I've dabbled in art. A class here and there, mainly in my childhood, though I've long been more focused on writing than sketching or painting or sculpting. Beyond school, I can remember taking art classes at least as far back as Virginia Beach, VA in the early 1980s; and in the mid-'80s I had an art class in the basement of a neighbor's home, too. That was Mrs. Ottke's class. But after college, I've rarely done classes, and have only sporadically even sketched. Still, I have what I'd done before to remind me that I can do it, and do OK art.

By Virginia Beach, where I lived from summer 1982 to fall 1984 (we moved to Northern Virginia when I was a month into fifth grade), I was already devouring science fiction. Including disaster science fiction. Had Independence Day come out 12 years earlier, it would've blown my mind; that said, we already had the various versions of The War of the Worlds, for example.

Around fourth grade, I did this collage.


I think this was for a class; I also think this got displayed at a student art show in Virginia Beach's Lynnhaven Mall.

My words have been seen by more people, but this was my first art to be seen by a good number of people I wasn't related to or in school with.