I tend to have many projects going at once, which has always made it difficult for me to actually finish any of them.  I love to write short stories, especially the type of little slice-of-life vignettes I post on the blog.  I also have a cluster of unfinished novels/novellas that I hope will be great things one day.  I often get attached to my characters and find it hard to write their ending, even when I already know where things are headed.  My favorite types of story to write are horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a focus on personal relationships between characters.  Traditionally, these genres have highlighted the setting rather than the characters, but I have never been able to distance myself from the characters' emotions and interactions.  I prefer for my characters to come before the world in which they live, for the way they feel to aid in the action rather than be a dismissed byproduct of it or side note to it.

The inspiration for my stories comes from both whatever little thing is currently holding my interest, such as Greek mythology, daily life in the 1920s, or urban legends, and from my dreams.  I love doing research, and I will spend countless hours looking at all available material on a subject once it has captured my interest.  I let things that spark my curiosity drive the direction of my writing.  Part of the reason I like to write in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres is because they are wonderfully flexible and accommodate this.  I can take anything at all that strikes my fancy, no matter how outlandish or incongruous with reality, and place it into such a story.  And because dreams can be quite strange, stories deriving from them are right at home there.  I actually suffer from what are called hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations accompanied by sleep paralysis, which means I open my eyes while I am asleep and project my dream onto the room around me. I experience the sight, touch, and sound of the dream as if it were real, but I can't move or talk.  It can be utterly terrifying in ways I can't describe, but hey, it's great fodder for a book.

Poetry is something that I only tentatively explored at first, but it ultimately became my primary creative outlet because of my tight schedule.  I use my poetry as a way to reflect on certain moments in my life, good and bad, by resurrecting them in a way that highlights their most vivid beauties and horrors.  I almost always write free verse, and while I've been told by some people that poetry is meant to be read aloud, I never really intend for mine to be spoken.  I'm a visual person, and anything I write is meant to be seen, to be reflected upon internally based upon what is seen, and to create an image in the reader's mind.  I like to use clever word play, striking imagery, and colors in my poems.


I do a lot of reading, so it follows naturally that I have very many literary influences.  I also draw my inspiration from more sources than I can number (see above).  However, I'll do my best to name a few of them:  Stephen King's train-of-thought writing,  Ramsey Campbell's ability to put fear and desperation into anything, H.P. Lovecraft's overall topic and styling (especially his seamless blending of horror with science fiction), Anne Rice's heady and luxurious tone, Abraham Lincoln's concise yet powerful expressions, Sylvia Plath's word play, Robert Herrick's upbeat yet deep and meaningful poetry, Isaac Asimov's creative imaginings of the future, Philip K. Dick's surreal future romps, George Lucas' epic mythological undertone, pre-1920's fiction, pre-1920 scientific texts, science fiction and fantasy stories aimed at young adults, the Cthulhu Mythos, everything Japan, ancient myths and religions from around the world (including religious texts), urban legends, unexplained mysteries, ufology, cryptozoology, ancient and modern cultures, scientific theories and discoveries, dreams, and personal experiences.