I was born in Anchorage, Alaska.

I grew up in Sarasota, Florida, where my mother still lives. My older sister lives in Orlando, Florida.

I got my B.S. in Psychology from the University of Florida, located in Gainesville, Florida, in 1990 and have done graduate work in Social Psychology at the University of Illinois and here at the University of Florida. Instead of pursuing my original goal of being a Psychology professor/researcher, I started Law School here at the University of Florida in January, 1995 and graduated in 1997. I am law partner here in Gainesville with Thomas Edwards where we handle matters related to criminal law.

My interests include, among dozens of others, alternative comic books and film... I am the Publisher of Alternative Comics, the Editor-in-chief of indy Magazine, and the owner of Independent Comics.

I started reading comics as a kid with Archie, Richie Rich, and Superman Family/Batman Family $1.00 Spectaculars in the 1970s. I read my share of Legion of Super-Heroes and other DC Stuff, never really getting into Marvel as a kid. In the 1980s I got completely into comics and was into tracking down old silver age DC comics with the help of the Comics Buyer's Guide (then known as The Buyers Guide). Often I would also send a couple of bucks to self-publishers advertizing in TBG (now CBG) to see what they did. That's when I got a taste of Matt Howarth, Matt Feazell, and lots of other self-publishing greats. The most influential was when Don Thompson wrote about Larry Marder's free Tales of the Beanworld comic. I wrote to Larry and he sent me these fantastic magazine sized xeroxed Tales of the Beanworld comics that were much better than anything in color between glossy covers that I was paying money for!

I was completely hooked on independents. Most of the stuff I read from that point on, was independent comics.... Eclipse, Capital, First, Aardvark-Vanaheim, Pacific, and lots and lots of mini-comics, self-published stuff, etc... I stopped reading comics a year or so after I started college, but started up again during my first year of graduate school, and have been involved with them in some way (selling, publishing, writing about, etc) ever since.