Islands of Loar: Sundered

Ernest Wayne Laurence, Jr. is a writer of science-fiction and fantasy with a healthy dose of conservative political views as well as Christianity tossed into the mix. He is a member of the church of Christ and enjoys discussing Bible apologetics.

He was born January 10, 1975 in San Antonio, TX. After living there for a few short months he lived at Texas A&M while his father finished his Doctorate in Education then moved to Killeen, TX where he lived for nine years. In the summer of 1985 his family, including father, mother, and three younger brothers all moved to Hutto, TX where he spent the remainder of his child hood. He never really grew up. An alumnus of Tarleton State University, Ernie received a degree in Computer Information Systems. By that time he had already done some work for a gaming studio in Austin as a video game level designer.

In the summer of 2005 he married his wife, Heather, on the beach in Florida. After a short stint designing quests for Star Wars Galaxies (released from his temporary contract due to creative differences with the liberal lead designer), he entered the alternative teaching certification program for Texas. He is now certified to teach high school Physics, Chemistry, and Math and is thinking of getting certified to teach History/Government (though he refuses to get certified in Biology). Ernie and his wife have been teaching since 2007. His wife (an elementary school teacher) gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in October, 2009 and is taking a break from teaching to raise them. In January of 2014, his second daughter was born.

Ernie has been writing since the 6th grade. Beginning with pencil and a spiral notebook and with the encouragement of his parents (who finally came to understand his utter fascination with Star Wars and Transformers), a number of teachers, and the librarians (who ordered way too many fantasy/sci-fi novels for the school library at his request), Ernie wrote his first novel, Demon War. After his dad, the school's superintendent, got a computer in his office (which was behind the band hall on the single K-12 campus) with DOS and MS Works 2.0 loaded on it, the game was definitely afoot. He completed that first novel his senior year.

Over the course of the next twelve years he completed fifteen more novels, spending more time working on them than going to class and doing his homework in college. Once his wife realized just how many novels he had written, she began to strongly encourage him to publish, something that he had never given much thought to. His sixteenth book, too large to publish, became two (Islands of Loar: Sundered and Islands of Loar: Causality). He has since expanded the trilogy into a quartet including Islands of Loar: Rebellion and Islands of Loar: Prophecy.

Ernie is currently seeking to establish a small press publishing company to not only publish his own works but to publish other authors within related genres that hold to a specific standard of quality in the content of their writing. He will likely continue teaching as well.