Growing up I was an Encyclopedia Brown, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew kid — I just loved a good mystery. But the real fuel is my life. My father died two months before I was born, so I never met him, and death has been walking beside me since before I took my first step. That's why Death keeps showing up in my books — he's practically family at this point. And honestly? My wife once asked me why I keep writing books that sell little to nothing, and I couldn't answer her. Writing has always been my thing — poetry, rap, now novels. I have to be creating something to feel normal inside.

Freshman year of college, my English professor told me I was "quite a cunning linguist." I never forgot that line. When it came time to pick a pen name, it was the only one that ever made sense.