Fluid Shock

I didn’t grow up wanting to write. In fact, when I finished college I’d all but stopped reading. Then I took a job at a local police department as a whistle-stop on the way to some great destiny, got hurt early on and, faced with long days of much-needed bed rest, limped into a local book store, and left with an armful of novels.

Two decades later and I’ve served that police department as an officer, supervisor and, now, investigative lieutenant, all the while bleeding the book stores dry. As for the great destiny, I simply offer this: we are never fully human until we find some outlet for our innate creative impulses. My outlet is the novel, particularly the dystopian science fiction and horror stories that resonated with me those years ago. Perhaps, one day, I’ll find that something I’ve written has influenced another, the same as that armful of books once did for me.

As a child of Kentucky and Texas, bluegrass and bluebonnets share equal time in my blood, fueling a need for adventure and exploration, and a keen desire to see what is out there.

This is my third evolution as a writer, starting as a young boy inventing adventures for my toys and friends. In school, I wrote to fulfill assignments and map out the world. Now, I write for the same reason I read: I want to know what happens next.

Stories can make us laugh or smile, scream or cry, sometimes at the same time. In the best stories, we let the pages tell us what we need to see inside ourselves.

My fiction ranges from horror to historical, and I placed in a short story contest when one of my first stories found a home in Evolution: Vol 1, published by Evolved Publishing. Outside of the Lone Star state, I won the Arkansas Writer’s Conference Special Award (2009) and the Creme De La Creme Award (2014) from the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation, Inc. for best overall story.