The greatest joy used to be simply completing a novel. Now its completing a novel I am happy with and I know God is happy with. There's a strong sense of accomplishment in finishing something like Shades of Eva and Spirit of Peace. With regard to Shades, there was joy in knowing I paid a tribute to my late mother, who was my inspiration behind that story. I think she would have enjoyed it.

I think I had an attention span problem when I was young. I don't remember finishing too many novels. When I was in high school, a teacher kicked me out of English class for daydreaming and sent me to the library to get a book. I guess he thought that was punishment. I don't know. Anyhow, I came out of the stacks with Stephen King's "Thinner". I finished it in two days. It kind of got me hooked on the suspense and horror ways of storytelling (in movies, that is). It would take a while to develop my appreciation for books. There's something dreadfully delicious about watching a man fade away into nothingness from a gypsy curse, something you can't experience with torture and overt violence (although some of that was in the book, too). It left me with an appreciation of dread, which I think is an underserved ingredient in most literary dishes.

Hunting Season went from idea to publication in just a few months. Opening day of gun season 2011 I kept hearing gunshots outside my house. We lived near the woods, but not that near. One shot woke me up that sounded pretty close. I started thinking: what if a bullet comes through the window while I'm showering? or what if I, or someone I love, my wife for instance, gets shot walking the dog? Hunting accidents sometimes happen. That's how ideas come to you, and you create characters to fill in those roles: victim, shooter, and widow or widower. You start thinking about where they were when the accident happened; what they were doing; and what they are like as people. That's the joy of writing. Characters seem to "reveal" themselves and stories seem to unfold if you give them time. My shooter has a sweating disorder and can't stand water or heights. My widower is a city boy transplant to the country from Detroit, who is taking a speech class. My victim is a country girl who likes metropolitan men, and her goal is to teach her husband to hunt. After all, it is River Bluff. As far as the crazy deer in the book go, I saw a video about a man attacked by a deer, of all things. It was disturbing to watch. The truth is, during the rut deer can get quite aggressive. I wanted to create an environment where that aggression might reach its peak, both human and animal aggression, and I think I succeeded in this book. So yeah--Hunting Season derived from paranoia, my fear of dying, and the sentimental wish sometimes that deer could fight back. Someday they might evolve to do so!

The Asylum Chronicles is meant to be a collection of stories set in or around a mental institution. The stories are not delimited by one character or one institution, however. For instance, Hunting Season and Shades of Eva have little if nothing to do with one another, except for the fact that a portion of their stories takes place in River Bluff and at the Coastal State Asylum for the Insane. There are also some common characters: Inez the Crazy Lady and the detectives. The hook, at least for me, is that the Asylum provides either a backdrop or a setting for these stories. It is a third protagonist, if you will. In the US, we have a rich (and sometimes not so rich) history of treating mental illness that quite often took place in places such as these. I think the idea that the institution is always there is a horror in itself. To some, it is a safety net and to others: a looming threat. After all, Institutions are merely a collection of people bound together by an idea, which is the treatment of insanity. Treatment, however, is more art than science, and this difficulty in understanding how we treat those with mental illness is certainly demonstrated in my books.

Generally, I work. I am an x-ray technologist at a local health system. I try and spend my downtime enjoying life with my wife, Stephanie. I camp when it's nice, and otherwise work toward our artistic endeavors and improving our 1929 bungalow.

Mostly with distaste. If there's one theme I talk about throughout that novel, it's how people can tend to bury the past and their secrets. My mother (and my main character Eva) each lived a difficult life, though that's not all Shades of Eva is about. My mother overcame a lot, had her children, and lived. So did Eva. They both danced. Smiled. Laughed. Worshiped. And they hoped. They never lost hope, neither of them. But each died young. Each was committed to an insane asylum in her teens and each endured a lot of horror in those days. You might know someone who suffered something similar. My mother had multiple rounds of electroshock treatment during a time when ECT wasn't so safe, and she was scared. She was imprisoned, for lack of a better word, in a state hospital, a place many referred to as a snake pit, and for good reason. We can't just focus on the rosy aspects of life. I've often felt that's what family wants to do: remember only the good and forget the rest. When you do that to someone, anyone, it's an insult to that part unless that's what they truly wanted. I don't think my mother wanted that part of her life swept under the rug. She said in many ways those days were her best days. Why not remember them? It's hard to simply move on from what happened to her, or to me indirectly as her son, so long ago. Finding a parent having died in her sleep for unidentifiable reasons is hard to deal with, and it raises a lot of questions--questions that never quite go away--particularly with so many secrets floating around the castle. Those questions haunt me, and I have to answer them somehow. A quasi-biography was one way to deal with her mystery. I want people to understand that, and feel something with me and people like me through Eva's story. There is a legacy of abuse and neglect, or good intentions and not-so-good practice in this country, and it has an impact on future generations, or can. By not reading this, and simply criticizing my writing as vindictiveness, or its dark theme as hostility, just misses the point. And that's been my family's reaction thus far. I would hope they read through the rest of the chronicles, because there are other themes I deal with--one of which is forgiveness and peace, and I think we can all do with a little more of those.

I look for a core image that expresses the mood of my novel. In Shades of Eva I searched for images relating to insane asylums. One link took me to a Flickr page by Andre Govia. He's into the urban decay genre. One of his photographs depicted a girl in a white dress (Hannah) seated in this decaying, paint-peeled and completely empty asylum room, or seclusion, looking over her shoulder. Her expression was as if she had just been surprised or might want to kill whoever just interrupted her presumed daydream, or nightmare. She roughly symbolized my character (Eva's) tormented spirit at the time. In Hunting Season, I found a similarly eerie image of the woods, back-lit in blue tones, which fairly described the surreal tone of that novel. The images of the sad young man and woman, opposite each other, also help create the tone. As Mark Coker at Smashwords suggests, the cover image of a work makes a "promise" to a reader. With the images I created for my Asylum Chronicles books, the promise is, quite simply, darkness. But with all of my books, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I believe in justice first and foremost--but dread hooks.

I believe in supporting artists. I believe in rewarding hard work. We should reward each other's talents if we can. In reality, I'm writing for that one reader--just that one--who can appreciate what it is that I am trying to do and say, who wants to take a chance on laughing with me, maybe even crying with me, and who will leave me just one piece of positive feedback. That's what it's about for me.

I have multiple projects going right now. I'm sort of a traitor when it comes to my books, so I'm working on a sequel to Shades called Spirit of Peace (just finished) as well as a Christian sci-fi novel called Rogue Planet. I am also finishing edits to a theatrical play called Honeymooners Cult and also typing up the loose ends of Emerald City, a novel, which is a third installment in the Mitchell Rennix saga. So a lot going on.

Everything. I am new to the self-publishing game, so I've only received a few comments so far, but they've been positive. It's a remarkable feeling to know that something you've written has touched somebody's life in a positive way. I'm in the process of creating a website and a fan page at Facebook so I can interact a little more with my fans. I hope they visit it when it's done.