As most people who know me for any length of time quickly discover, I write. Most don't know how intensely I get absorbed in it, how real it becomes to me while I'm in the middle of it... or the wrenching feeling when I have to walk away from it and go back to the everyday world.

I write novel-length fiction. I occasionally write short fiction, and the presentable examples are available here. I write simply for my own amusement, just to see what will happen if I put characters in a given situation, and then switch the roles around and see how that influences the outcome, which is usually quite a lot. I have worlds of my own I visit to explore, learn, practice, and escape. At one time I hoped to "become a published author", sell my work to a publisher and see my name on books in a bookstore. Since then, I've concluded that the industry's realities would rapidly poison my work, and that I'd prefer to find my own ways to share.

It is, though, hard to stick with something long enough to finish it when you don't have an audience, real or intended. Writing 100,000+ words, preferably words that form sentences and ideas, is hard work, and sometimes it gets very discouraging. But somehow there are always more words there, something in life suggesting another twist on that idea if not on this one, and on it goes....

My short stories have lived in a site called The Shadow Realm, in one incarnation or another, on one host and domain or another, for quite some time now, and I first created it while using the online name Tenebra. Its successor is the section here that holds my shorter works, for which an open mind is strongly recommended. Its sister, home to novel-length and ongoing projects, is a much more recent addition. An open mind wouldn't be a bad idea in there, too...