Childhood

I was born and raised in a rural area of Nicholas County, West Virginia, where I spent my childhood in the deep woods and cool streams surrounding my home. I fought with my three younger brothers more often than I got along with them, and I lived miles from the nearest school buddy, so I spent many hours alone with only my dog for companionship. These hours were spent in faraway worlds doing amazing deeds. Dad gave me an old stripped-out Voltswagon Bug, which I used as my spaceship. If I grew tired of exploring the stars, I removed the seat (the mounting brackets were rusted free of the floorboard, so it just came out.) Then I flipped the car upside down, put the seat back in it, and pretended it was a subterranean tunneling machine. My imagination knew no boundaries. I began writing down my adventures when I was in the seventh grade, and I became a steady winner in the county-wide Young Writer’s contest until I stopped competing in 1992.

School & College Part 1

Public school bored me, and I did not enjoy the social opportunities school presented. The archetypical outsider, I kept a small core of close friends and generally disdained the rest of my peers. I didn’t think I was better than them; I just didn’t like them. I graduated from Richwood high school in the spring of 1993 and attended West Virginia Wesleyan College in the fall.

At Wesleyan, I tried unsuccessfully to become a more sociable creature and fall into step with the rest of the human race. I planned to get a degree in an area that would pay my bills while giving me time to develop a writing career. Originally a double major in computer science and engineering-physics, I changed my major to English after the first year and then dropped out of school entirely at the conclusion of my fall semester in 1995.

Wives & Guns

I joined the US Army on January 1, 1996 where I made my way through basic training, airborne school, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program in order to become a member of the 1/75th Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, Georgia. Over the next four years I served with one of the most elite infantry combat units in the world. I traveled to Germany, Panama, Thailand, and many states within the USA. I jumped out of airplanes, flew along the nap of the earth in helicopters, shot rocket launchers, detonated mines, and learned how to channel and direct the endless deluge of aggression that erupted out of me.

I married in November, 1996 and nearly died from hypothermia in late 1997 while in Pre-Ranger School. It was in the Army that I picked up the nickname “Tommy,” a name I prefer to this day. I wrote very little and published nothing during my Army career, because my mind was often occupied with more important matters (like staying alive,) but I did write a few poems that became very popular among my fellow soldiers, and my words started showing up on plaques awarded to soldiers in Charlie Company.

Divorce & College

I left the Army in April, 2000 and moved to join my wife who already had a job and an apartment in Marietta, Ohio. After a number of failed attempts to join law enforcement agencies, I signed into the Computer Information Technology program at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. I spent my days immersed in Windows, Cisco, Java, Visual Basic, and all things computer-related. I spent my free time writing short stories, source material for pen-and-paper role playing games, and I finally started the novel I’d always wanted to write.

My wife asked for a divorce in February, 2002. I refused at first, but she persisted until she convinced me we really had grown too far apart, and it was the best move for both of us. A judge finalized the matter in July of the same year. I lived at first with a friend from college until I could get on my feet and get an apartment of my own. The novel was forgotten as I devoted all of my time to school and work. I attended college as a full time student, worked thirty-five hours a week as the senior computer technician for the CIT program, and taught lower-division Cisco classes twelve hours a week. I also trained with a local National Guard unit and attempted to keep a steady girlfriend.

Man of Many Hats

The pace only increased after I graduated in 2004. I got a full-time job as a salesman with a local telephone and security camera company. At the same time, I continued to teach at WVU-P and taught a few classes online for ECPI, a college based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In January, 2005, I quit the salesman job and moved to teaching online full-time. I taught two more classes in the spring for WVU-P and then packed my belongings and moved to Christiansburg, Virginia.

Initially a stellar success in the realm of online teaching, I looked forward to doing great things with my teaching career, but it was not to be. The work schedule combined with reoccurring technical issues and personality conflicts soon burnt me completely out. I tried to switch to course development, but I finally left the company after a few failed attempts to revitalize my interest in the work. To this day, I am unsure if I quit or if I was fired, but either way, the paychecks stopped coming.

