Ok, hi.
My name is Jason. I'm 30 years old, and I live in northern California. I'm married, and I have two little boys. By day I work for a major technology company that makes routers. Chances are you own one of our products. Your school or work certainly does. At work I say things like "Here are the quality metrics for that product line." And "The customer downgraded their Linux kernel to a version unsupported by the file system." ... Yeah.. I know. Blah. Tell me about it.
By night, however, I'm a filmmaker, writer, and webmaster. I've made a fair number of short films, some of which have won awards, and all of which
can be viewed here. My most recent project is called
Spectre. It's an (ahem) epic fantasy short film about a Paladin who finds a cursed sword on a battlefield. You can
learn more about it here.
Although I have never written a novel, this year's NanoWriMo inspired me to get off my butt and try. 30 days and a wimpy 13,000 words later, I was hooked. I didn't have a lot of time to write, but I love the process, I love my story, and I can't wait to go farther with it.
In addition to filmmaking and writing, for the last 10 years (eep!) I've been the webmaster of a big ol' giant website called
Dragonmount.com. It's a fan site for the
Wheel of Time novels, which probably explains to you how I first heard of Brandon Sanderson, Writing Excuses, and TWG website. One of the best parts of running a site like DM is that I've had the amazing opportunity not only to meet and become friends with Robert Jordan, but that I got to see a lot of the behind-the-scenes action at Tor Books. I've had some very open conversations with editors and other writers, including Mr Tor himself, Tom Doherty. (Tom is, hands down, the Nicest Man In The World). I actually met Brandon in person recently. We had a few hours together, so we played MAGIC: THE GATHERING. Bad idea. Never play Magic with Brandon. He wins every time. At least when he plays me.
What I hope to get out of Reading Excuses is pretty simple: I look forward to reading your stuff and giving you some insightful input. I'm no stranger to collaborative writing (mostly from my screenplays). I've been around the block enough now where I'm confident in my ability to provide useful feedback. In turn, I can't wait for you to read over my stuff and tell me how bad it is, and how I should stick to making short movies and big websites.
Oh, and, I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know all of you. Y'all have a nice cozy little community going here and it looks like a lot of fun.
See ya around
J
