I GREW UP in northern Wisconsin, where my parents ran a seasonal summer lodge. As one of their sons, I enjoyed summer employment as the resort's ski boat driver (aka The Boat Boy) for most of my teenage years. Summers spent playing on the lake and in the woods, combined with winters sitting inside and staring out into snow-covered darkness, turned out to be good nectar for my imagination.

The few teachers that taught creative writing throughout elementary and high school seemed to like what I wrote (although that could have been because I was one of the few students who didn't complain about it—who, in fact, regularly turned in stories that were a page or two longer than required), and I gradually became aware of the fact that I really liked to write.

I went to college to study English, but during my junior year the whole money thing got to me and I wimped out, adding a Computer Science major to my studies. I graduated, got a great job creating software for a great company, and spent thirteen successful years there. But the urge to write never went away. I'd stay up late some nights, trying to muster the energy to write something—anything—and brooding over the fact that I'd never taken the time to really focus on it.

But then one day it hit me—maybe it wasn't too late. I decided to take a nice long sabbatical from software development to write full time.

Since then I've finished my first book, Escape from Devil's Canyon (which I originally wrote for my kids), and my first novel, Will. I'm back at a day job now, but I'm still writing; a fantasy novel, a crime/thriller novel, and a sequel to Escape from Devil's Canyon are all in the works.

Today, my family (a fantastic wife and three awesome children) and I live where I grew up—on the lake in northern Wisconsin.