Bio

I grew up in the wilds of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. I taught myself to write my name from watching Sesame Street when I was four and have been addicted to writing ever since. All things mythological, fantastic and atmospheric drew me from an early age. As a child I was addicted to science-fiction and fantasy. The adventures of the heroes of Marvel Comics astounded me. I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe dozens of times. As early as the first grade I began writing books and never stopped.

At the age of thirteen, I wrote horror stories by request from my classmates and friends. I read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and became a lifelong fan. I also read Dracula at that time and ignored the evil guidance counselor who told me I should forget about trying to become a professional writer.

In high school I discovered Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, and Douglas Adams. I guess these guys (along with the King) had the largest impact on me as a thinker and a writer.

In college I studied writing, literature and theater and studied at Westminster University in London, England. I acted and studied Shakespeare at the Globe Theater Stage. I travelled to Santorini and Athens and felt like I had travelled there before.

Returning to Vermont and New Hampshire I began teaching in 1997. I taught in private schools and public. In 1998 I met my lovely wife-to-be, Sandra Brown, who changed her name to Sandra Barrett a year later. I helped raise her three children. In December of 2000 Finnegan Sage and Brahms Magnus, a set of very lovable and imaginative twins entered our lives.

In 1999 I began writing a series of spicy fantasy tales (that’s how you guarantee an audience) set in the world of Jotunheim. One of these stories snowballed into the epic that would one day be called: The Vale of Shade. This 250k+ work took shape during the birth of our twins, house fires, moving, a brief bout of homelessness, marriage, and all the calamities that comes with raising a family. In 2004 I finished, and set to writing a children’s fantasy novel the next year. I wrote and produced a Halloween themed play in 2007, and kept putting off the dream of being a published writer until the summer of 2009.

In 2009 I made a pledge that I would work tirelessly to become an established and successful writer in five years. I began searching the small press calls for submissions. I made my first sale a few weeks later in Northern Frights Publishing’s Shadows of the Emerald City. From there I published close to two dozen short pieces.

In 2010, I contracted with the Twisted Library to publish The Vale of Shade. The first volume was published in December of 2011. I contracted another novel with them, but all of the contracts went null and void the following year when the publisher closed up shop.

In 2012 Post-Mortem Press published The Wardmaster, a fantasy epic that takes place in the Jotunheim’s sister world: Vanaheim.  Post-Mortem Press is now a dead market.

Hairy Bromance, a horror comedy novel was contracted with Damnation Books and came out late that year. The book is now out of print, but people who have read the book still talk about it with me with fondness.

In March of 2012, I collected and self-published 21 of my horror stories in the volume: The Night Library which is available from Amazon.com.

The Vale of Shade trilogy, was self-published in its entirety through Amazon and is available. The first section of this book is the Test of a Prince that first saw publication in 2012.

The Bone Snake: A Novel of the Valkyries was self-published in 2014. It details an adventure of the all-woman monster-hunting motorcycle gang in my native Vermont. The Valkyries were first introduced in the novel, The Wardmaster.

I have recently begun teaching middle school humanities after having spent twenty-two years as a high school Language Arts teacher. I have had three works of short fiction accepted for publication this year. I hope to get back to putting out the same amount of quality fiction that I once did as a younger man.

I have hundreds of novels and stories running around in my head. It is always a wonder to me to see what will surface and what it will be like. I have been to many wondrous places in my imagination. Let me take you to some of them…