The obligatory authorial back story:
I grew up in Luverne, Minnesota, population roughly 4,500. (My family and closer friends would argue with the growing up claim.) Spent my senior year of high school in Sweden as a foreign exchange student. (I lived in a Stockholm suburb called Djursholm: “Animal Island.”) During various breaks and wanderings-off in college, I did some acting, toured with a theatre troupe, sang lead, played bass and/or wrote lyrics for a number of rock bands (two of them pretty decent, one of them opened for Santana), shingled roofs, sold Halloween costumes, wrote for a med school paper. After ten years, I ended up with a degree from the School of Journalism at the U of Nebraska, moved to L.A., bounced around, got my first serious writing job at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, spent a few years there, went out on my own as a freelancer, wrote entertainment industry ads, trailers, DVD box copy, etc., cranked out scripts for a number of kids/teens TV shows, moved from L.A. to Iowa (!), wrote my first books, landed a skilled and resourceful literary agent (that would be Adam Schear of DeFiore and Co., New York), was elated to see my Young Adult science fiction series sold to Strange Chemistry, new imprint of one of the most admired indy genre publishers in the solar system. And… here we are.
These days, my wife Kat and I live in a rambling Victorian farmhouse on 11 acres of rolling Iowa prairie, where we ride herd on three ferrets, a rotating cast of about a dozen rescued horses and/or donkeys and one busy little Aussie-mix mutt named Django (the guitar virtuoso, not the Tarantino film). When not SF-ing, I continue to write marketing materials for the dreadwizards of the entertainment industry. I’m also a member of several awesomely awesome local animal welfare groups who re-hab wildlife, work to humanely reduce feral cat populations through Trap/Neuter/Release programs and periodically schlep stuff or do some writing for the groups. Part of this involves providing barns, sheds, corrals, enclosures and other spaces on our farm for temporary housing of everything from full-grown black bears and cougars, to orphaned coyotes, raccoons, possums, feral cats, the occasional white tail fawn and, rescued from some over-eager barn cats, one very cool least weasel.