Bio: I was born in Salem, Massachusetts and lived there within walking distance of the House of the Seven Gables. However, I grew up in sunny South Florida and had a childhood full of alligators, snakes, turtles, and walking catfish. Writing was something I started doing at a young age. An early story featured a giant, white tiger, and a connected series of drawings (perhaps one of the first "graphic novels?") depicted a war between two groups of robots: the square-heads vs. the round-heads. Comic books were a major influence on me, as were series of books like Encyclopedia Brown and Tom Swift. Later, the Heinlein juveniles grabbed hold and never did let go... at least, not completely. In high school and college I tried my hand at playwrighting. It wasn't until I took a creative writing class at the University of Florida, under Smith Kirkpatrick, that I seriously attacked short fiction. I eventually dropped out of college, but kept writing while exploring other methods of expression. For a while I sang in a punk rock band called Officer Friendly (hence the picture), and co-published (with author James C. Bassett) a punk-influenced sci-fi 'zine called Science Fiction Randomly. It was this fanzine that directly led to my first professional sale. Lawrence Watt-Evans had read, and apparently liked, some of my writing in SFR, and invited me to submit a story to an anthology he was editing, called Newer York. It took almost a full year and five stories, but he eventually bought one from me. Since then, I've sold over 35 short stories to anthologies, small press magazines, and web sites. One story, "Reality," made the Preliminary Ballot for the Stoker Award. Another story, "Virtual Day," I adapted into a short film script and sold to an Atlanta-based digital production company. My personal philosophy about the art of writing fiction has undergone a dramatic change over the years. I used to think that the end-all and be-all of my existence was to make a living as a full-time writer, no matter what it took. However, I am now more interested in producing the absolute best original works that I can, regardless of what I actually do for a living. I want the stories I write to communicate my vision of the world, as it is or as it could be, or perhaps as I fear it might be…