I grew up as part of a large, religious family in Wisconsin. As a kid, I was constantly running around with my siblings or kids from the neighborhood playing pretend. We had our made up places and characters and implemented them constantly in our games. About the age of 10, I began writing these stories and imagined places down. My parents had a strict 25 minute time limit on the computer, and we had to read just as much beforehand. I appealed this, telling them that I was using the computer to write my own stories, and got it bumped up to 45 minutes per day, as long as I read just as much. I completed my first novel at 14. My younger brother also completed his first novel the same year. He was only 9. By our standards today, they were not well written.

Yet it spurred a desire, then love, then necessity for writing. I wrote three more books while in high school, then took a break and served a two year mission for my church in Los Angeles, California. This break lent itself well, because it allowed me to meet and serve many diverse groups of people. It also spurred in me a desire to write for the purpose of inspiring others to more fully implement Christian principles into their way of being.

Three years later, just before college graduation, I published my first book, Forth From Eden, and have written and published it’s follow-up, Pursuing the Sun, as well as Gather the Stones.

Two other aspects after my mission have continually influenced these books. One has been getting married and starting my own family. While the rigors of tending to small children can detract from time at the writing desk, they provide a stockpile of fuel for content. It also helps me understand, just a little more, what God must experience as He tries to guide us through life.

The other has been gardening. Designing, constructing, and tending to landscapes has not only given me an outlet for expressing my creative tendencies in a more concrete manner, it has taught me patience and cultivated my ability to see a vision of Eden, even when the plot is choked with weeds.

I currently reside just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my wife and four sons.