Adam Connell

I was born in 1973 and grew up on Long Island. Disregard what many people have said; Long Island wasn't a terrible place to grow up during the 70s and 80s.

My parents and my sister loved me.

But I was the least popular kid at school and Blah Blah Blah. You've heard this shit before. Hell, maybe you even lived it, too, like me.

What's important is that I loved to read. As I got into science fiction and fantasy and horror, when I became enthralled with genre books my local library was starved for, I got part-time jobs in Junior High and High School so I could buy the books I needed, that I craved, that nourished me.

I went to NYU to study Literature. To study books simply because there was nothing more I wanted to learn everything about.

I didn't take a single class on creative writing. Most of my fans are surprised at this, but auditing a few of these classes I saw that they were too competitive for me, that half the students delighted in crushing the works of their classmates.

I wrote in private. I wrote alone in NYU's giant and lonely library. When I graduated and couldn't get a job in publishing, I worked elsewhere and I wrote at night. While my coworkers were becoming fast friends and going out for drinks, I abstained and stayed at home and wrote at night, every night.

My life has been one of sacrifice and success. I'm not complaining, because I've written some good books and I'll write many more.

I know that the most satisfying act is not having put "The End" to a book I was proud of. The most satisfying is that hazy span between books. The gathering, like berries, of ideas and characters and themes and story.

Reading and musing and writing. They're more important to me than vegetables and water and air.

(But not more important than my wife. Jeannie is the exception to my life of dust jackets and ink-stained fingers and notebooks.)

This, in 362 words, is who I am, or in pockets of doubt, who I strive to be.