About Me

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Durango to Silverton - 2022

It has been said that much of who you are and what you do is decided at relatively few junctions in one’s life and that these junctions need not be earth-shaking, or even recognized when they occur. Surely then, the accidental discovery that magic is real would change who you are, no matter how subtle the actual discovery. 

Logan Bridges starts his day in a sleepy rural town with a few chores that have been hanging on his “to do” list for too long. Then he accidently discovers that magic is real. Initially this is just an incredible oddity. But before he can decide what to do with his discovery, his world starts changing, slowly at first but then faster. Soon events threaten to spiral out of control. Logan quickly finds that he, and most people, live solely in one world among many and even much of that world is hidden. Logan struggles to keep his footing as he scrambles up a steep learning curve. 

And then a monster arrives.

The most common question readers and inspiring authors ask me is, “What motivated you to write this book?” I’m personally more interested in learning about and sharing, “How did you publish this book?” since that seems to be the biggest barrier that writers face. But ok, I’ll address the question I’ve been handed.

In the fall of 2021, my best friend Steve and I came up with a scheme to escape for a while. The number one challenge was COVID. There were no guarantees that we would find hotels, restaurants, museums, national parks, or the like open. And if they were open one day, they could be unexpectedly closed the next day. The scheme we came up with was to travel to the American west and primitive camp on a remote 4-wheeling adventure. If need be, we would be prepared to survive on gasoline stops alone for 4 weeks.  We expected to find the mountains east of the Salt Lake Basin desolate. We figured we might only see a few others any given week. Even many miles of rough road from any towns, it turned out that it was more along the lines of only a couple vehicles an hour. But it was possible to find remote camping sites where the only two or three human-made lights visible were on the distant horizon.  This given one a lot of time to think and converse.

We survived the long drive from Pennsylvania to Utah, listening to an audible book from a series that Steve’s kids raved about: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden Files series. We discussed the two books we listened to around the Coleman Stove or campfire many nights. We both loved that he had a complex urban fantasy world that was rules based with an underlying theory of how things worked and why. We were less moved by the miserable Harry Dresden who seemed to go out of his way to miss even small opportunities to improve his life. We also weren’t thrilled with every battel scene going from bad, to worse, to impossible only to be resolved with the most incredible luck or some new force of nature conveniently discovered just then.  Exciting yes. But hard to believe and often hard to carry forward in the ongoing story.

Couldn’t the magic user be a person that was more “normal”? Why couldn’t that person be likable, have friends, have productive relationships, live a decent quality of life? Why couldn’t they network in respectful exchanges with others and use their intelligence to cleverly deal with the problems that came up? Couldn’t they be involved with the incredible, and even the dangerous, and yet survive by wits and planning?  Sure, they might make errors, maybe big errors, be hurt in fights, maybe badly hurt, and experience frustrations both mundane and magical. But couldn’t they be interesting without being a dark, broken superhero with more luck than the gods? 

Steve and I challenged each other to write books pursuing such questions. The first of these books turned out to be mine: FUHAMMER.

My vision is to have a developing series where the main character, Logan Bridges, is every bit as bound to the rules of the world (both the mundane and the magical) as all the other characters. He started with no knowledge of anything magical and has to learn about those things.  And Logan Bridges is smart – smarter than me. 

So, what does he learn and how does he solve problems? As the narrator, I’ve got the advantage of knowing more than Logan does. That allows me to have Logan do things smarter than I would do them if I was in his place working with only his knowledge.

My extended vision is that my readers will guide what Logan discovers and how he solves problems, especially the ones I’ve presented to him that he hasn’t figured out a solution to yet. 

Bottom line, your questions and ideas may well be the next discoveries and actions that Logan undertakes.