Born and raised in Alaska, I discovered science fiction at an early age and devoured everything I could find at the local Book Cache: Asimov, Bester, Delaney, Heinlein, McCaffery, Norton... the masters! Heinlein in particular resonated with the way Alaska was in my youth: you were expected to be able to take care of yourself in the wilderness and willing to extend a helping hand to whoever needed it. 

My obsession with technology and spaceflight took me to MIT, where I was average at best. Boston was a hell of a culture shock for a kid from Alaska. Halfway through a degree in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering, I took a year and a half off, and spent half of that wandering, mostly in Africa, still one of the only places I’ve been that compares with Alaska.

By the time I got back to the States, the place looked very different to me, and not in a flattering way. But finishing college seemed the thing to do, so I returned to MIT. When I learned Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author Joe Haldeman had come to campus, I signed up for his writing workshop – absolutely the best thing I did at MIT. (Second place: building stratospheric x-ray telescopes as a side-job to help pay tuition. That was cool.) Joe was awesome, and I learned the basics of the craft from him.

The economy was tanking when I got out. The only places that really interested me were NASA and JPL, but I needed an advanced degree to land a job at either. I had zero interest in more school. So I moved in with my girlfriend and lived low while she finished her degree, and wrote my first novel. It was not great. One thing led to another, and next thing you know we were back in Alaska raising a family, and I was working in software development, because in those days, all you needed to get a job coding was to be able to do it. 

Between raising a family and working for The Man, writing took backseat. I sold four short stories and started a second novel before I hit the wall. There were not enough hours in the day. So there it sat until the kids turned into wonderful human beings and I started novel three. Which languished, because The Man had an insatiable appetite for my time. 

Fast forward a few years to the pandemic, and like many other people, I ran out of patience with corporate servitude. So I quit my job and co-founded a startup with one of my sons, which was very interesting but not, alas, very profitable. At which point I realized (I’m a bit slow) what I really wanted to do was write, and I best get on with it.