Lonnie

The Official Version:

I started loving fantasy fiction when I was 14, and the addiction never stopped, though it did get supplemented by many other genres, especially thrillers and horror. In 2006, I drew on my (too) many hobbies and published my first novel, a laborious—but enjoyable—process that taught me much about the publishing industry. I live in Missouri and am raising twin boys and a cat.

When the time allows, I’m compiling my thoughts, methods and ideas on writing into a writing course over at Zero2Novel. One day–probably with your encouragement–I do actually intend to finish it.
When I’m not busy writing, I acts as co-host of the Dragon’s Landing Podcast – a podcast doling out advice and ideas for tabletop roleplayers. If you enjoy roleplaying games and want to play or run a better game, join us at DragonsLanding.com.

Please feel free to contact me. I will read every letter and email, and I’ll do my best to answer them all.

And now . . . the rest of the story
It all started with a divorce.

I remember being sat down on the couch in the living room one day after school. I was 12. I could sense something was wrong, but had no idea what. All of the arguments had been kept carefully hidden from me. But that’s the day I found out they were getting a divorce. And that’s the day I really began loving fantasy.

I grabbed every book that could (I remember both J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks were my introduction) and hid in my room, devouring the books. They became my escape. Perhaps that’s why I write today–to offer escape to others who need the time to heal or get away from the stresses of life.

During high school I found a new love for reading and writing of all sorts. In AP English, my teacher awarded extra credit for poetry, so I found myself writing quite a few poems. Some were pretty decent, even looking back. Others were . . . well . . . awful would be the nice way to describe them, I guess. Another English teacher brought fun into the plays of Shakespeare by pointing out all of the double-entendres within Hamlet and shed light to hidden meanings within the words of what would otherwise have been some very stuffy reading. He made literature fun.

I also managed to get my first short-story published. Granted, it was in the high school yearly literature book, but that still counts, right? The story was the disturbing tale of an old spinster who was devoured by her own cats. Can you tell I was heavily into Stephen King at the time?

And then college happened. My interest in music took more of my time, as well as my studies. What studies there were. I spent the first year working towards an architecture degree. During that summer, I choose to major in music. Everyone managed to convince me to take education classes so that I could earn a living doing it. What I discovered was that my enjoyment of music was tied to the creative aspects. I could not stand teaching it. It was a purely selfish hobby. Realizing that I had just wasted between $4000 and $5000 that semester alone, I dropped out of school and found a career in the civil engineering field, drawing plans and doing design work.

But that was not a fulfilling career for me. I need the creativity and challenge of other pursuits. I explored my hobbies, one by one, searching for a new career that could give me that joy that was severely lacking in my day job. After trying programming, web-design, game design and more, I came back to writing and found what I had been looking for.

I had been writing off and on the whole time, anyway. A half-dozen novels sat partially plotted and partially written. Several worlds filled notebooks, but were never used. So, it was time to see if I could write a novel. It was time to get serious.

It only took me 5 years to finish that first novel. But I did it. I scrapped nearly 300 pages of manuscript, and plotted the entire thing out twice before finding a story that captured me and felt alive and passionate. Over 90,000 words later, I was able to start writing Daughter of the Sun.