I have done many things and few things with my life. One of the things I have not done is come up with a biography that somehow reflects my skills as a writer. This I shall now try. I have read a metric ton of text in my life. You could probably crush a dozen men beneath the weight.* I have studied creative writing at Spalding University, which turns out is simply reading and writing. I thought that was nice. I have spent countless hours watching fantasy films, at times awed and at other times disappointed. I have held swords and shields and dead things. I once undertook a daunting quest to recover the stolen car keys to my mother's station wagon. Maidens have handed me favors ranging from bracelets to perfume-drenched letters to lengths of fake hair. When I encounter dragons, I keep my wits about me and my gold coins close. I am a liar. I am a thief: I have stolen words out of men's mouths and claimed them as fictional musings. My friends often question me on my whereabouts (they seldom check Medieval Outfitters). I am not a serious person; of this, I am serious. I spent my formative years training myself to be a ninja. In this I can don dark clothing and climb the tallest trees, I can do a front roll and a cartwheel, and I can fashion a smoke bomb from a tennis ball and match heads. If you were to ask me a question I would instantly become evasive and confusing (mostly as a product of my uncertainty, but also because I'm super mysterious). Say something poignant, the Internet says. Very well. I have won many insignificant things and have lost many precious things. This, I feel, is important. It is one thing to hold an object in your hand knowing its worth is a paltry measure in regards to what you might have been holding. This idea of loss is a vibrant and living thing. It lets you see that what is offered is not always what should be taken, and that what should be taken is hardly ever offered. And there waits cynicism, the most powerful of writerly attributes. If you don't know hopelessness, or dejection, or heart ache, you do not know conflict. Pain can be observed on television, or read about in the paper. But to live it, that it what molds a heart and moves a soul. My writing can be dark and terrible and harsh. This is not a product of formal training, or awards, or degrees. It is a result of my humanness, of my longing to understand agony and love and how the two survive in the same world. My stories are studies of the human heart, of humanity's need for good, and of the dreadful movements of evil as done by minds capable of love. My stories are a study of myself. To all those who read about me, thank you.