So what do you want to know about me?

I was a breach baby, born foot first with the other tucked under. My father would joke that I hung out with the stork too long.  

My parents (below with my grandmother) didn't really believe in censorship.  They let me watch what I wanted, listen to whatever I felt like, etc.  They believed they'd raised me well enough to know what's right and wrong.   Among many other things, they'll always have my respect for that.

Random Facts About Me:

I am a tenth generation descendant of Jacob Balthasar from Neuburg Germany (born 1625).  He was supposedly a descendant from one of the three wise men of the same name.  In fact, the Balzer family crest depicts the star of Bethlehem.  It's interesting to add that the de Sade family often bragged about being related to the Gaspars and Balthasars so they could say they had the blood of the magi in them (Found in AT HOME WITH THE MARQUIS DE SADE: A LIFE by Francine Du Plessix Gray, page 19).  I don't let all that go to my head, but I find it fun.

I can wiggle my ears, eyebrows, and nostrils. That's my superpower.  Villains beware!

I have Type 2 Diabetes (inherited from my mother's side) but I keep good enough control over it through diet and exercise that I don't have to take medication for it.  I also have hypothryoidism.

In (I believe) fifth grade, I received a Presidential Acedemic Fitness award, signed by Ronald Reagan.  The glass broke on it years ago and it's turning yellow, so I really need to reframe it.

More About the Author

Born in Quincy, IL 1975, I spent the first years of my life in a little town on the Mississippi River just 30 minutes north of Hannibal, MO.  My parents moved me to Arcadia, Florida at the age of seven. They'd sold nearly everything they had so we could move with enough money for a fresh start.  However, they underestimated the higher cost of living so we ended up very poor in a crappy little trailer. In school, I was going to gifted classes, reading all the time, and dreaming of being a scientist or something like that, and at home I was getting in fights just to walk down the street. Then there was the big AIDS scare in that town. A few hemophiliac boys had received bad blood and, since nobody knew much about the disease back then, parents were afraid to have their children around them in school. It created quite a controversy.  My parents didn't want me going to public school amongst all the mess so they put me in a private school. 

Then in 1987, my parents finally said to hell with it and moved us to southern Missouri, West Plains to be exact, as recommended to them by my uncle. I fell in love with the area for its beauty, but it took me a while to warm up to the people. There I was, a 12 year-old kid in seventh grade fresh from Florida, thrown in with a bunch of country kids who criticized me harshly for things like saying the word "dude" on occasion.  I would mock them sometimes by acting stupid, but they just thought I was stupid.  So I'd go home and either read or watch horror movies. I found the movies to be a great release for negative energy. I'd watch people being ripped apart or otherwise mutilated and feel great! That kept me stable. 

Going into high school, I was still in all the smart classes, which meant I had to deal with the preps.  I didn't mind being ostracized by them because they never impressed me anyway. I found the movie "Heathers" to be my all time favorite flick. Watching Christian Slater and Wynona Ryder kill preppies made me feel so much better. I never had the urge to do it in real life, and the movie never made me feel like I should. I'd just watch the movie, and the negative energy towards them would be released, at least enough to deal with them a little longer. 

After school I got with the "Smoker's Hill" kids and partied with them all night. I spent many a morning sprawled out on someone's floor with a beer buzz at five in the morning, doing my college prep biology homework before getting ready for school. I was finally happy with where I was, expanding my intelligence during the day, and relieving stress in the evening with my friends, ghost hunting and partying. 

Then there was the accident. In May of 1992, I was driving home from school when someone came around a blind curve way too fast and hit me head-on. Shortly after, I began to have horrible hallucinations, short-term memory loss, and fits of depression. In no time, I was diagnosed bipolar manic depressive schizophrenic. The doctors doped me up so I was practically a vegetable, and then suggested to my parents that we move someplace else. The idea was to get me in a new environment, but I think it was just so they didn't have to deal with me. 

We moved back to Florida, where it took doctors three years to figure out that in the accident, my entire skeleton had been violently shoved this way and that. The left side of my skull had been pushed into the bipolar region of my brain, making it swell up and cause all my problems. It took a while to set things straight and I was never 100%, but as John Astin used to say in "Night Court," I'm much better now. During that three years of being doped up and labeled insane, however, I was really angry at the world. There I was, a gifted student with high potential, turned into a sedated mess. I needed an outlet for my negative energy then more than ever, and movies weren't enough. I began to play Dungeons & Dragons with a handful of friends. I'd write up these really wild and violent adventures for them to play. That helped but it still wasn't enough, so I began writing my own fiction, namely "The Oak Clan," something I'd toyed around with when I was 15 but never committed to.  

Because of the short-term memory loss, I could only write one page, or somtimes one paragraph, at a time, but I worked hard on it nonetheless. After my skull was set straight, I kept writing. Also, having literally been to madness and back, I could relate to the violent death metal/industrial scene of Tampa, FL. I began going to Ybor City and hitting the mosh pits. The Goth club, The Castle, became my home away from home. 

Of course, over time, I began to miss the seasons and the atmosphere of Missouri. Call me crazy for wanting to leave all the fun in Florida, but the humidity, fire ants, etc. were beginning to burn me out. So currently, I'm back in northeastern Missouri, working on the sequel to "The Oak Clan" and going down to St. Louis for the occasional concert.  I'm married to a very devoted woman who happens to be bipolar manic depressive paranoid schizophrenic. Hey, I can relate so we're perfect for each other.