FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What was your biggest influence to writing?

It's actually a combination of many things. I have a love for horror films. I started writing short horror stories. I also enjoy playing video games to escape. Living the life of video game characters is fun an exciting. Writing was another way to live life through the eyes of someone else. When you create your own character, you can live your ultimate fantasy. As a senior in High School, Mark Nelson was my English teacher. In danger of failing the course, Mr. Nelson suggested I write him something and he would grade it as my final exam. I wrote a forty-eight-page story called "The Winner." Mr. Nelson was so impressed with it he told me I should strive to get something published. Ten years later, I did just that.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I first thought of becoming a writer was when I was eleven. I remember going to work with my mother that day and sitting at a desk with nothing but a typewriter. In an attempt to amuse myself, I started writing. By the end of the eight hour day, I'd developed something completely original. That was the first time I thought I was capable of writing something worthy of being published. Though the book I started that day was never completed, I still have my original notes. Maybe it will be something I go back to in the future.

What was the first thing you ever wrote?

That's impossible for me to answer. I have been writing as far back as I can remember. I suppose my first stories came when I was playing with action figures as a child. I remember playing with a Spider-man action figure and creating new powers for him. I later colored him and called him "Shoot-Out." That was the first original character I ever created. I acutally got rather far creating a costume, profile & enemies for Shoot-Out. Maybe I'll put up his biography in the Short Stories some day.

Who is Joseph Mahan?

Joseph Mahan is a name that appears in all of my books. Though the name is always the same, the character is often not. When my brother started acting, he wondered if he should use a stage name. It was a common idea to use your middle name and the street you grew up on to be your stage name. I would be called Joseph Mahan. Also, everything I write comes from one single idea. I make Joseph Mahan the person that makes that idea take form. An example is how he is he police captain that brings Kenneth Wise into his cases throughout "The Kenneth Wise Chronocles." The Joseph Mahan name is reused as the man in the fourteenth century that causes the death of Aylukard's mother in Nocturne in the Moonlight. You will read his name many times. Keep in mind that he is often not the same person so you will have to forget the previous Joseph Mahan you may have read about.