I was born into a military family in the United States. At a very early age I was given the opportunity to travel the world. One of the first places my father was stationed after my birth was Germany. Europe was a magnificent land dotted with castles and history. This invoked within me first a curiosity about history, and later a passion. I became captivated with tales of both heroes and heroines of times past.
After my experience abroad, history was filed in the back of my mind. We returned to the United States and went about our lives. Somehow life in the United States didn’t feel quite right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Over time I got used to the different pace of life. In the ensuring years I settled into a pretty typical military brat lifestyle.
As I reached for adulthood things began to change. My Grandparents took me on a a trip to Italy to become acquainted with my Italian cousins. I found Southern Italy to be beautiful land filled with thousands of years of history. Greeks, Romans, and many others called the land home and left their mark upon it. The best part of the trip was a visit to Rome! During the visit, I got to walk amongst the ruins of the world’s greatest empire. I could feel the weight of thousands of years of history bearing down upon me as I walked the same streets that Caesar and Augustus once tread.
Finally, my own tour in the military took me to more wondrous places full of history, such as the Middle East and Iceland. These new experiences helped bring the love of history to the forefront of my thoughts once again. These two experiences added an appreciation for both Nordic and Arabian cultures.
As life always does, living it got in the way of my passion. After leaving the military upon the conclusion of my tour of duty, there was more school and several jobs. Once I completed my Master’s degree, I decided to try my hand at writing. As I thought about what I could write, history came crashing back to the forefront of my thoughts. This time my love of history was going to become the centerpiece of my life. As I read the work of other authors to figure out what genre I wanted to start with, my own tales began to form in my mind.
During this time period, I read extensively of several historical fiction and alternative history authors. Some of my favorites being Gordon Doherty, Simon Scarrow, Douglas Jackson, D. Russ and E.E. Isherwood. My real inspiration was Harry Turtledove, a master of alternate history. Though I have read many other alternate history authors Harry Turtledove remains my favorite.
For my first book, Scourge of Byzantium, I combined my love of history with a more recent passion the walking dead. My mind imagined a world in which the infection did not take place in the modern era, but during the later Roman Empire or Byzantium as that nation is known in modern times. Imagine how much better equipped a Roman Army would be to deal with zombies. Now imagine how much harder it is to kill a zombie wearing armor!
My second full length novel Damascus of the Damned picks up the story that ended in Scourge of Byzantium right after that novel left off. It continues the tale of Athos, Baltazar, and Constan in the Byzantium Infected Universe.
The third book in the Byzantium Infected Series, Emperor's Errand was completed and released Christmas day 2018. Continuing the story of the three heroes, Athos, Baltazar, and Constan, their travels take them to the highest levels of the Roman Empire, culminating in a meeting between Emperor Heraclius and Athos & Constan. The Emperor gives them a mission, vital to the preservation of the Empire. The completion of that mission is featured in Emperor’s Errand Part II, which was released on July 4th of 2019.
Upon completion of Emperor’s Errand Part II, I decided to take up a different genre, World War II. This is ground that has been continuously tread by authors since the conclusion of that great conflict seventy-five years ago. I didn’t want to write about the same old thing that had been used over and over again, so I searched for a little corner of the war that had been neglected by other authors. I found that corner. During the Winter of 1939-40 the world's most powerful communist nation, The Soviet Union, invaded their much smaller, and less populous neighbor, Finland.
The world expected Finland to collapse like Poland had done a few months earlier, to the overwhelming might of a superior neighbor. That didn’t happen. Instead the vast frozen forest of the Karelia Isthmus, the land around Lake Ladoga, and far flung stretches of this artic nation, became battle grounds. Despite being outnumber by five to one at the start of the war, and somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven to one by the conflict’s conclusion, Finland’s David, stood up to the Soviet Union’s Goliath. It seemed the Soviets gave up a life for every foot of captured Finnish territory. My latest series, The Winter Sniper, focuses on a fictional sniper, Hale, and how he defended his homeland, and family during this invasion
The series takes places during the 1939-1940 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. There have been six books written to date with a planned series of nine books. The first three books, The Winter Sniper, Against The Commissar, and Assualting The Commissar take place in the early days of the war on the Karelian Istumus. In books four through six, the characters participate in the Battle of Suomassalmi and The Raate Road.
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