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 say that I write popcorn-munchers with delusions of literary merit. My first love, both as a kid and to this day, is genre fiction. 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 Star Wars at a formative age, okay?

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 sci-fi and fantasy that transcended their genre. Fiction that somehow combined all those tropes and pithy lines with the sort of emotional honesty I thought could only be achieved by people with last names like Shakespeare and Steinbeck. I found myself yearning for more of these stories. When there weren’t enough, I tried making my own. I’m still working on that part.

The cool thing about fiction is that you can write about stuff blowing up and awesome hoverbikes, but while doing so, you can still tell a gripping tale about a teenager on a space galleon who grew up knowing his father abandoned him. Maybe I can’t compare Treasure Planet to Hamlet or East of Eden. But maybe I can. 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 we have in common, not what divides us. In my work, I want to get at those precious, tragic things that unite humanity.

And, I want to be able to blow up an airship or two while I do. Who says I can’t?