My journey began in a city where, when I wanted to be alone, I went to a public place.

Asking questions, or what I like to call the difficult task of thinking, appeals to me because my life required I support myself. At fifteen, I was forced to leave home. Bouncing through three different high schools, I learned how to get into and out of trouble. At nineteen, I dropped out of a college I couldn’t afford and lived briefly out of my car. I found my way after a year and a half of changing course, saving money, escaping influences, and hiking in the mountains. My future wife encouraged me to return to school. Paying my tuition and bills required three jobs: waiting tables, a paper route, and clerking in a bookstore, which meant sleeping in two- or three-hour shifts. My memories of this period of my life are some of my most cherished, but I don’t feel the need to do it again. I graduated from college in three years with highest honors and was accepted into graduate school.

In graduate school, I studied several languages and earned graduate degrees in religious studies, comparative literature, and education. For twelve years, I taught writing, philosophy, and literature at a few different colleges, worked as a freelance editor and translator, and taught high school English.

After many years gaining education and experience, I’ve dedicated my life to the craft of building worlds and developing character driven stories within those worlds, stories that question the assumptions we make about how and where we engage meaning in our lives.