Gary Alan Ruse

I can honestly say that I began writing as a small child. Even before I could put actual words to paper, I was using my imagination to create ideas, plots, settings, scenarios and mini-adventures. As an only child in a neighborhood with few other children, my "playtime" often revolved around letting my imagination roam, inspired by the things around me, and thinking "what if...?" I can vividly recall sitting on the floor with paper and scissors, a stapler, pencils, pens and crayons, and making my own little "magazines" and filling them with simple content. I think sometimes there is truth to the saying that some people are born writers, and in my case that seems to fit. An interest in art developed simultaneously, and each fueled the other.

My latest completed book is "Perseverance Triumphant!", which is a Steampunk (Victorian Science Fiction) adventure. Set in an alternate history version of Victorian England in which, due to the "timely" intervention of famed inventor and genius Nikola Tesla, many futuristic elements become merged with the romantic past of that period. It's a fast-paced, sometimes tongue-in-cheek adventure with the accent on fun. The book is really a "novelization" (novella length) of a screenplay I wrote first that came about in a most unusual way. I woke up one morning obsessed with the idea of making a Steampunk costume for myself. A costume required a persona, so during breakfast and for the next hour or so after I worked on “imagineering” who the character would be. Since I decided on a captain of a steam powered starship, I started working out details of the ship, how it would work, how it was built, who the crew members would be, how they would communicate with Earth while in space, how the robots would work. And a villain! I needed an interesting villain and his nefarious allies. Before long I realized that I had created enough material not just for a persona and costume, but for an entire story. I launched into it and wrote a two hour movie screenplay first, which my agent is showing around Hollywood, and then a novella length eBook based on that. And all because I wanted to make a costume!