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I was born, as is the way of things, in Corte Madera, California, after a lengthy and complicated labor; the lead singer of my father's band announced my birth from the stage, which might explain a thing or two about my reactions to the world at large. Or at least my tendency, when everything else is silent, to hear people applauding mysteriously.
My life took me up and down the California coast, with stops in Los Angeles, Fort Bragg, and San Francisco; Los Angeles is where I started writing, and Fort Bragg is where I decided to be a writer. I started with comic books, then the scripts for comic books when I found my artistic ability lacking, and then short stories when I decided to let my doodles stay doodles. In amongst my struggles to attain something approximating literary skill, I earned a B.A. in Literature from UC Santa Cruz, and decided to risk my writing chops and my sanity on earning a Master's degree in English from San Francisco State University. I would love to tell you a story about how this informs my writing, but the real and basic truth is that I just find deep joy in dissecting stories. There is little that will pique my interest as much as the words "close reading". Except perhaps "Norse mythology". Or "free food".
Right now, I'm narrating this from a house in Mountain View, my first room away from the shadow of apartments and relatives and the latest adornment in my Responsible Adult costume. I've got a job that pays me to nitpick punctuation and spelling, a short story fermenting in the slush pile at an online magazine, and the carcass of a novel query that I'm trying to fatten up and jolt into life. It may not be an ideal life, but it's closer to the dream than I've ever been, and I look forward to whatever the next step might be.
I'm going to conclude there for now, lest this turn into a more boring Paradise Lost; if you have something you're absolutely dying to know, whether for your own edification or (be still my beating heart) something you're writing for work or school, please feel free to drop me a line via the "Contact Tyler" link in the sidebar, and I'll see if there isn't enough attention to warrant an FAQ. Oh, the giant dreams of little men...