I wrote my first book at the age of 9. Invasion of the Mole People. Blue construction paper cover. Twenty handwritten pages. Eleven illustrations. Jam smears on a few pages. My parents loved it. My teachers loved it. My friends loved it. I knew then that I wanted to be a writer.

Throughout my school years, I continued to write, creating many worlds, characters, and adventures – mostly in Dungeons and Dragons. But it was there I learned how important it was to keep people hooked on a story, have the people they love put in terrible danger, and always have a romantic interest for the girls.

By the end of high school, I even attempted my first novel, Starborn, which was a story about a hunter of rogue androids who doesn’t realize he was an android. I received an A in English class and a stack of rejection letters.

Sadly, out of high school, I did not pursue a writing career in any shape or form. Instead, I chose the very exciting field of accounting. Oh, the glory, the challenges, the excitement! But I still kept on writing. However, it wasn’t until many years later when one of my work colleagues remarked, upon reading my latest newsletter called Joe News, that I should write for a living.

I decided to get serious again. I wrote my first real novel. The Elementals. A weight-lifting eight hundred pages about a boy who must understand his true powers if he was to stop the world from being overrun by demons. More rejection letters.

I realized that if I wanted to get published, I would have to learn from experts. So, I went to conferences, learning about how to create a better book from writers, agents and editors. I even went down to several workshops in Oregon run by Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch where I worked with an amazing group of writers, from Sean Sommerville (writing now as Sean Slater), to Loren Coleman, JP Haines, Jay Lake, Adriane Phoenix, Pati Nagle and even Laura Anne Gilman, though back then she was an editor.