Hobo Writer

In this same time period, I discovered the realm of Internet blogging. I quickly rose to prominence in my blogging community, where I was ranked in the top four of nearly 300,000 bloggers. It was the first time I’d written in ages, and it reminded me how much I loved it and missed it. After I lost my teaching job, I looked at my future in IT - full of ever-changing technology and the never-ending race to keep up with the learning curve - and I decided to leave it behind.

In October, 2005, I sold some things, gave some things away, and put the rest into storage. I packed my car and hit the road. My path led me through the south-east, and I eventually wound up in Tennessee, where I met a woman I knew from the blogs, a person who promised to help me get published with Double Day. This woman proved to be a liar and a fraud, and after it all fell apart, I spent the remainder of the winter with my parents in South Carolina. I spent many hours working on my novel while watching the reflection of the sun glide across Greenwood Lake.

More Hats Than Last Time

I returned to Parkersburg, West Virginia, in February, 2006. Determined to avoid full-time computer work, I took on a number of jobs at the same time. I worked for Value City as a furniture assembler/mover. I reactivated my status with the National Guard. I worked as a fiction editor and writing coach. I worked as a bouncer at the Nip 'N' Cue. I taught two Cisco classes for WVU-P. I built a number of personal websites and launched an online forum for writers. I also worked as a contractor to teach county governments and poll worked how to operate the touch-screen voting machines that West Virginia deployed that year. (That was a crazy job. I worked 120 hours in the seven days prior to the Primary election. There’ s only 168 hours in seven days.)

Sometime amid all that chaos, I decided I was tired of working five jobs and barely making ends meet. I decided to go back to IT if I could find a job that paid well enough. Subsequently, I was recruited by General Dynamics to do all manner of clandestine IT contractor work for unspecified clientele, but I couldn’t get started until they conducted an extensive background investigation. While that was in the works, I started building contacts with the IT department at Camden Clark Memorial Hospital, where they were talking about hiring an assistant network administrator. I also opened a dialogue with a recruiter for Black Water USA.

I finished the rough draft of my first novel in September, 2006. In the following months I sent it to test readers and refined the draft while I submitted it to contests and literary agents.

Return to Computers

By June, 2007, it was clear that some aspects of my life needed to change. The book was being ignored by everyone. My bank account was empty. I was working myself into an early grave, and had nothing to show for it. I withdrew from all online endeavors, stopped the fiction editing job, and stopped querying agents. I quit bouncing at the bar and working at Value City. I decided to teach one class (instead of two) for the Fall 2007 term at WVU-P.

In July, I took the position of network administrator at CCMH. I was very reluctant to return to IT work, but I was tired of being broke. Dad threatened to kill me if I joined Black Water, and General Dynamics continued to drag out the security investigation, so I took the network admin job. It paid the least and was the least sexy of the three choices, but it was a sure-thing and was the only choice that didn’t involve significant risk to life and limb.

I joined the hospital's chemical response team and tried to visit the gym enough to keep my weight under control. I failed in that endeavor, thanks in part to the many colds and infections I caught while working around patients in the ER. At one point I returned to the Nip N Cue as a bouncer, but I had to quit again because I caught the flu and coughed so hard that I tore something lose in my ribs. Then I developed pneumonia on top of the flu when the pain in my side prevented me from breathing deeply enough to clear my lungs.

Despite the illnesses, my quality of life improved overall during my time at the hospital. The bills were paid every month, with some left over. I had been living with my girlfriend, but we had very different ideas when it came to a comfortable living space. I had wanted to move out for months, but I was in a situation where I made too much money to qualify for assistance, but not enough money to pay for everything on my own. The hospital job changed that, and I got my own place. It took time, but I eventually furnished my apartment with furniture and decorations according to my own tastes, and I repurchased all of the firearms I'd been forced to sell in 2005. The hospital salary allowed me to stop all other jobs, and I left the National Guard as soon as my service contract expired. I broke up with my girlfriend too; she wasn’t happy when I moved out, and things fell apart pretty quickly after I left.

I used my new-found free time to separate Heretic into two books. The first book is now titled Warlock's Wake. The second retains the original title, Heretic. I improved my websites, researched literary agents, and laid the groundwork for self-publication.

