I grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Probably the greatest influence was widely diverse friends and acquaintances.

35 years ago. To seriously fulfill my passion, 2 years ago.

Yes. I remember long ago, in probably 4th grade reading Mark Twains "Huckleberry Finn". More than anything I remember just being sucked into the story like I was part of it.

I follow a fairly rigid process. I start with my premise, then create bios for my main characters. From there I visualize the scenes I want to depict and create draft scene sketches. Then follows a rough outline that I synch up with a chronology. From there it starts to get fun. I use Dragon interpretive software to create my entire first draft of the book. I don't care about spelling or editing at this point. I just want a complete story on paper that I can work with. I can lean back in my recliner with my headset on and just tell the story. After about three complete self edits, I turn it over to three or four beta readers and get their feel for the story, along with which I end up finding a few corrections needed. I take a couple weeks off, then decide what if anything I want to incorporate from my beta readers. I figure by this time I own the story and will make the ultimate decision about any change of content. One final complete read through, and I'm finished.

I want to have a background scene, something memorable from the book. In foreground I try to have the key characters as I envision them in the book, Their position is meant to be symbolic of the story. In The Amended Family, John is the primary character with Catherine and Elizabeth on each side. Elizabeth is positioned a litte higher than Catherine because John has a stronger relationship with her.

I like fiction adventure stories that I can lose myself in. Since writing and editing on my own, I find myself being overly critical of other writer's work, I don't seem to have much patience with factual errors in a book I purchase to read. Example of two recent finds are referring to a pronghorn antelope in the American West as a longhorn antelope, and describing dynamiting Aztec temples in the 16th century when it wasn't invented until the 19th century. Nothing can more destroy credibility of a book for me than those kind of obvious errors.

Simple. Computer, desklamp, yellow pad, pen, and plenty of yellow stickys for notes.

I wanted to be sure my message got out in front of people without traditional publishing bias.

The creation and evolution of the characters and their interaction with each other. Occasionally I will read back over some scene and character involvement and think, That's really cool.

I have my 2nd novel, "Dexter Brown" in work. It's about a man, Dexter Brown, who has a tremendous story to tell. The only thing is, it is left up to the reader to determine the truth or fiction of his story.

To put the ideas in my dreams down on paper.