About Tuff

I was born in 1966 to some loving parents. This is where many writers now state: From the age
of two months I knew I wanted to be a writer. Well, that's not my next sentence. In fact, I didn't
even like to read when I was young, and reading is a precursor to writing. I was into sports. They were my
life growing up. And reading took a long time and kept me from doing the thing I loved most, sports.

But things started to change when I discovered The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien the summer before my
freshman year of college. I instantly fell in love with the fantasy genre, and particularly dragons. I still
didn't have any aspirations of writing stories at that point, but it did stoke my love for reading and since
then I have read hundreds of books in various genres.

The first time I got the bug to write my own story was after reading Intensity by Dean Koontz in 1996. After
finishing that book I set a goal to finish a novel by the end of 1997. Unfortunately that did not work out.
Life started throwing me some serious curve balls, so pursuing the act of writing a novel quickly moved onto
the back burner.

I hadn't considered writing again until the year 2000 when the Harry Potter books entered my life. Those books
gave me the bug again, and I decided to pursue it once more. Throughout the next several years I began learning the
craft of writing and started writing my first novel. But life was still too crazy for me to focus on something
that required so much time and energy. I never finished that first novel. I will go back and finish it someday.
It is deeply personal to me. But that one wasn't meant to be my first novel. Instead, I took up writing short
stories for a while because writing a novel was simply taking too long with my busy life.

And then came the event that changed my attitude towards writing forever -- a suicide by a friend of someone in my
circle at that time. This rocked my world big time! Suddenly, some of the things I thought I knew -- life is short,
pursue your dreams while you can, etc. -- instantly became very real to me. That was the night, with these old
perspectives newly imprinted into my mind, when I made the decision that I WOULD be a writer and publish stories if
it was the good Lord's will.

From that point on, I kept plodding along. I couldn't write as often as I would have liked, but I did keep writing
and learning the craft. My progress was slow -- VERY SLOW. It became an off and on adventure as the kids grew older
and became more involved in their activities, but I never gave up. I chipped away little by little and kept moving
forward.

Fast forward to 2016, the year I turned fifty years old. My life was finally to the point that I could now dedicate
some time to a writing business. My ideal scenario would be to find a core group of Tuff Readers
who love to read my fiction to escape from the realities of every day life. As long as I have people reading my
writing, and as long as I am able to write, I will do so. I can't think of a better way to spend the rest of my life!