A few preliminaries: I’m from Georgia, I have a wonderful wife named Katie, and I share my office with 45 pounds of hyperactive dog.

But you’re probably here for the stories.

I like to tell people I write popcorn-munchers with literary aspirations. When I was in fifth grade, little eleven-year-old me scribbled down some loose leaf pages about a boy and his best friend who find treasure in their backyard. There’s an evil lightning wizard who fits into the plot somehow, and there are these awesome hoverbikes with laser cannons.

(I watched a lot of Lucas and Spielberg at a formative age.)

In fact, I consumed tons of fiction growing up, and most of it was the same as what I liked to write: explosions, romance, feats of derring-do…

But then there were the special ones — the SFF that transcended genre; that took all the tropes and pithy lines I loved and combined them with the emotional honesty I thought could only be achieved by writers with names like Shelley and Steinbeck. Those stories stuck. Inevitably, I got it into my head to try and make my own.

See, the cool thing about fiction is that you can write about stuff blowing up and awesome airships, but you can still tell a gripping tale about a teenager who grew up knowing his father abandoned him, or a little girl who values her life more than society does. Fiction is limitless. Story gives you that power.

My goal — and my deepest wish — is to create stories that other people will find as much meaning in as I do. I believe that fiction is a linking force, a celebration of what unites, not divides. In my work, I want to get at those precious, tragic things that make us all human.

(And, I want to blow up an airship or two while I do. That’s what makes it fun.)