I'm a native of southwestern Virginia and still dwell nearby, perhaps deep within the limestone caves of the region.

I grew up a geek who loved science fiction, fantasy, comic books and role-playing games--pretty much the whole nerd gamut. I snagged an associate degree in Commercial Art at Virginia Western Community College before joining the Army.

I spent four years in the U.S. Army as a SIGINT Analyst (if you don't know what that is, it sounds a lot sexier than it really is.) I spent most of my time in uniform in Germany, during which I concluded that it wasn't the career for me. After which I attended the Joe Kubert School of Graphic Arts and Animation in Dover, NJ and graduated three years later. I had intended on seeking a job in the comic industry--until I got exposed to enough of it to rethink my intentions.

In the intervening years I subsisted on odd jobs and periodic freelance art work. At some point I decided to try to write. Much to my joy, I discovered I loved writing. I REALLY loved writing. During my free time in the last ten years I've written six novels and am halfway through the seventh. In-between the novels I've written fifteen short stories and have done a lot of fiction blogging.

After my second novel was thoroughly rejected by all the usual companies as well as countless short story rejections, my attention was grabbed by the exploding ebook market. So instead of continuing my cycle of publisher rejections, I decided to post my fifth novel, 'Fourfold' online. Since I didn't have the financial wherewithal to hire a cover artist, I dusted off my art skills and painted it myself. I shall hopefully have my fourth novel 'Mettle's Forge' published--with another cover painted by me--within the next few weeks. I shall publish my second, third and sixth novels as soon as humanly possible.

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Sadly, unless you're the most wonderful model that ever walked (and maybe not even then) I can very rarely do digital paintings for free. It takes a while to paint one of these and right now my finances can't justify projects that don't pay. I can do paintings either for pay or for exposure that can lead directly to paying projects. Me poor.

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