When did you first start writing?
I first started taking writing seriously in high school. I would write angsty poems about anything and everything, minimalistic and sweepingly epic. They probably weren't that good, of course, but it was cheaper than therapy. I filled dozens of marble composition books with grievances, observations, and lies that had no meter and no rhyme scheme. On my lunch break at Arby's, I would steal a pen from my boss's office and cover the white paper backs of tray liners with tiny scribblings and musings.
It was probably around 10th or 11th grade where I first started writing a novel. The novel was a series of letters from a man in a semi-post-apocalyptic future who has decided to kill himself, but damn if he doesn't take a long time explaining why. I finished that novel senior year of college, back when I was considering being deep and artistic (or at least attempts therein) more important than being a good storyteller.
"The Suicide Letters" was not the first time I started trying to create a story or even a universe as that was something that I have always been able to do. I spent a lot of time alone as a child and much of my alone time was spent envisioning new worlds, creating characters to populate them, and finding adventures for them to go on. I use to go and stand out in the driveway of our house for hours, appearing to everyone to be shooting baskets, but my mind was far away in Terrateara, the Sol System Union, or any of a dozen other worlds.
What's the story behind your latest book?
The Parliament of the Profane series, and specifically the first book S.O.B., began with a single scene in my head: a man sprinting at superhuman speed behind a panel van, jumping onto it, rescuing the abducted girl from the back of the van, fighting on the roof of the van as it careened down a bridge, and ended with him jumping off the bridge and teleporting away just before hitting the water. The entire series was reverse engineered from that one scene. I knew that my main character Nate had super powers, so I was almost certainly dealing with a novel set in a more graphic novel universe. (If I didn't suck so much as an artist, it may very well have become a comic book.) I had to come up with reasons for my heroine Gwen to be abducted, and then what were the origins, rules and roles of superheroes in my world going to be. Genetic mutation and radiation have been done to death as have magic, aliens, and the rich guy with a bunch of toys tropes, so I wanted to bring in a new possible explanation for the evolution of superheroes. Of course, if I told you what that was, it would ruin the surprise.
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