I did a lot of things before deciding what I really wanted to do was write sci-fi stories about alien coffee-smugglers.
My story starts at the age of 15, when I ran away from home and hitchhiked across Canada, from Toronto to Vancouver, selling ink drawings along the way to earn meal money. I never looked back.
Hitchhiking down the US west coast
I reached Vancouver and got my first job flipping burgers at a fast food joint called Lions Burger. The following year I hitchhiked down the US west coast, following the coastal highway from Seattle to Los Angeles. Eventually I ended up in Newport Beach where I met some Jesus freaks, and spent the rest of the summer living on their commune called ‘The Land of Love and Miracles.’ (Seriously, I’m not making this up.)
The next few years was spent travelling extensively around the US and Canada, working at odd jobs. I was a garbage man in Washington Iowa, I cleaned cafeterias in Newport Beach California, did factory work in Alberta, and buffed floors in London Ontario.
Not living the dream
Eventually I ended up in Edmonton Alberta, where I got a truck driving job. After a few years of this I realized it was time to get an education so I could land a better paying job, so I went to college and took computer programming in Calgary.
I graduated with a diploma in Computer Programming and worked in IT as a software developer for 20 years. My very first book, a non-fiction computer programming guide, was traditionally published in 1997.
Learning to Live the Dream
I’d always dreamed of writing sci-fi, but life was busy with marriage, kids and a career, so I never found the time for it. The years went by and still I never wrote that first novel, until one day I realized it was never going to happen unless I got intentional about making the time to write.
So I started getting up at 5 AM – before the wife and kids were up and the busy-ness of the day started with getting kids off to school and myself off to work. I wrote every day for three years, early in the morning, and finished my first complete full-length novel in 2010.
And it was awful. But the important point is that I finished it, and learned a lot in the process. And more importantly, I learned that I could really, actually, do it. I wrote that book, instead of just thinking about writing ‘some day’.
My first book was pretty terrible – but at least I finished it!
I kept writing every day and completed several more novels that were much better. However, I never seriously thought of publishing until 2014, when I published Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte.
I love to write sci-fi without getting nerdy about the science. I’m more interested in the people, places and plot. My stories are light-hearted, perfect for beach reading or anytime you want a bit of escapism and a day off from anything serious.
Today I live in Ontario with my wife Pennie, where I continue to write sci-fi about aliens who like coffee, lonely time travelers, and extra-terrestrial bounty hunters.
We have six kids, eight grandkids (at present – more are highly likely), and no dog. Our cat died a few years back.
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