Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in a little town called LaPorte, Texas, and two of my novels are centered on Texans in the general Houston area. But those who are Texan will understand what I mean when I say Texas is at least as much a state of mind as it is one of geography. I don't know how much LaPorte itself influenced me, though. I think the entirety of anyone's life influences who he is, and in the case of authors, what he writes. I was a paramedic for a long while and worked in a hospital doing ECG telemetry, but while some of that medical knowledge has seeped into my writing, I've never written an EMS-based novel, and certainly never one about working telemetry (although that would be a verbal equivalent of an overdose on Valium, probably) and I've never considered writing about growing up in LaPorte.
When did you first start writing?
I tinkered about with it, nothing serious, as a teenager with a ballpoint pen and a spiral notebook. Many years ago (I never transcribed it nor published it) I wrote a novel entirely in spiral notebooks at a couple Denny's locations after getting off work. Until ten years or so ago I never really considered trying to publish. It's an evolutionary process from penning the tale to ... well ... to growing the balls to publish it and see how it does.
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