Hopefully, you landed here because you are interested in my work as a writer of novels. You may also know me because I've been designing video games for close to thirty years now. In a way, I have always been telling stories for a living.
I've had the privilege of helping shape the landscapes of legendary gaming franchises like Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends. I have worked on the pop group, KDA, and the Emmy-award winning Netflix series, Arcane. I started one MMO for Riot Games, and a second MMO for my former studio, Fantastic Pixel Castle. I've had the titles of design director, vice president, and studio head. If you've customized your armor appearance in a video game, you can blame me for turning "transmog" into an industry standard. Gamers online know me as Ghostcrawler.
Before I got into video games, I was an oceanographer. I earned my PhD in marine science from the University of Texas at Austin. I was a benthic ecologist, meaning I studied creatures that live on the bottom of the ocean: some fish, but mostly invertebrates, such as clams, worms and yes, crabs, which I still use as my mascot to this day. You'll find a bit of oceanography and South Texas in my novels.
After graduate school, I became a professor at the University of South Carolina, where my most interesting project was collecting DNA by capturing live, radioactive alligators. Despite all of the time I spent on boats or in the marsh, I found that being a professional scientist mostly meant sitting in front of a computer screen, and decided if I was going to be sitting in front of a computer, I might as well be playing video games. So, I made a massive career switch into game design.
Outside of game development and writing, I enjoy history, gardening, yoga, hiking, and exploring the world. When I retire, I plan to be a very colorful bait shop operator somewhere in the Caribbean. But even then I plan to keep writing.
