Ever since I was little, my greatest passion has been well told stories. From the time I learned to read, I could rarely be found without a book of some sort. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said an author. In the following years, I went through several other future career choices but I always came back to writing. I found my second passion when I was first introduced to video games through Super Mario Brothers 3. At that time I became fascinated with platformer games such as the Mario, Sonic, and Mega Man series. But it wasn't until shortly before my 13th birthday when my love of stories and my love of games combined.
I started writing my first novel at age 12. Shortly after that, a friend introduced me to the recently released Final Fantasy VII. I was quickly captivated, not only by the amazing graphics and top quality music, but by the deep and twisting plot, which surpassed that of any book I'd read at the time. When I was at last able to get my own Playstation, Final Fantasy VII was the first game I bought. By the time I'd reached the end, I knew that I wanted to write stories like that, and I wanted to create the games to go with them.
I continued to write as the years passed and have now completed eight full length young adult fantasy and sci-fi novels, with plans for many more. Throughout that time, I worked to expand my skills and knowledge by reading a wide variety of books across many genres and playing as many different games as I could. I also became a serious fan of Japanese anime and manga.
My favorite book series include: Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time, The Sword of Truth, Sherlock Holmes, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Favorite games and game series include: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Ico, and Dance Dance Revolution, just to name a few. A mostly complete list of my game collection can be found in this forum post. As I read those books and played those games, I always tried to recognize the best and worse parts of the writing and/or game play, and use what I found to improve my own writing and game ideas.
Aside from my reading, writing, and game playing, my other hobbies include piano, Seibukan Shorin Ryu Karate (in which I'm currently a 2nd degree black belt), cooking, hiking, traveling, and photography. I also create a sprite based web comic called Pebble Version, which has been updating steadily for over five years and has received between 20,000 and 30,000 unique visitors per month.
Throughout all that, I remained focused on my goal and began to experiment with game design using various RPG Maker programs. I enrolled at The University of Advancing Technology in spring of 2004 to study game design (after being homeschooled until college and spending three semesters taking gen. ed. classes at my local college). During my time at UAT, I worked on several mods (both individual and team projects) and led an original 3D strategy RPG project (full details can be found on my Project History page). I graduated a Bachelor of Multimedia with an emphasis on Game Design in April of 2007.
At that pointed I wanted to take some time off to try something different and improve my Japanese (which I had been studying on and off since high school), so I found a position teaching English in Japan. I spent eight months teaching at Nogi Elementary School and two nearby preschools in Nogi Town (a small town about an hour north of Tokyo). I loved the country and the experience and wrote an extensive and photo filled travelogue on Pebble Version. However, as much as I enjoyed Japan, I missed game design so I turned down the offer to renew my contract for another year and returned to the US.
After some time spent helping my family out and working on various other projects, I returned to UAT in the fall of 2008 to pursue a Master's in Game Production, which I completed at the end of 2009. During that time, I wrote my Master's Thesis on storytelling and interactivity in games and other media. In June 2010 I signed a contract with Focal Press to write a textbook based on my thesis work titled Interactive Storytelling for Video Games, which was released in March of 2011. And in the winter of 2010 my independent game, Game Washer: Summer of the Ninja, won third place in Intel's Level Up competition.
In August of 2011, I began working at Florida Gateway College, developing their new game design certificate program and teaching most of the related courses.
My two greatest passions remain stories and games. I'm a writer, a gamer, and a game designer and I always will be.