STORY

I wrote my first book several years ago during a period of involuntary unemployment just to see if I could sit in a chair long enough to finish it. The book was about a Roseville California winter I spent jumping trains and living the hard-bitten hobo lifestyle. My goal was to reach the east coast, specifically the grave of HP Lovecraft in Providence Rhode Island. In the end, I was so bad at the vagrancy lifestyle I wound up in Portland Oregon and had to hitchhike back to Roseville.

 

During that summer when it was too hot to be hiding in bushes with my backpack and water jug for hours to days at a time waiting for a  Union Pacific to roll past, I decided to pursue another love which was superheroes. I figured I could knock out a story I'd been ruminating on about an orphan girl who discovered her father was a supervillain, draw a comic to go with the story, and then get back on the rails that fall for the diesel-powered sequel.

 

Instead, I was nearly obliterated by a Dodge Charger while walking in a crosswalk. The picture on your right was taken that day. I was supposed to be performing as Captain America for a bunch of kids with cancer. Instead, I ended up in the same hospital they were in. I had a fractured skull, brain damage, broken eye orbit, broken nose, broken jaw, lost six teeth, broke my neck, broke my shoulder, nearly severed my right bicep, broke my lower back, and lost the Tib/Fib in my right leg and had it replaced with a titanium rod. Later I developed blood clots and nearly lost my leg a second time.

 

That began what I called my "year in a bed" and then three years homeless, living off an orange tree and sheltering in my car with an ever-growing half-million dollar medical debt hovering over me and lawyers doing everything they could to destroy my life to force an early settlement. With nothing else to do but go to surgeries, bleed and sit in Starbucks with the other transients (until Covid/BLM riots/ANTIFA came along two months later to destroy everything) to work on my story. As I tried and failed to return to the working world due to intermittent paralysis in my arms and entire lower body I realized that if I couldn't work for somebody else that I need to work for myself

 

And there you have it, a very succinct version of what led to Herocia House Publishing all crammed into this little box.