I’ve always craved outdoor adventure. My earliest preschool memories include frog hunting in the fields behind my house, and careening down hills around the neighborhood on my metal-wheeled skateboard. In middle school, I progressed to BMX, spearfishing and surfing. After college, I added snow and water skiing, windsurfing, and eventually mountain biking to the mix, and was fortunate to have a career that allowed time and resources to travel the world extensively seeking adventure.

Now well into my sixties, I research and write about science, extreme sports, nature and philosophy in between daily hikes and mountain bike rides around the homebase and monthly journeys to destinations unknown.

I personally have struggled with weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure challenges while I was in my teens and twenties. It was through functional medicine and many of the strategies I share in my book that I was able to create a positive shift in my own health and support the health of my clients.

In my education and subsequent research, the Vagus nerve always stuck out to me as a unique and underrepresented component of the health journey. My curiosity regarding human anatomy and physiology led me to this important and missing answer: enabling our bodies to enter a healing state and initiate the recovery of our health.

I’m an Associate Professor in the University of Alabama’s Department of Philosophy. I worked as an FBI Special Agent before making the natural transition to academic philosophy. Being a professor was always a close second to Quantico, but that scene in Point Break in which Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze fight Anthony Kiedis on the beach made it seem like the FBI would be more fun than academia.

In my current position as a professor at the University of Alabama, I teach in my department’s Jurisprudence Specialization. My primary research interests are at the intersection of philosophy of law, political philosophy, and criminal justice. I’ve written three books on policing.

I am a Geography professor at DePaul University with a long-standing obsession with the world, comparing puddle shapes to countries as a small child and subsequently initiating map and flag collections that I cultivate to this day.

Having lived in different parts of the UK and the USA, as well as being fortunate enough to travel further afield, I’ve relished the opportunity to explore widely and chat with the people who know their places best. I love books that alter how I look at the planet, and I am particularly intrigued by the subtle ways in which people have shaped our world—and our perceptions of it—both intentionally and inadvertently.

In my 25 years of writing short stories, novels, and plays, I have explored my Mexican and Chicano roots in a variety of genres, from literary fiction to horror to magical realism to science fiction and everything in between. In the end, I do not discriminate when it comes to genre because a well-told story is key for me, regardless of the mode chosen by the author.

I love reading fiction that bravely challenges conventional storytelling.

I’m an author and science journalist with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. I’ve written over 6,000 articles, sharing the latest news from space. 

I write horror and crime thrillers grounded in my unusual lived experience as an author and attorney who has also overcome poverty, incarceration, and violent crime. I feel most fulfilled when I read a book that both entertains and expands me in meaningful ways, immersing me in lives, cultures, and history I might not otherwise know.

So I love Social Horror novels, which feature characters who face significant human adversity beyond my own experience and leave me questioning what was worse, the human or the supernatural.

I wanted to write an action crime book, and it turned into a vigilante book. With my military skills (West Pointer/Infantry & Aviation Officer) and lots of cop friends, I was able to draw on real experiences. I also read about 80 novels a year and write crime thriller novels. I’ve won more than a few awards and keep studying my craft. It makes me feel young.

I love stories with action that make you think and are a little different and unique. I want to make a reader cry and laugh, which is what I look for in a good novel. So, when I write about vigilantes, I try to keep it real. 

Having written in the genre of psychological/crime thriller fiction for some years, I am always drawn to original voices, particularly those who are prepared to go that extra mile to produce something fresh or a concept that hasn’t been touched on before. With this kind of writing, it is quite easy to get pigeonholed, and the author has to be as meticulously authentic as they possibly can.

Thinking and then using the absurd in writing is probably the best endorsement for any book; the stranger, the better. In this modern, media-fueled world, you always have to go to different places and ignite new ideas and narratives. 

I’ve always been an avid reader, ever since I was old enough to hold a book upright. Today, I’m a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers, with credits spanning novels, short fiction, television, comic books, and video games.

I’m especially fond of heroic tales that feature female main characters, both in books and on-screen. Several of my nearly 40 novels have featured heroic female main characters, including my newest book, Star Trek: Picard: Firewall, which is a coming-of-age tale about Seven of Nine’s journey to becoming a Fenris Ranger.