Rob has been writing short stories, poetry and novels since he was in elementary school, focusing largely on mainstream fiction, science fiction and fantasy, often with comedic turns. He has also written numerous stage plays, including The Legend of Sweetbriar Cemetery, which was performed by the Cross Creek Players in November, 2008.

Rob is a veteran of several collaborative writing projects, most recently having contributed the first chapter in Write Anything’s Fall 2008 project, Lost on Earth.

Rob continues to find inspiration in the garden, in a hot cup of coffee and in the number thirteen.

What is your favorite short story and why?

If I had to choose one short story as my favorite of all time, it would have to be Nightfall by Isaac Asimov. The story does a great job of capturing the fear of the unknown as well as the mass mentality to dismiss theories that they don’t agree with or scare them.

It investigates the overlap of science and religion (facts versus beliefs) and the battle that exists between them, even when the two sides agree. Asimov paints a great picture of how individuals as well as the larger society respond to fear and uncertainty and he does so in a relatively few pages. I also like that he does not weigh the story down with what happens after “the disaster” strikes, leaving that to the reader to surmise.

Another favorite short story is the Spanish-language story by Rubén Darío called El Nacimiento de la Col (The Birth of the Cabbage). In this story, a beautiful rose is convinced by an evil spirit that while it is beautiful, it lacks usefulness. The rose, in turn, petitions God and asks that it be made useful like the trees. God grants the rose’s wish and thus cabbage is born.

I have read several versions of this story, some of which include discussions between the rose and God in which God tries to convince the rose that its beauty is, in fact, useful; some versions just have God grant the rose’s wish immediately. In any form, this is a story that is rich and well written despite its very short length and has stuck with me since I first read it over twenty years ago.

Do you write for a living or do you have a day job?

I have a day job which, unfortunately, seems to always get in the way of my writing. In my day job, I write budgeting and financial reporting software for businesses. I have been working in the software business for sixteen years despite a strong dislike of technology and business in general. I use the time I spend writing as an escape from that world and usually the problems in my stories are solved not by technology but by a triumph of people over their situations.

What was it that you read that made you want to write your own fiction? Why do you think it had that effect on you?

I do not remember if any book or story I read as a young child made me want to write my own fiction initially. I think that it actually just started as a result of a “book” I wrote and illustrated as an assignment in second grade. (It was an eight sentence story about a friendly alien who befriended a kid who was always picked on by others.) I didn’t make time to write things that were not school assignments for another year or two, but the desire and interest in doing so was there from that point forward.

However, as a young teenager, when I was doubting my ability to write at all. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams reinvigorated my desire to write and brought forth a renewed set of story ideas and characters. I think the reason that this series of books had this impact on me is the books were odd and funny, and had complex and hard to follow story lines. This style of having odd and quirky characters, bad puns and jokes and complex stories that had multiple, seemingly un-related arcs was a style I had begun trying to build for myself.

I was not feeling successful with it at all and had given up on writing things outside of school because I had kind of backed myself into a corner with my writing and could not find a way to get out of it. However, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy allowed me to see it was possible to write and be successful in this style. I never really wrote anything in this style that matched the quality in Douglass Adams’ work, but it freed me from some of the mental blocks I had built up with my writing and ultimately made me a better writer, at least in my own opinion.

When do you normally do your writing? What do you most like/dislike about writing then?

I do the majority of my writing in the early morning, often before 8:00 AM.

I have been a morning person for my entire life so this is not surprising to me. What I like about writing at this time of day is that the world around me is mostly quiet. There is little noise from the roads or from people in the neighborhood, leaving me surrounded by the sounds of birds and other animals or the morning breeze. This allows me to focus better.

The problem with this being my best time for writing is that during the work week, this is the time I should be going to work or even doing the day job. At night, after work, I am too tired and unfocused to settle down and write. My wife and children tend to write more in the afternoons and evenings as well, so if I could join them more actively it would be more of a family event.

What was the first story you remember doing for the sheer joy of writing (ie. It wasn’t a school project or homework!) and how old were you?

The first story I remember doing that was written just for the joy of writing it was a piece called Sunward. I wrote it when I was nine or ten years old, just after moving to a new town before the beginning of fourth grade. I didn’t know anybody and was angry about the move, so I essentially had nothing else to do besides sit around and feel sorry for myself. So, I wrote instead.

Sunward was a story about a colony from Earth that was meant to go to Venus and settle on it. They brought supplies and equipment with them that would transform the planet’s atmosphere such that the greenhouse gasses dissipated, its temperature reduced and the planet would become habitable. Unfortunately, on the way to Venus there was a disaster (of course) aboard the ship which caused them to become unable to rendezvous with their target. Eventually, the ship fell into a mostly stable orbit around the sun, between Earth and Venus.

Over time, the communications equipment failed. The people on Earth assumed that everyone on board the ship had simply died out. Finally, a salvage ship was commissioned and sent to recover whatever could be returned to Earth. When the salvage ship arrived, some fifty years later, they were surprised to find a thriving settlement living in the ship – a settlement that wasn’t very happy to have visitors from the very Earth they felt had abandoned them.

I don’t remember the specific details of how I wrote it or how I came up with the idea, nor do I remember how I managed to get everything to happen in twenty or so pages. This story was handwritten and the one and only copy of it was among a box of papers, stories and other items damaged in a flood in my basement several years ago (nearly all of my pre-high school writing was lost in this flood). I’ve thought about trying to write it again now, but I haven’t yet done so because in my memories this story is fantastic and I know that I would not write the same story in the same way today.

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