2009

I left Camden Clark in January, 2009 and accepted an offer with the Federal government, where I still worked in IT, but I enjoyed the job more because it focused on the types of devices I preferred (firewalls, routers, and packet captures.) The new position paid better, offered more flexible hours, and more time off. I hoped to publish the novel in 2009, but it proved to be a chaotic year.

The new job required much more energy than I'd anticipated, and numerous upheavals in my personal life kept me busy. Just to complicate life further, I bought my first house. The year passed so quickly that I didn't realize it was over until a cashier teased me for dating a check "2009" instead of "2010."

2010

2010 proved to be even more taxing than 2009. Work increased in pace until overtime was required almost every week. The job branched out into many other disciplines, until it was almost as diverse as the hospital job I had left in order to take a more focused job with Uncle Sam. Before work became insane, I agreed to teach a class for WVU-P again, only to discover the curriculum had changed and all of my previous course preparations were virtually useless. At the same time, failing health of family members and other family business added fuel to the fires. I accomplished none of the plans I had made for my book or my house. My life slowed to a standstill, held in place by the crushing weight of personal and professional stress. Late in the year, an opportunity arose for me to leave IT and change careers into Human Resources. After careful deliberation, I took the opportunity.

2011-Present

2011 started on a positive note. The HR job represented a drastic change in careers and entailed a steep learning curve, but I learned fast, leveraging my writing skills and IT background wherever I could. Just as I was starting to figure out the basics well enough to feel comfortable, my department underwent a reorganization, and I was assigned from one special project to another. I enjoyed the work, but it made the rest of the year a very uncertain (and often very frustrating) time. I made the best of it by going to work and doing the best job I knew how to do. Everything I did seemed to advance me to better opportunities, and work in general was going very well…until September.

My publishing endeavors also started on a positive note, building in momentum until I published Warlock’s Wake in June. It was very well received on Amazon Kindle, and rose rapidly in customer reviews. Paperback sales were not as successful, but were improving as I planned signing events and other promotions. I began a project to launch a new website and create a specific brand name for myself. It wasn’t an overnight success story, but I was well on my way and building up steam… until September.

My personal life had been a bag of mixed blessings. In January I dedicated myself to weight loss and exercise, and lost 60 pounds (from 315 to 255.) I looked and felt great! I had been in a tumulus relationship with a woman I met at work in February, 2009. We’d had our problems, made amends, and tried to keep the relationship viable, but we broke up in June shortly after Warlock’s Wake was published. In the months that followed, I continued to lose weight, go to work, and promote the novel. I eventually started dating again and started to deal with the reality of the breakup; she had been my soulmate and future, and it took me awhile to face the fact that my future had to be re-written whether I liked it or not. I was doing well. I had met a few great ladies and was starting to learn how to enjoy life again, until….

On September 15th, 2011, my father was shot and killed. He was murdered by John Lever, the lecherous pedophile who lived two houses down from my parents.

I was on a date with this great lady I’d met in college. We were going to dinner, but she had stopped at her brother’s house to give him back his camera. We were both having a hard time keeping our hands off each other, and I knew it was going to be a great start to an excellent weekend.

Mom called. My life stopped.

In the weeks and months that followed, chaos engulfed my family, consuming every other aspect of my life. I was focused on holding my family together and helping my mother, who had legal issues of her own and insisted on living nine hours from me - but only 150 feet from the sociopathic piece of shit who murdered Dad.

Nothing else mattered, and consequently, everything else crumbled. I regained weight. Book sales stopped. The website became a cyber ghost town. I burned bridges with all the women I had been dating. My erratic behavior threatened my Federal career. I reconciled with my ex-girlfriend during this time, but even that proved to be a disaster, because all our old problems were resurrected with the relationship. They just took a while to resurface, and being committed to her forced me to sever ties with friends who would have supported me if I had allowed them to remain close.

