely inspired by my own personal experiences of living through a hurricane in Hawaii in the 1980s. I've really enjoyed the stories I've done so far in the anthologies THE DAME DID IT and NEWSHOUNDS, plus my own short story "Ghost of the Airwaves," all of which are available on Smashwords. There is potential for additional stories through Pro Se Press, and those will be announced in due time as they develop.

As far as my indie projects, my goal is to get to the next collection of THE WILLOWBROOK SAGA out in 2017. What I'm actually planning on releasing first is THE WILLOWBROOK MYSTERIES CASE FILES #1, a group of stories set in present-day Willowbrook revolving around the chaos and disorder in the town following the Saga. I believe both series will be enjoyable if read independently, but each will complement the other.

MYANNA MOORE is a serialized set of stories based around a private investigator that I have started marketing under my PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF blog name. They actually feature the daughter of the lead of an older series I started launching but quit midway called the TRUTH REVEALED saga, and those older books serve as the backup features in the serialized e-books. I came to realize I really wanted to tell the daughter's stories. The older books will be re-released as bonus material to the MYANNA MOORE books. My hope is that these will eventually lead to full-length books featuring Myanna Moore.

I first started seriously writing in the fifth grade after some poetry I wrote got enough attention from my teacher to be featured in a student mall exhibition. In sixth grade my teacher made us write weekly stories with our spelling words. When mine regularly became among the best read to the class each week, I decided it might be something worth getting serious about.

I see my birthplace and hometown as two different things. Though born in California, my father was in the Navy, and we would also go on to live in Japan and Hawaii before he retired. After his retirement, we moved to Cheney, Washington, to be near his family. So I went from an early childhood in foreign lands and exotic cultures to teenage years in a college town in Eastern Washington with a main street that had only a couple stoplights, where I remained until moving to Los Angeles in 1996. I believe that my wide exposure to varied culture, geography and ideas gives me the freedom to explore people from a wide variety of backgrounds and set stories in varied settings. THE WILLOWBROOK SAGA novels are set in a fictional town similar to ones found in Eastern Washington with its own little twists, while other items I've written take place in Los Angeles.

There were two factors. One was that I suffered a long period of unemployment a couple years ago, and wanted to do things with all the time on my hands when I wasn't looking for work. I'd been freelancing other things off and on with projects for other people, but I decided I also wanted to start doing stuff directly and seeing what I could accomplish. More importantly, I realized that some stories stories I wanted to tell just wouldn't be mainstream enough for publishers, but I've had it on my heart for years to tell some of these stories (such as THE WILLOWBROOK SAGA, which traces its roots back to my own high school days for its earliest character development). So I followed my heart because I had the time to do so. Though I release less books now because I've been working, there are still things being worked on that will see the light of day. Now that I've started I'm not giving up, though I also enjoy working with other people and publishers as well.

What I enjoy most about writing is to be able to create various characters and explore what it would be like to live lives and face decisions that I myself probably never will face. I like to take a look at humanity's many facets and how nothing is really black and white. I enjoy when I'm writing and then all of a sudden a plot twist reveals itself I didn't plan and how it changes everything. The joy is in the discovery.

When I'm not writing, you can usually find me immersed in playing LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE or reading a book. However, as my "day job" if you will, I do quality assurance of websites. Attention to detail is important in that line of work, as well as in writing.