I am currently employed as a math and physics instructor at Bluefield State University in West Virginia.

I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the University of Southern Mississippi in the early 2000s.

I taught for several years at the University of South Alabama. I eventually decided to return to school to work on my Ph.D. in physics which I finished in 2010 at Washington University in St. Louis.

After a break and a year of postdoctoral work (essentially a contract scientist position), I’ve mostly been teaching math and physics at various universities in the mid-west in St. Louis, at the University of Findlay in Ohio, and now at BSU in Appalachia.

Why am I doing this?

I started writing fiction after finishing my Ph.D. and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it despite the uncertainty about the process (remember I’m a scientist by nature and training). Writing is a different kind of work than being a scientist or a teacher, but it’s still hard and rewarding.

I was writing grinding on several works in progress (a smattering of science fiction but also some historical fiction with romance elements) between jobs, and I was frustrated at how I was repeating the same basic editing tasks a gazillion times.

Not that I’m a fast writer, because I’m not, but I didn’t like the drudgery of how much time basic, even trivial, edits took.

Why can’t I delete a sentence without grabbing my mouse? I can delete a word with a single keystroke.

Or just cut or copy this paragraph?

Delete to the end of this sentence?

Swap two words without deleting stuff?

The list grew.

All small in the grand scheme of things, but they were annoying enough that I just wanted them done. Like immediately.

So I started writing … macros that is, in Microsoft Word.

I finished writing several rough drafts (technically two finished plus several partial drafts) during that time, but I also enjoyed writing my macros … kind of more than my fiction.

I admit I felt a little guilty, like I was wasting my time; but the more I wrote, the more I liked the little bursts of efficiency as I used them.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the writing too, but there are already hundreds of writers out there talking about how to write better. Very few are trying to streamline your writing and editing workflow.

So I’m trying to pass all this on to you.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Where am I going with this?

I hope to help lots of you guys and gals get a faster with your writing and editing efficiency, fiction or non. I’ve done both.

That’s now and probably for the near future.

I’d also like to publish all this fiction that I have in my backlog, but that’s a story for another day … (hopefully soon). If you're interested in that also, send me a message.