I have been hooked on fantasy and science fiction since preschool when I watched Star Trek the Original Series with my family on TV. Then came Star Wars at the theater when I was 5, and a few years later, I discovered the joys of reading fantasy with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I quickly moved up to stronger stuff like Conan, and I currently like The Song of Ice and Fire. The elements I like most about the genres are the high stakes (save the world, overthrow the empire, etc.), the diversity of characters, and how magic or extraordinary technology allows plots to expand in interesting ways. The ability of fantasy and sci fi to include analysis and criticisms of social conditions like religion and politics is especially fascinating as well. When this is done in conventional humdrum fiction, people and readers descend into arguments about whether an opinion is valid or the historical information is accurate instead of assessing the concepts themselves. These interfering issues are not present in the purely metaphorical works that occur sometimes in fantasy and science fiction. Of course, fantasy and sci fi can just be fun as well. I love a good hero or heroine and villains can be the best of all. And there is something therapeutic about picking up a sword or blaster and solving the problems of the world. My taste in genre has inevitably married itself to my love of writing. For some reason I am a person capable of writing novels. The act of creating thousands of pages of fiction does not overwhelm me. Making it a good work of fiction is the hard part that requires countless hours of editing and rewriting and lots of daydreaming too. I have written a four-novel epic fantasy series entitled The Rys Chronicles. The individual novels of the series are: Union of Renegades, The Goddess Queen, Judgment Rising, and The Borderlands of Power. I produce my novels in paperback and ebooks, and readers all over the world have been kind enough to allow me to entertain them. Currently I am in the midst of writing another fantasy series. I expect this one to be 4 novels as well, and, as of February 2009, I am closing in on completing Book II. This series is still untitled and I won't be publishing it until it is complete. This process allows me to fine tune everything throughout the novels. When I'm not writing, my other passions include cooking, growing food, reducing my consumption of fossil fuels, and reading.
