Biography I was born in Washington DC and lived there until I was 18 and went to college, so a good number of stories I’ve written are based in the DC Metro area. I wrote my first story when I was five called “The Lost Girl.” I was writing adventure/suspense from the get-go(!) and I haven’t stopped writing stories that excite me since. I write more as a compulsion than anything else; and almost exclusively fiction. Washington DC is a nice place, but a bit too conservative for my taste, so I packed up and went to Oberlin College, a Midwestern Mecca of liberalism. I majored in environmental studies, and eventually went on to get an MS in environmental management from University of San Francisco. Conservation is my day job, and I enjoy it because I do my best thinking alone and surrounded by nature. Oberlin shaped me a lot, as it’s a place where you can really let yourself out, no matter what you’re like, and I got used to that freedom. I took a fiction class with the great Dan Chaon while I was there, but didn’t have a lot of time for formal writing classes. As any Oberlin-ite will tell you, about half the graduates end up in Berkeley, and after 5 years in Santa Rosa, California (about 60 miles to the north of San Francisco), I moved down there with my kin. And here I remain. In my off time I play the drums in rock bands, and I hike and play soccer on the weekends. Currently I live in Albany, CA. Influences Dan Chaon, Glen Duncan, Jon Krakauer, Dean Koontz