I grew up in a small town in southwestern Wisconsin. My parents were academics, but not in fields that anybody thought was important, so I was exposed to a lot of learning as a child, but we never had any money. I spent most of my free time in high school reading Heavy Metal and playing Dungeons and Dragons. I spent a couple of years in college studying lighting and scene design (my childhood left me ill-equipped to face the practical world), then my girlfriend and I ran away to Washington DC. My first job was as a movie projectionist in a non-union theater, then I worked as a clerk for Science magazine, published by the National Association for the Advancement of Science. In Washington, I realized that I am not a big city person. My girlfriend (now my wife, Erica), decided she wanted to be a teacher, so we moved to Madison, WI, where we still live. My first job in Madison was as a part time manager of a small movie plex on the University of Wisconsin campus. (I got this job because I had projection booth experience.) I did that for two years, before getting sick of working until 2 am on weekends, (we had midnight movies, which, on a college campus is an invitation to misery). I started temping in offices and eventually got full time work as a clerk in a mortgage company. Over a four year stretch, I moved up a few positions, then got laid off the year my wife and I bought our house. (Yes, this is true.)

During this time, as well, I got involved with a small amateur theater company, First Banana Productions. I acted in their first production in the fall of 1995 and stuck with them until I started to breed. I did a lot of things including acting, writing, directing, producing and designing. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work, and for five years straight, my entire social life consisted of doing plays in one way or another. Right after I started working with First Banana, I landed my last job--an assistant for newspaper advertising salespeople. This was a pleasant gig, and my boss was very nice. Finally, Erica and I had a couple of kids, and that put an end to both the job and my amateur theater career.

After I stopped doing theater and began being a full time parent, I played around with some short stories and even got a couple of them published. Then, at the tender age of 39, I happened across two collections of Tony Millionaire´s work--The Adventures of Sock Monkey and The Collected Works of Sock Monkey. These books reignited in me a long dormant love of comics and inspired me to try my hand at cartooning--I brushed up on the drawing skills that had laid fallow since college and set off. It's kind of funny--when I was in high school and was reading Heavy Metal, I thought when I grew up I'd either be an actor or be writing comics. It took over 20 years, but that came true. People say be careful what you wish for, but that's only part of the original expression. The full version: Be careful what you wish for in youth, for you will get it in middle age.