I was born and raised in New Jersey; and I am New Jerseyan through and through, wherever life may take me.For Christmas one year my parents bought me a Lord of the Rings computer game. I started playing it and was so inspired by the story that I put the game aside and did not touch it again until I had read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Those books sparked within me a love of reading in general and a love of fantasy literature in particular.My favorite genre, however, is philosophy, particularly as it relates to ethics and metaphysics. This, together with my love of the fantastic, is the inspiration for my writing.In my reading I have seen how ideas affect history. For this reason… it has been important to me to not simply tell a story, but to show how the characters interact with different ideologies and ethical dilemmas. I want my readers to at least understand, even if they do not sympathize with, the villains of the story.