I grew up in a rural part of British Columbia, Canada. For those who don't know, there are parts of the province that are closer in climate to California than to the rest of Canada, so I grew up in a place that was hot, dusty, and sparsely populated. I think living in that sort of environment has given me insight into what some like to romantically call the "rhythm of the seasons" because unlike living in the cities, you really have to adapt to whatever the environment throws at you.

The first full story I ever read was "Colours in the Dreamweaver's Loom" by Beth Hilgartner. I just found the imagery in her books to be, well, magical. Come to think of it, I also read Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" around the same time. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my love of reading - and of fantasy as a genre - was shaped by the writings of brilliant women telling stories in a field that often ignored them.

Sure do. It was a post-apocalyptic story about an isolated farming town deep in the mountains that had somehow survived the nuclear winter that had consumed everything else. I think I was in the fourth or fifth grade.

Honestly, I have very little free time these days. Fatherhood and working full time takes up the bulk of my days, and so writing (fiction) is basically how I decompress.

I usually just stumble on new ebooks by following the suggested titles that pop up after I finish another book. Sometimes it pans out, other times it doesn't, but that's part of the fun.

I've got a Kobo that I've really put through its paces.

It's going to sound corny, but I find a great deal of satisfaction through service. I am an educator because I love the idea of helping young people learn and grow, and I do the research I do because I want to help make the lives of my neighbours a little bit better.

I've tried a couple of different methods. My training as an academic and researcher inclines me to mapping out with a fair degree of precision the sorts of things I write, but in writing The Crown of Tevindh, I opted for a more free-wheeling method where I let the characters sort of "speak" for themselves.

Something about judging books by their covers fits here nicely.

I go through phases. These days I'm primarily reading pulp sci-fi and space operas. A year ago it was epic high fantasy, and before that, pretty much only stuff written by Sir Terry Pratchett.

Ancient, cheap, battered, cluttered. It's basically a slab of particle board that's refused to succumb to the nearly two decades of abuse I've put it through.

It's something I've never done before, but always wanted to try. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the traditional publishing style. Too exclusionary. I don't want some random person skimming through a hundred manuscripts a month telling me if my work has value; I want readers to do that themselves.