What inspired you to start writing?
High school: short humorous story read aloud got positive reaction. Wrote poetry and science fiction while in Vietnam, none published. Was a photographer/editor in the public affairs detachment of the Wyoming Army National Guard. After wife died, remarried horse lady and moved to Nebraska. She saw my efforts to train a filly and suggested my body would better tolerate writing. To get me into writing mode, she signed me up for Nanowrimo, which committed me to write at least 50,000 words in November. She did this on October 28. I had no clue about anything to write. Despite that and the holiday, I won the challenge. This ultra-rough draft became the basis of Dust & Cannibals, my second book. Along the way, I wrote a piece for a book of collected Vietnam stories entitled TANS.
Why do you like speculative fiction?
As a pre-schooler I learned to read above my grade level. That led to my first exposure as a third grader reading a fifth or sixth grade book from the school library about a family building a spaceship in their backyard and flying to the moon. This was 1953. Been hooked ever since. Dad worked in aerospace, which also kept me looking at the sky and beyond. Copies of Aviation Week kept my imagination alive. College courses introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges and his magical realism, expanding my thought further.
What are your interests and influences?
To name a few, I attended thirteen elementary schools in five states and got good at taking IQ tests, which were all the rage. I settled down when it was time for high school and went two years at Tucson HS, which had 5,900 students. My graduating class at California High School in Central Missouri had sixty-four. My interest in flying got me within two weeks of an Air Force commission at University of Missouri, but they released me from duty in 1966. Enlisted in the Army in 1967, which resulted in thirty months Vietnam. After I got out, there were several jobs, including a finance company, an experimental tomato greenhouse in Tucson, The hospitality business felt like its own lifetime, working for properties in Arizona, including one owned by the White Mountain Apache Tribe, followed by hotels in New Mexico and Wyoming. Escaping the hotel business, I joined the Wyoming National Guard, both weekend and later full-time, retiring as a soldier in 1999 and as a civilian in 2004. Since 2005, I’ve been on a small ranch in Nebraska with a blonde horse lady learning to speak equine.
My main series is Dust & Cannibals: Post-apocalyptic western set in south-central Nebraska. Book 1: Dust & Cannibals; Book 2: Mud & Horizons; Book 3: Snow & Sanity; Book 4: Fog & Fate. The LaGrange Legacy. Touch Stones. They’re all available from either Amazon or me.