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About John

Hi.

I'm not crazy about ... well ... About pages. Let's face it. How well can you really get to know me in 500 words or so on a single page? I hope you'll get to know me better as the site grows and as I produce more content.

The short version of who I am

I grew up in small-ish northern California town, born in the year of when one of my favorite movies (Star Wars: A New Hope) premiered, and raised on Mexican food (thanks to my family's restaurant), 80s Saturday morning cartoons (was there a better time to be a kid?) and in an era where we played outside most days without parents or grandparents asking if we were OK every five minutes (as a Gen Xer, I wasn't necessarily a latchkey kid, but I kind of was).

A little more about me

As for writing, I've always liked to write as a kid and I read a lot. Growing up, I frequented our public library, checking out Stephen King books one after the other and getting questioning stares from librarians about why a 10-year-old kid wanted or was allowed to read Cujo. For my kid self, "Stephen King Rules" as the t-shirt read in "Monster Squad."

I also had a deep love of dinosaurs, and in the sixth grade proclaimed I wanted to be a paleontologist. After some time, I got into comics and taught myself how to draw, but still loved dinosaurs, movies and anything sci-fi related. Spielberg was my film idol growing up (saw Jurassic Park nine times in the theater; maybe I'll write a post about that someday), so I thought maybe I'll write movies.

I went to UCLA as an English major and loved every minute of my time at that school. I took film classes and had internships at various studios. I even had one at Amblin, my film idol's production company, but could only stomach two weeks (probably should save that story/lesson learned for another time, too).

Over time, life got in the way of that dream to write for movies, but I still wrote and even co-created UCLA's first sitcom for UCLA TV. I got into web publishing writing for AOL out of college and, aside from two years trying to teach in LA Unified, I've spent most of my post-collegiate years working in the digital world for close to a quarter century.

Now, after numerous ideas over the last 12 years, false starts and 70 pages of a book written in a genre I wasn't excited about, I've finally nailed down my idea for a novel and have 9,000 words (as of March 2025) and about 30 pages of my first book. It's taken me a while to get here after almost 50 years of life, but I'm excited for this adventure and I hope to write something that's fun and connects with people.

In my past life, I've been a:

  • College mascot
  • Campus tour guide
  • College radio DJ
  • Catalog model
  • Relationship advice columnist
  • Teacher
  • Content manager
  • Generalist (UX, analytics, content management, content strategy, project management)

But what I most enjoy being now is:

  • Husband
  • Dad
  • Writer

What I want this site to be

Ultimately, I want this site to be a lot of things:

  • A place to keep me accountable and keep me writing by giving updates on my sci-fi novel for whoever wants to keep me accountable.
  • A place to build a community through my newsletter of other individuals who share the same affinity for sci-fi as me.
  • A space to call my own where I can write about anything (but most of it will be about sci-fi and writing) and share my voice (yes, just what the interwebs needs, another "voice").

I hope I succeed. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope to see you back here soon, fellow traveler.