John was born in the bowels of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and remains in the state to this day. A (mostly) lifelong resident, he fought with learning deficits in most subjects in school–except for reading comprehension. Always reading ahead of his age level and with a hunger for books, it was only natural when the writing bug took hold.

In 1993, the first family PC included MS Word and the decision to try writing led to a lifelong love of storytelling. After being pulled from public school and homeschooled during this time, it made for a perfect environment for an aspiring writer. The first fifteen years were entirely hobby writing, but eventually the realization began to set in: this was something he could be good enough turn into a skill that paid the bills.

The road from hobby writing to novelist was fraught with the challenges of learning the writing craft in a serious manner, hampered by work, family, bills, career change, and a PC littered with the rotted corpses of half-a-dozen terrible starter novels and twice as many unfinished ones. Finally, the right story and the right motivation came together to form his debut novel: The Black Crown.

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