in his own words...

When I was much younger, I loved listening to the stories my older relatives would tell about their own childhoods.  It was fun to imagine my elderly relatives running around, getting into mischief.

Around this time I also had an enviable collection of action figures, assuming you were a kid who envied other kids’ action figures.  I used to spend hours sending them on adventures, looking for treasure and fighting epic battles of good against evil as I understood those concepts.

When I was in high school my girlfriend was into writing.  She encouraged me to write.  Guys have done stupider things to impress girls and since I had mostly given up playing with action figures by then and had definitely given up studying for Latin quizzes, I had time on my hands so I gave writing a shot.  I don’t still have it, and if I did, I’m sure I would burn it.  It was about a guy who had to rescue his girlfriend from the underworld and fight his way through demons and hellfire and stuff. It was a mash-up of the Orpheus myth and an 80’s action movie. In my defense, it was the 80’s.   My girlfriend said she liked it,  but she was just being nice.  I had fun writing it though, and I have been writing ever since.

Falling From the Ground started as a thought experiment way back in 2008. My wife and I took our first weekend away without our kids who were still little.  We headed for Cape May, New Jersey for a three-day weekend.  By the time we checked into the lovely bed and breakfast, my wife had a full-blown stomach flu.  This does not really make a romantic getaway terribly romantic.

I’m in this cool old mansion (Cape May has a lot of cool, old mansions) and I was reading HP Lovecraft (still one of my favorite authors) and I got this idea for a story set in a town like Cape May where kids find themselves fighting an evil monster.