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.

I know I wrote several pieces for creative writing in high school, but the first time I ever got serious about a story was a piece of fan fiction based on the Warner Bros. animated series "Tiny Toon Adventures." I approached it as a prose version of a three-act cartoon - lots of slapstick, a little implied romance, and the ability to reach back and use one of Looney Tunes' greatest monster characters. The title? "Bad Hare Day."

I grew up loving Robert Heinlein and Anne McCaffrey. I've enjoyed works by Asimov, Bradbury and Spider Robinson over the years. The last two decades I've been catching up on the works of Tom Clancy (who seems to write a lot for a dead guy), Lois McMaster Bujold and Diane Duane. In the last few years, when I'm not working on my own stuff, I enjoy Andy Weir. I'm most definitely a genre reader.

1). Variable Star by Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson. I appreciate the craftsmanship and construction involved - one writer, who was a big fan of the other, coming in posthumously almost two decades after one had died to complete an unfinished manuscript.

2) Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey. The first Pern novel she wrote that wasn't exclusively about dragons, she introduced a strong, independent female protagonist who overcomes all sorts of odds to pursue her dreams. As an awkward young teen who had his own dreams to pursue, I appreciated Menolly's journey and the strength that she showed.

3) The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. The first Jack Ryan novel, Clancy's first, it was crisp and tight and suspenseful, unlike his later works which needed an editor - but who gets to tell one of the world's top novelists to stop writing doorstop thick books?

4) The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern. I was never much of a comic book collector as a kid, but this novel by the writer of numerous comics took the epic story that was published across multiple titles over several months and condensed it into a single coherent narrative. It stuck in my mind enough that a quarter-century later, I used it as a template when writing "The Agency."

5) Sword of the Lamb by M.K. Wren. This novel out of Australia was memorable to me because it taught me how to do exposition. The first chapter sets up all the worldbuilding by turning it into a history lesson between a teacher and his two students. In a half dozen pages, their conversation handles paints a brilliant picture, but I as the reader was caught up in the conversation, rather than a recitation of dry facts that would have had me skipping forward. It's one of the true hidden gems of my library.

The time I get to spend with the characters. Inevitably, as I get to know them better, they reveal insights about themselves I didn't see when I started the writing journey. A small two-panel character from the original comic became an integral part of the protagonist's journey, because it seemed she had a much larger story to tell - and provided me a way to explain things without just telling the reader. Finding those moments make all the long hours staring at a computer screen worth it.

First - the big idea. Something that will eventually become the one sentence that describes the book. For 'The Agency,' it was "Harry Potter meets Mission:Impossible." For my first novel, it was "People with abilities get drafted into a super-secret agency to save the world." For my latest project, it's "What if you were the first girl in a thousand years who could do magic?"

After that, it's drafts and writing. My goal is 2500-3000 words per day - essentially, a single chapter. Once I finish a draft, I put the project aside and work on something else for thirty days - to give my mind a chance to gain some distance. After that time is done, I return to the draft and start editing heavily. My novels go anywhere from five to eight drafts before I'm satisfied they're ready for the world.

Organized chaos.

In 2014, I met Ruben Romero and his team at Think alike Productions and became a fan of this comic book. A few years later, while attending a comic convention, I had the chance to speak with author Kevin Anderson, who had previously written several novels based on DC comic book characters. That made me think - had anyone done such a thing with a small indie comic. A search came up empty, so I decided to try it myself. A couple of years and 90,000 words later, The Agency is ready for the world to share.

I have a young adult fantasy novel - actually, the start of a projected series of books. I have a killer hook, but the challenge I've had so far is that when you create a world, you have to build the entire society - and have a good reason for everything that populates it. From geography to fashion, weather to technology, and most importantly, how the society functions (or dysfunctions, as the case may be), all of it has to be well defined before you can put a finished word on a single screen. Worldbuilding takes time, but it's a fun problem to have. I'm really looking forward to sharing it with the world.

I live in Orlando with my wife, Pam and our two cats. Any moment I can spend with her is pure magic - an unending honeymoon! Given my location, regular visits to the local theme parks and resorts are a natural. But I love to spend time in a coffee shop, just people watching. More than once, someone who's caught my eye has ended up inside one of my novels.

I read more of my ebooks on a Kindle Fire tablet, although its software update to include Alexa is currently causing conflicts in my office. I also own a Nook, because they took over Mobibooks a few years back and thus transferred over all my previous purchases. Having both allows me to double-check how my own books will appear on each. But my long lost love was my Microsoft Pocket PC, with Microsoft Reader software. It accompanied me on commutes into Seattle for the better part of a half-decade right after the turn of the century.