Why I Started Writing:

Daytime game shows played a major role in driving me to write.

One summer when I was in junior high, I had watched TV all day. I had seen too many unsuspecting contestants come on down. They would run to the front shouting, squealing, and hugging members of the audience they didn’t know. Meanwhile, I sat on the couch with nothing to do or anywhere to go.

That’s when I noticed a word processor across the room. I started to type at the green-screen computer and my career began.

I realized I could go anywhere by writing. I first found a street fight in Los Angeles between a gang of dark-night ninjas and the cops. The ninjas slipped away from the police and traveled to other countries. The gang could go anywhere to get away from L.A. To choose where I spun my family’s globe. Wherever I stopped with my finger, the guys would go. They ended up in Bora Bora.

My interest in that story soon died, and I moved on. For years now, I’ve been able to spin the globe—both as a fiction writer and a journalist.

Authors Who Have Influenced Me:

I have never been one to gobble up books and read constantly. The only books I’ve read twice are C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. His writing is relaxing. I hear him with his British accent tell the story of this new world. I even like his use of the comma. In addition, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has great plots and characters. I also like Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society and Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. The novelized Bond influenced my view of Matt Barnes. Lastly, Louis L’Amour takes me to the Wild West like no other author. He lets me feel the hot desert sun and smell the sweaty horses.

Books I Have Written:

The Matt Barnes Adventures is my first novel, which has been exciting to write. Matts let me go anywhere in the world—even back to Bora Bora.

What I'm Working On Now:

I’m writing the follow-up to the Matt Barnes Adventures. I’ve finished several children’s books. Two squirrels meet in a tree and decide to trade keys to find a new life. They soon realize there’s no place like home. I also wrote a story about the Articulate Alligator, whose aim is to “reform the reputation of the Reptilia.” In the works is a YA book called the Sand Sifter, in which gold coins appear when a boy and his father use a charmed sifter.