My Extended Bio

My God, that photo is sexy! If I had a MySpace page, I would totally put that picture up there! I really don't look much like this normally, which I guess is the whole point of these sort of photos. I took it myself one day because a few people on here had asked what I looked like. And when I say 'a few people', I mean 'one person'.

Anyway.

Those same 'few people' suggested that I should write an extended bio that nobody will read, so here it goes.

I like to write stuff. I've enjoyed writing ever since I was a child and some days I feel like I'm pretty good at it. One of the first real stories I wrote was about a possessed Ouija board. Another one was about an army of clones attacking my middle school. I tried to sue George Lucas a few years ago for theft of intellectual property but he's got some damn good lawyers. I'm all grown up now but I guess I still like writing about possessed Ouija boards and clones. It's fun.

Writing and reading should be enjoyable, it should not be a chore and I don't understand why you'd want to read something you don't enjoy. That's why I do not understand the point of literary stories or magazines. I can't say many of these so-called 'literary' stories made me feel my time was well spent by reading them. It just seems like artistic masturbation to me.

I've lived in a bunch of different places. I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. My parents moved our family to a tiny Minnesota town called Askov when I was five. It's home to the annual Rutabaga Festival, just to give you an idea of the level of excitement. I had a nice, wholesome upbringing in the middle of the country. I don't regret it, but I wonder what kind of person I'd be today if I still lived there. I'm sure if it had been up to me, we never would have left. But when I was sixteen my family moved once again to Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Going from the broad, stout Midwestern accents (and people) of Minnesota to the clipped and sarcastic tones of New England was a hell of a culture shock. It was weeks before I understood anybody. Eventually, I adapted to the radically different culture and grew to consider New England my home. I spent almost twenty years living in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, living in various towns like Methuen, Hampton, Farmington, Dover, Amherst and even an apartment in South Deerfield directly next to the world famous Yankee Candle Factory. (Don't look for it, they knocked it down so they could expand Yankee Candle's parking lot)

The town of Bailey that I write about in my Tom Fish stories is fictional, but it is based closely on working-class New England towns like Amesbury, Ware and Rochester. That's what I'm going for, at least.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts, I finally met the love of my life about five years ago now. To show her just how much I loved her, I moved to her place in New Jersey. Not Northern New Jersey, thankfully, which is what everyone thinks of first; but Southern New Jersey which is really just one, big suburb of Philadelphia. About the only I miss from that area are the soft pretzels and Wawa. Oh, and cheap tickets to the Phillies games.

After two years of dealing with Philadelphia traffic, humidity and the most bitter and self-loathing sports fans on the planet, we made the BIG MOVE out west. We sold half our crap on ebay, put most of what was left in storage (it's still there) and moved to Las Vegas!

Half the people we knew said "Cool!" and the other half said "Why??". I had been enamored with Vegas since my first visit and every time I went it became harder and harder to leave. We've lived out here for over two years now and I still like it a lot. Oh, there are downsides for sure. It's a big city with typical big city problems. There's plenty of crime and there are plenty of shady characters you need to be wary of. They dont call it Sin City for nothing. Everything outside of murder, narcotics and prostitution is legal and readily available twenty-four hours a day. Need a bottle of whiskey at four in the morning? Just pop in to Wal-Mart! No one will even look at you twice. It's not a good place to live if you can't deal with your vices.

The upsides? It's an endlessly facsinating place. You meet people from absolutely everywhere, everybody has a story to tell you. You meet people you previously thought only exisited in movies. We get three hundred days a year of sunshine. Sure, three months of it is over one hundred degrees in temperature, but that brings up another plus - NO HUMIDITY! It make a huge difference. If you don't believe me, come out here and see for yourself.

Hmm... well I need something better to end this on but for now I'll just leave you with this advice. If there is one thing I could tell people it would be; if you don't like where you live, MOVE. There's really nothing stopping you. Too many people are born, live and die in the exact same spot. You miss out on so much that way. The world is a big place any every place is not like every place else.