BRIAN WHO?
DON'T ACCEPT REALITY; HACK IT!
As a long-time software engineer, I've always enjoyed writing code but was driven to compose other forms of alternate reality. About three decades ago (wow, I'm old), I got my first big break as an aspiring speculative fiction writer when my short story "The Last Indian War" won the L. Ron Hubbard Gold Award in the 1991 Writers of the Future contest. I continued submitting short stories to various magazines and anthologies, enjoying the process and learning a lot but "staying small" in terms of projects. Then, in 2013, my first novel — Aquarius Rising: In the Tears of God — was published by Double Dragon Publishing. To my surprise, it won EPIC's eBook Award for Science Fiction in 2014. I followed that first novel with a sequel — Aquarius Rising: Blood Tide — which won the Readers' Favorite Gold Medal for Science Fiction in 2016. The final novel in the Aquarius Rising trilogy, The Price of Eden, was published a year later to conclude the series. Since that novel's release, I've mostly reverted to my roots, writing a series of short stories that have been published in various anthologies.
Of late, I've concentrated on environmental fiction, for which I have a particular passion: climate fiction, eco-fiction, and solarpunk. Now that Double Dragon has closed its digital doors, I've experimented with self-publishing a collection of short fiction (Mindshards) as well as a consolidated volume of the Aquarius Rising Trilogy, with additional content included. What's really fun about this "refactored trilogy" effort: my sons contributed cover art and illustrations. What a blast!
I recently retired from my day job as a cybersecurity professional. Now, instead of hacking software, I hack my imagination, rooting out the twisted tales that worm their way into the deepest recesses of my brain. My wonderful wife and three sons help me by providing (brutally) honest feedback about what works...and what amounts to an epic fail. Even the dog gets his two cents in: it's amazing how snarky a doxie-pit's bark can sound to a sensitive writer's ear!
