You know those people who always have to be making something? I’ve been one of them since around second grade. Longer, if you count just making messes.

Hence, today, a workspace dubbed Green Man Studio, after the ancient symbol of growth and rebirth that thrives within the broader cycles of life and death. There’s no direction I can look without a benevolent leafy face staring back.

After selling my first two novels at the age of 26, I’ve gone on to make, thus far, 20 novels and story collections, around 135 shorter works, reams of nonfiction, and a soundtrack album. Several works are in various stages of development for TV and film, but these wheels grind ever so slowly.

Under the conviction that success in one realm of creative endeavor should fund the ongoing abuse of another, Green Man also serves as a studio for music and soundscaping. Sometimes photography. Interpretative dance, never.

Much of my writing career has been spent mining various veins of horror, plus a side-fling with criminal activity, but that now feels done.

There’s a weird occurrence that, while common, seems to not get talked about much: how a long ordeal, especially where mortality is concerned, can leave you rewired in significant ways. A few years ago I lost both parents three weeks apart; neither death was expected. The following year-plus was consumed by my role as estate executor.

When the time came to get back to work, in earnest, I was surprised to realize that I’d lost interest in the directions I’d been heading before. The partial novel I expected to return to? Ever since, it’s been rusting out like a car up on blocks in the yard.

Instead, I found myself increasingly interested in fantasy. The seeds were already there, in a handful of varied, atypical works I’d done in recent years. Apparently, while I was busy elsewhere, the seeds sprouted and took over the garden.

Life, death, rebirth, growth — I’m in the right room.

I live in Colorado with my partner Doli, where I also hoof it up the occasional mountain, sustain periodic contusions from Krav Maga training, and on most days strive to sweat like I’m being chased by the police, but for better reasons.