D.G. Speirs

I've written a number of things over the years - technical manuals for the Navy, fan-fiction about various animated shows, and copy for my advertising firm. But while I'd toyed with the idea of writing a novel, it wasn't until someone introduced me to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that the creative juices started flowing.

As it was, my misunderstanding of the format of that writing challenge was a good thing. I thought the goal was to complete a novel in 30 days, rather than just reach an arbitrary word count. So in the month of November 2011, I wrote the first draft of my first novel - all 85,370 words of it.

I grew up all over the country - I went to thirteen different schools growing up! The result of this was an unending sense of always being the outsider, never quite making a mark anywhere before it was time to move on. Since then, I've traveled the world as well in my time in the US Navy, which has given me insights into how other cultures work. I've been able to use these experiences to populate my writing with vivid senses of place. Places I've lived and visited always seem to keep showing up in my novels.