Well – here we go! Thanks to my friend Jeanie Grey (@jeaniegrey) for nominating me as part of her blog hop – very curious to see what gets nominated next, but for now, I’ve got some question to answer. Follow me please!

What am I working on?
Ugh, what am I not working on?! I work on too many things at once and too little on one thing!
But in, all seriousness, I’m currently focused on two serious book projects – one I came up with last summer (2013) and another that sprung to me in December and has grabbed most of my time. I would say both of them are about 60% into their manuscript phase (read: Literary limbo).

Killhaven (my main project) – a detective set in the dystopic ruins of the East Coast. America as we know it has fallen and turned into the nightmare warned of by Eisenhower: A corrupt, fascist military-industrial complex rules what is left with iron fist. Europe has fallen to a Neo-Soviet regime and millions of European refugees have flocked to America in despair. They work the worst jobs as second rank citizens in the poverty struck and criminal city of Killhaven, where no one is happy and none dare make a difference.

It’s there that Pierce Carter, a hardened and bitter private eye, does his job of chasing corpses that float around the Killhaven waters. Like all the others he lives in an unwanted reality he can’t escape, until one day a case makes Pierce realize that the only beautiful thing in his life is no longer there before he knew it ever existed.
Together with a refugee, a whaler named Jonas, he begins a journey to solve the case that will forever change everything.

Awakeners – Is a sci-fi set on the massive spaceship Aurora Quest, on which its passengers and crews are in deep cryosleep until their journey is over. Or so they hoped.
For Willow, and her fellow crew, the nightmare truly begins when they wake up and find that an alien pathogen has invaded the ship and the biosystems that are connected to the still sleeping passengers. Soon they find themselves facing a new breed of life, the Awakeners.

Together with a platoon of Marines the crew of the Aurora Quest must try to battle off a seemingly unbeatable organism that is hellbent on surviving and expanding.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?
I suppose I’m sort of a genre hopper, which shows in my work because I don’t strictly abide to the definition of a certain genre – I try to blend them into colorful and complex stories. Likewise I try to build strong characters who each have their own identity. I’m not just trying to write a cool story – I’m trying to write an experience you want to live and characters you’d want to meet.

Why do I write what I do?
I’m pretty sure if I didn’t my chest would burst open and all the stories inside of me would spray all over the floor. And I hate mopping the floor so I’d rather write it out before that happens.

In all honesty, writing is what heals me inside and keeps me alive. If I stopped writing I’d probably wither like a plant in industrial strength hydrochloric acid. Which is not as good as it sounds.
I write them because, like I said, I can’t keep it in and I want to share with others the joy of creating a world of your own. And if I can put a small message in there that might speak to some readers, that’d make me a very happy man.

How does my writing process work?
That’s a great question! I’m not sure if I actually know – a story often begins with a random scene in my head that I begin expanding on. Usually I know the start, a point in the middle and the ending of my story then I just add boiling water, salt and pepper…

I also tend to build strong “moods” that help me feel the story, I usually have maps full of dozens of relevant pictures as well as YouTube-videos and Soundscapes that match a scene and bring it to live as I write it. Does that count? I think it counts. Screw it.