Bio
I was born on a Reserve in Northern Alberta. Mom and dad had come from the UK. They were recruited by the provincial government to run an aboriginal elementary school. Temperatures of minus forty were normal. Dog sleds were the most reliable method of transportation. Hunting was a way of life.
When my father completed his Ph.D, our family moved to London, Ontario. On Saturdays, dad would take me to the public library with him. We would bring two gym bags and fill them with books for the week. He read everything but he especially loved science fiction and military history. The first authors to captivate my imagination were Robert Asprin, Larry Niven, Michael Crichton, W.E.B. Griffin, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Heinlein, Ed McBain, and Orson Scott Card. I read Ender's Game in a loop, turning from the last page to the first. Eventually, my mom bought me my own copy which I read until it disintegrated in my hands.
In my tween years, I began collecting comic books. Wolverine and Silver Surfer made regular appearances in my dreams. I fell in love with the cinematic works of Stanley Kubrick.
I learned the basics of computing by playing with a PET. I wrote my first code on a VIC-20. Then our family got a Commodore 64 with a modem. I learned how to use the strange noises to connect with others on bulletin boards. This was before the world wide web, back then everything was words typed with a keyboard and displayed on a screen. The transition to writing seemed natural.
In high school, I wrote fantasy novels. I used birthday money to save up for postage, sent copies to publishers in New York, and then fantasized about what I would buy with the huge advance that was surely going to be sent back with the reply. After I'd written five novels that no one wanted, I became bitter and decided that I was going to be a playwright instead. The first play I wrote was good enough for the editor at Scene Magazine to offer me an opportunity to write reviews of performances in the area. There was no money in it, but I got free tickets.
When I moved to Toronto to study literature at York University, I immersed myself in the theater community. I kept reviewing new plays. I interviewed directors and producers. I worked with the Canadian Stage New Play Development Program. And I saw my scripts produced on amateur stages. I read David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, Brad Fraser, Judith Thompson, Daniel McIvor, Arthur Miller, John Osborne, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Harold Pinter, David Hare, Tony Kushner and Samuel Beckett.
I never formally studied computer science. I kept up with technology by using technology. When I moved back to London and entered the workforce, the internet was just becoming mainstream. Employers weren't interested in my English Degree but I knew HTML which meant that I could create websites which everyone suddenly needed to be able to do. Almost accidentally, I became an IT guy. Married and ready to start a family, I exploited the ever-expanding-niche for a steady paycheck. A temporary gig at The University of Western Ontario became a career. I kept learning by doing. I figured out web forms and databases by replacing paper forms. I learned software development and data structures and network architecture by solving problems. When our servers were hacked, I started figuring out cyber-security. I'm not a Software Developer or a System Analyst, but a veteran of the great digital transformation.
Somewhere in there, I switched back from writing plays to writing novels. I write every morning and I read every evening. My list of favorite authors now includes Brett Easton Ellis, Ernest Hemingway, Irvine Welsh, John Brunner, Aldous Huxley, Don DeLillo, Carson McCullers, Hunter Thompson, Nic Pizzolatto, Patrick O'Brian, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Michael Connelly, George Orwell, Caleb Carr, Thomas Pynchon, John Irving, James Joyce, Umberto Eco, Iam McEwan, Neal Stephenson, Raymond Chandler, William Gibson, H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Amis, Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson, Jeff Lindsay, Ian Fleming, John Steinbeck, Thomas Harris and Cormac McCarthy.
