Current Location: Wheaton, IL

Hometown: West Lafayette, IN

Current Position: Self-employed, Author and role-playing game developer

What was your overall UIS experience like?

I was lucky to be accepted into the Public Affairs Reporting program. I'd recently graduated from Purdue University and was a reporter at a newspaper in Indiana, but heard good things about the program and was ready for a career move.

My overall experience at UIS was positive. I enjoyed academic life and learned a heckuva lot during my reporting internship in the state capitol with the Chicago Tribune.

While I had little time for clubs or activities, I forged long-standing friendships with some of my fellow PAR classmates. Two were groomsmen at my wedding and I'm real proud of how well everyone's done since graduation.

Do you have any fond memories of your time at UIS you'd like to share?

During my internship, I earned the distinction of being the only reporter to ever become trapped in a revolving door with former-Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who did not like that one bit.

Why did you choose UIS?

Earning a master's degree in one year at an affordable price was a huge appeal. And my college newspaper advisor and an editor at the paper I worked for both had good things to say about the PAR program. I figured if I was going to pursue advanced education, the experience also needed to provide me with an edge in a competitive field.

What has your career path been like? How did you end up where you are?

After graduation, I covered the crime and court beats for newspapers in Florida and Illinois. My journalism career was put on hold in 2007, when my Illinois National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq and then Afghanistan a few months later.

I was wounded in combat. Physically and mentally, I couldn't return to journalism. As a result, I decided to take a shot at a childhood dream of being an author and pursued a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Northwestern University.

The Surge, my debut novel, was first published in 2019 and is being republished in the spring of 2025 by Tortoise Books, a fantastic Chicago press. The book's not a best seller, but it's nice to know there's enough interest to keep it on the shelves.

I'm still writing fiction, novels and short stories, but I rekindled a childhood passion for role-playing games during the pandemic lockdown. Social media, believe it or not, led to writing gigs for a handful of gaming publishers in the US and UK.

Apparently, my science-fiction adventures are fun to play. I decided to launch my own publishing imprint, Boondock RPG Adventures, which is set to release its first title in January 2025. A big step into uncharted territory. But that's all part of the fun.