Next one up

Hey! My name's John, and I guess I'm the next one up.

It'd be absolute madness for me to try to recall what exactly sparked my love for fantasy (I can barely remember what I did five minutes ago) so I won't try. All I know is that my big sister's manga and a bunch of toddler-sized fantasy tomes at school had something to do with it.

Seriously, if one more person makes a "Porn of Prophecy" quip...

I was an extremely curious kid, and I loved, loved, loved to learn new stuff so I could make other kids feel dumb later so I could help people. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on, even the majority of my mother's behemoth of a dictionary. Nothing captivated me quite like fantasy. I'm not certain why that is. I think it's the sheer scope of things that the fantasy genre allows an author to include. It can accomodate every other genre (romance, mystery, horror, etc) and there are very few boundaries exluding those that the author makes for him/herself. Seriously, what's not to like?

"Hi!"

All this time, I never let up reading manga. I loved reading stories with magical elements set in the present day (schools and other 'normal' places), and wished that there was more of that kind of thing in novels. Someone pointed me to a bunch of urban fantasy books, and eventually the first book of Dresden Files, Storm Front, by Jim Butcher hit my lap. I was hooked.

And there you go :) Somewhere down the line I got into writing it. But that's a story for another time...