Born in Arkansas and raised in New Orleans, Charles B. Hampton wrote his first story at age 9 about Thor and his mighty hammer. Since then he has published several million non-fiction words, including news and sports stories, several hundred trade-magazine articles and numerous gee-whiz science articles.  During his career, he has been musician, sailor, oil-field roughneck, newspaper reporter, aerospace public relations representative, and advertising executive. In January 2013, he retired after serving for 15 years as editor and principal photojournalist for a successful business trade magazine. Brothers of the Light was his first published novel. In addition to Brothers of the Light, he now has three other works: his non-fiction book for writers, Writing Great Stories. Novus Schola a near-future thriller, and The Oddlings, a book of science-fiction short stories, available on Amazon. He currently has two other new books in the works, so watch for them. Hampton says, "I've been blessed as home-based, self-employed writer to have been able to raise a family, put four kids through school. . .all with my typewriter, now computer. One complaint, though. The hard part about working at home all these years has been the terrible commute. . .from my bedroom office to the coffeepot! What drives me to write? Based on my observations over many years, I believe most writers begin their writing lives with certain built-in dominant artistic motivations, such as intrigue with character, place, mood and mystery. I also believe that many of us suffer because we don’t understand that motivation. In my own case, my earliest writings were confused efforts to evoke a sense of place and mood (emotion), which probably means I was principally motivated to write stories about places (settings.) I was enthralled by the sound of foghorns in the night and echoing footsteps on cobblestones in the fog, ala Sherlock Holmes stories. In those early efforts I could just see and feel and smell and hear those dark, moody places about which I wrote. However, I was a very confused young writer and also had a strong desire to win fame and fortune. The result was simply a writing mish-mash with lousy stories (or none at all) and too much mood and sense of place. The result also was far too many years of misery and frustration as I batted my head against the wall, trying to make what I wanted to do sound like all those best sellers out there. Eventually I learned that most of the big sellers write suspense-filled plotted stories. I then began an agonizing shift toward learning to tell a good story (as opposed to creating a mood. A report of my efforts to learn and the knowledge I accumulated forms the heart of my book, Writing Great Stories.

So far, so good. Four books out, two more on the way. As a writer, I'm most proud of the fact that I was able to raise, feed and house my wife and four children with my typewriter (oops, computer) as newspaper reporter, PR writer and later as editor of a successful business publication.