Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I spent my childhood years in the small town of Gibsons, British Columbia, home of "The Beachcombers". Our family also had a small cottage on the nearby Keats Island. I grew up loving boats and being on the water, something that has stayed with me to this day. Because of this, and also because my father was a pilot in the Navy, I had a strong preference for science fiction stories set on futuristic aircraft carriers. To me, stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are kind of like islands in the Pacific Ocean.
When did you first start writing?
I remember two short stories that I wrote in school that were significant to me. The first was a one-page story I wrote in elementary school about astronauts on the Moon witnessing a nuclear war back on Earth. The second, which I wrote in Grade 11, was titled "The Egg" and was about a vigilante trying to hack into a worldwide computer network in order to bring all of humanity together into one global consciousness. The latter story impressed my classmates enough to make me think that I had some ability to write fiction.
In my early 20s I took a course at Simon Fraser University called "Writing and Marketing Speculative Fiction" taught by Eileen Kernaghan in which I wrote several short stories. At the time I didn't feel ready to start on a full novel.
Finally, in 2003, I started writing what would become Edge of Infinity, the first book in my Masters trilogy.
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