I'm a grad student in Composition & Rhetoric and an instructor of freshman composition at a midwestern university. Writing takes up most of my life, but I make sure to squeeze in time for some art, too.

I've been doing "arts and crafts" for as long as I can remember in various media. I even started out as an art major in college. Imagine my delight when I discovered this program called Photoshop. At first, I used it to play with photos I took. Later, I got a lot of practice in graphic design doing banners, icons, etc. for journal- and forum-based roleplaying (dorky, I know), but I also played around with making covers for my own written work. While employed at a used bookstore, I began making posters, bookmarks and gift cards for the store. When I started writing for publication with my co-author, Aleksandr Voinov, I started making covers "for real."

Aesthetics have always been my thing, and design comes fairly naturally to me. It's a wonderful break from my life, and I could easily get lost in Photoshop for hours. I don't pretend to be an expert in graphic design by any stretch of the imagination, but I just really like to do it.

I use Photoshop CS2 for all my graphic work, although I'd do any number of things to get my hands on CS4.

I've published two stories this far, a novella called "Test of Faith" and a short story called "Spoils of War." Their covers and links to my author website are elsewhere on the site.