Dan Willis

When I was seven years old, my mother gave me a book for Christmas.  It was The Shattered Helmet, the sixty-seventh volume of the Hardy Boys series.  Like most seven years old, I found this only a little better than getting clothes.  Perfect waste of a present.  

Almost a year later, in October of my eighth year, I got terribly sick.  After a day of watching daytime television (which was as bad then as it is now) my mother insisted that, if I was going to stay home from school, I could only be in my bed or on the couch in the living room, where there was no TV.  After an hour of laying on the couch, listening to the radio, I was going mad with boredom.  When I complained to my mother, she just smiled and said, "Why don't you read that book you got for Christmas."

Ugg.

After another hour, however, I was bored enough to give it a try.  I took me three days to read that book.  To my recollection, I'd never read a book.  Of any kind.  I'm sure I must have in younger grades, you know, the kind they give you to learn reading.  But I don't remember them.  This one ... I remember.

I was hooked.

In the far too many years since that fateful day, I read anything and everything I could get my hands on.  Eventually, I decided to try my hand a writing, and found a home working for Wizards of the Coast, writing books for their DragonLance brand.  More recently, I wrote a Steampunk Civil War series entitled Dragons of the Confederacy with NYT bestselling author Tracy Hickman.  I also have a Dieselpunk Noir book called Plain Sight that will be debuting soon.

I live in the west with my wife and children at the mouth of a majestic canyon where the wind always blows.  In my spare time, I play games with my friends, watch old movies, and as you might expect, I read.

*****

If you're here and wondering why I don't have anything for you to read, don't worry.  I'll be putting up a full novel in a few weeks once I get my ducks in a row (and the cover done).