Location: United States
Member Since:
May 11, 2012
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Rick Partlow
Biography
I am that rarest of species, a native Floridian. I was born in Tampa in 1966, the son of a Baptist preacher. Dad was in his early 40s when I was born and had been the nose gunner on a B24 bomber in WWII---he had been shot down over the Ploesti Oil Fields, bailed out of his bomber and spent nearly a year in a POW camp. Needless to say, his stories had quite the effect on me as a child. We lived in central Florida until I turned 13 and we moved to Harrisburg, PA. I graduated high school there then moved back to Florida with my parents when my father retired.
I attempted to get into the Air Force Academy, but during my physical I found out I had an astygmatism in my right eye and wouldn't be pilot qualified, and without at least the hope of being a pilot I decided that the Air Force wasn't for me.
I attended Florida Southern College on an ROTC scholarship and graduated with a BA in History and a commission in the Army. I served as an Infantry platoon leader with the 25th ID in Hawaii before getting out and bouncing around from one job to another for a while before settling on teaching.
And through that whole time, I was writing. I wrote my first novel--a wretched espionage thriller/action story---in 10th grade, my second---a wish fulfillment adventure story---as a senior in high school. They were both horrible and both written longhand on notebook paper and I threw them both away at some point while I was in college.
It was in college that I began writing my first science fiction novel. SF had been my first love---one of the first books I had ever read was Have Space Suit---Will Travel and I had read it 100 times before I turned 18. I began writing a story I called Rituals, which later, after many, many years and many revisions became Duty, Honor, Planet. At the same time I came up with a plot for a book that would later be the basis for the characters of Birthright.
After getting out of the Army, I finished the books and got a literary agent, but couldn't break into the genre so I shelved them and gave up on getting published.
Then came the advent of e-books and the opportunity to self-publish on Amazon. And I figured, what the hell? What was there to lose?
And the strangest thing happened...people BOUGHT the two books, lots of people, and they liked them!
That lit the fire under my butt to write even more, and 14 months later I finished the sequel to Duty, Honor, Planet, titled Honor Bound. I am currently working on the third book in that series, after which I have plans for at least one sequel to Birthright and then two more SF novels unrelated to either series as well as a fantasy novel.
I currently live in central Florida with my wife of 20 years, our two children and a willfull mutt of a dog.
I attempted to get into the Air Force Academy, but during my physical I found out I had an astygmatism in my right eye and wouldn't be pilot qualified, and without at least the hope of being a pilot I decided that the Air Force wasn't for me.
I attended Florida Southern College on an ROTC scholarship and graduated with a BA in History and a commission in the Army. I served as an Infantry platoon leader with the 25th ID in Hawaii before getting out and bouncing around from one job to another for a while before settling on teaching.
And through that whole time, I was writing. I wrote my first novel--a wretched espionage thriller/action story---in 10th grade, my second---a wish fulfillment adventure story---as a senior in high school. They were both horrible and both written longhand on notebook paper and I threw them both away at some point while I was in college.
It was in college that I began writing my first science fiction novel. SF had been my first love---one of the first books I had ever read was Have Space Suit---Will Travel and I had read it 100 times before I turned 18. I began writing a story I called Rituals, which later, after many, many years and many revisions became Duty, Honor, Planet. At the same time I came up with a plot for a book that would later be the basis for the characters of Birthright.
After getting out of the Army, I finished the books and got a literary agent, but couldn't break into the genre so I shelved them and gave up on getting published.
Then came the advent of e-books and the opportunity to self-publish on Amazon. And I figured, what the hell? What was there to lose?
And the strangest thing happened...people BOUGHT the two books, lots of people, and they liked them!
That lit the fire under my butt to write even more, and 14 months later I finished the sequel to Duty, Honor, Planet, titled Honor Bound. I am currently working on the third book in that series, after which I have plans for at least one sequel to Birthright and then two more SF novels unrelated to either series as well as a fantasy novel.
I currently live in central Florida with my wife of 20 years, our two children and a willfull mutt of a dog.