Writer? Who, me? There must be some mistake…

In real life, I'm an electronics technician residing in the frozen tundra of the American Midwest. I spend a truly obscene amount of my time peering through a microscope at tiny whiz-bangy components and then performing arcane rituals upon them with a soldering iron. I was deemed a miracle worker early on in my career, and co-workers throughout the ages have been rather intent on making me live up to their ridiculous expectations. It pays the bills, I suppose.

Meanwhile, back at the writing thing…

My entire academic life was centered around a very simple premise – the kid can't write. Nope. Forget it. Give me a subject to write about and my brain goes into instant and irrevocable shutdown mode. Werds? Whassat?

That core tenet was shaken by an odd series of events involving an ungodly hideous short story (written by someone else), the foolish belief that even I could scribble something better, and an out-of-control tractor trailer that attempted to flatten me during a sleet storm. Stir all that up, give it a few days, and a weird little snippet came into being that I thought was interesting enough but not something I'd ever get in the habit of producing in mass quantities.

I posted the bit online, and it got what I considered to be an astonishing number of responses. It was the start of what became a disturbing pattern – post a little one-off short story, people start yelling and screaming "but what happens next?", and it somehow snowballs into a book.

Somewhere between bouts of electronic microsurgery and banging my head against the keyboard, I also cocreated a researcher, a wild man with occasional auto mechanic tendencies, and…an English teacher. Yes, it seems the cosmos is not without a very twisted sense of humor.

I've also got a pair of granddaughters out of the deal that both think I'm pretty cool. I'm in no rush to disillusion 'em. Their mom has also issued an edict to them stating that Thou Shalt Not read my scribbles until the sprogs turn thirty (though I think I might have talked the second one down to twenty-five…).

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Email: BK_Bilicki@wi.rr.com