Books that have greatly influenced my life: The Abhorsen trilogy and Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix; the Harry Potter series; Jurassic Park and The Lost World; Covenants, by Lorna Freeman; The Golden Queen, by Dave Wolverton; the Ender’s Game saga; The War of the Worlds; Dragonlance: Chronicles; The Black Company, by Glen Cook; A Game of Thrones; and almost all of the Starcraft/Warcraft books. Books outside of SF/F: Night, by Elie Wiesel; The Voyeur; Sentimental Education; The Fall; The Road to Wigan Pier; The Elementary Particles; The Erasmus Reader; The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien; No-No Boy; China Men; The Invention of Air; The Epic of Gilgamesh; The Fate of Africa; Dead Reckoning; The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1614; Don Quixote; The Inferno; A Handmaid’s Tale; No Country for Old Men; A Few Good Men; and Manimekhalai. There are many more, but I don’t want to be typing this list for hours.

I started writing The Cry of Havoc my Junior year of high school, mainly gibberish that I later turned into my Senior project the next year. But it was far from done. My Freshman year of college I stopped writing, as Stargate Atlantis and papers for school took over, and I didn’t make an effort to just sit down and type. It wasn’t until my Sophomore year  summer that I really took on the challenge of completing the beast. Unfortunately, my fingers had no idea how many hours still awaited them, and my sore butt could have used a heads up. Throughout my Junior and Senior years, I continued to evolve the story, and of course, my writing. So after six years my dream is alive, the pages are filled, and the plot goes on, as I look forward to writing book two.