Hi,

“Author”. It sounds so, I don’t know … pretentious. Like a guy standing around at a party in a herringbone blazer with leather patches on its sleeves, pulling a pipe out of his mouth just long enough to emit pseudo-pithy one sentence observations. Nah, that’s not me. “Storyteller” sounds a little better, but I’ll need to nurture this spark of creativity and write more books before I’ll include myself in that fine company.

I do have a demonstrated talent for programming however¹, am a wizard at programming web applications and have been in the computer industry for, well … let’s just say lots of years. I was born and raised in Green Bay Wisconsin² but left the cold and snow behind as fast as possible and currently reside in Tallahassee Florida. Along the way, I picked up a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Georgia State University.

Back to the subject of storytelling. The first response I received from a reader of Us: An Intimacy Innovation, among other kind words, was “I laughed, cried and cheered!” That made me stop and think. I realized that storytelling is more than just narrative. A journalist’s job is to relate the facts – neutral and unbiased – to their reader. The goal of a storyteller, on the other hand, is to evoke emotions in the reader. Accomplishing this means that they have been successful in drawing the reader into the story.

Take, for example, Stephen King, a master of horror fiction. I had barely begun his novel It when the story hit too close to home and I had to put it down. Never picked it up again. One of only a few novels I never finished reading. That level of storytelling skill is what I aspire to.

Both³ of my books are novels – 100% works of fiction – though they are entirely different from each other. Us: An Intimacy Innovation came from the heart whereas The Superior Arsenal came from the head. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Dan

 

 

¹ He claims, somewhat immodestly. 🙂
² If you’ve read Us: An Intimacy Innovation or The Superior Arsenal you may have picked up on that. 🙂
³ Rumor has it that there are other stories in the works. They too, are different than the others. More on that as the writing progresses.