Hi.
As you may have guessed from the name of this page, I write speculative
fiction. Spec fic is a general catch-all term that includes science fiction,
fantasy of all flavors, magic realism, and the occasional horror piece,
which either shows that I stink at specialization or I have an attention-deficit
prob-- ooh, a butterfly!
I've been writing pretty much all my life, starting with a childhood fixation on dinosaurs and Greek/Roman gods that confused the life out of my parents, and continuing well into high school where I used to scribble moderately good satire with my friend Terri (and moderately inept porn with my friend Patrick) under the guise of "doing homework." My first attempt at a novel was an incredible piece of rubbish that's still available in some net archive, and I'm sure it'll come back to haunt me one of these days.
It wasn't until 1987 that I had the epiphany -- in the hair care aisle at Walgreen's, to be precise -- that prompted me to change my college major from pre-med to English. Instead of operating on people's brains, I was going to be a Writer. Of course, it wasn't until 1994 that the Clue Fairy finally whacked me one upside the head via Robert Heinlein and I realized that there were three steps to becoming a Successful Writer:
- Put a story down on paper.
- Finish the damn thing.
- Submit it to publishers.
Lather, rinse and repeat until you have a sale. What can I say -- I'm
a slow learner.
But I did eventually learn. As a result, I'm a member of SFWA, I've been published in three countries, have two novels and a slew of stories in progress, am a regular at a number of Texas/Oklahoma science fiction conventions, and have vague yet exciting plans to break into screenwriting one of these days. When I'm not writing stories, I'm submitting them to FutureClassics, a North Dallas spec fic writing group, for evisceration and commentary. They're sharp folks -- I'm lucky to have them on my my side.
Most of the time, anyway. If only they'd lay off the "Gee, let's see who got laid in Melanie's story this time" riff. . .