The legal and emotional madness continued through the winter and into January, 2012. My situation at work deteriorated further until I found myself in danger of being fired. My girlfriend and I had argued at work, one of her nosy coworkers reported me to Security. The Security personnel convinced my girlfriend to file a restraining order against me as a way to cover her ass at the office, in case her role in the matter came under scrutiny. The order would have scarred my record and removed my right to purchase or own firearms for life, but I challenged it in court and defeated it. I gave her a second chance because I loved her and because she’d given me a second chance when I really needed it. Even though we were not allowed to communicate or associate at work, we continued our relationship on our own time.

I continued to regain weight while my life went to hell. I fell ill and blamed it on the stomach flu, not realizing my gall bladder had utterly failed. I finally went to the doctor, discovered the real issue, and underwent corrective surge,ry. My girlfriend had promised to take care of me after the surgery, but I overreacted when I realized that she had removed her house keys from my key ring. We broke up the following day. I survived the weekend without her help, returned to work, and was told a severe disciplinary action was being proposed in response to the argument I’d had with her two months prior. That was March 28th, 2012.

Not even a month has passed, and life is already looking brighter. My family has settled most of the affairs with Dad. Some unpleasant business remains, and Mom is still nine hours away, but we’re working on it, and I feel I have reached a point of closure. None of us are fine, but we’re all going to make it. I’m to a point where I can say “It’s going to get better, with time,” and I actually believe it.

I submitted an appeal at work and convinced management to reconsider my disciplinary action. I’m still being punished, but the future ramifications (in terms of promotions, reassignments, new jobs with other agencies, etc.) are much less severe than they would have been otherwise. I’m still dealing with the rumor mill; folks are whispering about how I’m a woman beater, I threatened to kill her, and such-and-such saw the text messages that prove it. None of that is true, but women who used to smile at me now cross the hall to avoid passing near me, and men who used to joke with me just walk by with furrowed brows or stand back with crossed arms. I don’t care what they think, but the principle of the matter annoys me.

I have started very light workouts and made (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to get my diet under control again. I’ve regained 40 of the 60 I lost, and I’m not re-losing it yet, but at least I’m not regaining it as fast. It’s depressing to see how far I’ve backslid, but I will get back to 255 pounds. I lost it once, and I can lose it again.

I am back in high gear with my publication endeavors. I am planning promotion events, working on publication of the second novel, and writing two more. I am switching to a better web host and redesigning my webpages and brand name.

Additionally, I have joined forces with a few other people to launch a new company that will provide various web-based services to our local area. I don’t know how successful it will be, but I have high hopes and am committed to doing my part to make it succeed.

I have reconnected with a few people who were good enough to forgive me for being an idiot and an asshole these past few months. I’ve also had some people spit in my face, but that’s OK. I had it coming. I am not dating right now, and I will NEVER date someone from work ever again. At this point I see dating as a waste of time that I can devote to working on me. I don’t think I deserved to be abandoned, but I also acknowledge that I am not perfect. I have a lot of room for improvement, so I am taking time to make me stronger and better. Once I feel better about myself and my plans are rolling forward on their own steam again, I’ll see how I feel about subjecting myself to the trials and tribulations of dating again.

If you've never read this post before, you couldn't know this, but every year, when I update this biography with the events of the previous year, I always end it with some sort of positive, optimistic note that pledges the following twelve months to finally be the age of milk and honey, when all troubles dissolve and all dreams come true. And every year, when it comes time to append the article with what actually happened, that sun-shiny statement is sitting there on the page, laughing its ass off at me and how stupid I was to actually believe it when I wrote it a year ago. And in this particular case, I’m almost four months into the year already, so I only have eight left to find that milk and honey.

So this year there will be no lofty promises or clauses over-brimming with pledges of optimistic sun shine for the coming months. I offer this prediction instead:

I will survive this year, and I’ll do my best to truly live as much as I can along the way. I will publish at least one book, maybe two. I will keep my Federal job. I will help my new company succeed. I will lose some weight. I will promote my novels and rebuild my online presence.

Every day I will look for a reason to smile and laugh. Every day I will look for rational, conclusive evidence that I am on the right path.

And on the days when I cannot find any reasons or any evidence, I’m going to laugh as loud as I can, smile as big as I can, and take the biggest step forward that I can – simply because I can.