Myself with Sprout(left) and Jace(right)
I spent the last fifteen years as a death metal vocalist playing in various bands in Nashville and Knoxville. But before I found my love for music, I had always enjoyed drawing comics, both original and versions of my favorite characters in my own stories. Lyrics are what made me fall in love with being a vocalist—besides the obvious adrenaline rush of performing, and screaming my lungs out.
Crafting a song out of what myself or my bandmates were feeling or going through was truly the first time I felt fulfilled in my creative endeavors. Not only was I able to let my imagination soar by putting words to emotions and situations, but I had the physical drain of performing on top of it. It was some of the best times of my life, and I accredit my eventual transition into writing full-length stories to those pivotal and priceless experiences.
30 years old now, the past four years I’ve dedicated explicitly to expanding my knowledge of the craft of writing, as well as the two universes that I’ve created. My first few stories could be considered short stories, and I regularly released each chapter on social media near the end of my last band’s career. Included among those stories were the first iterations of what then I called Jace & the Lightless, and Vine Vein.
Since the inception of those two stories, they have undergone unrecognizable change. They went from being generic worlds, settings, and characters, to being two separate, fully-fleshed out universes all my own: the Shifting Memory universe for THE LIGHTLESS and Gatherer’s Bounty for what is now the VINE VEIN Trilogy. Since completing these latest manuscripts, I have also been able to finish a novella called FLOWER FLESH.
I love telling stories that have the reader unable to guess what’s coming next, where the story will end. Stories that you can immerse yourself in, and find an escape in the grand worlds of Vilakku and Unfeasted. Leviathans, Lightless, Star-Shapers, Neverslepts, the Homesickened, Rooted there is no shortage here of strange and beautiful things that I cannot wait to show you all.
My dog Sprout and I a few years back! She’s 10 now in 2024