About the author:
Unfamed author Nick Enlowe is worried it may be unhealthy to write about himself in the third person. He fears writing pompous rhetoric about himself may lead to delusions of grandeur.
Lucky for us, one of his more laissez-faire personality splits is feeling particularly generous today.
Nick Enlowe (born Oct 26, 1979 in Peoria, Illinois) is a writer, poet, artist, singer, musician, and computer programmer. In 2007, he grew sick of being a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none, deciding to focus his energies on one of his biggest childhood interests: writing.
Ten years prior, he abandoned writing for less prolific pursuits, such as watching an inhuman number of movies and playing an inhuman number of video games. Much to his parent's dismay, this only served to nurture his early interests in all things fantasy.
Nick (literally) covered his walls with fantastic drawings and paintings. He found himself delving into the more esoteric comic books such as Maus, Sandman, and The Maxx. He grew biased toward sword-and-sorcery RPGs. He even started reading novels in his free-time again, pulling such bricks from the library shelf as The Fellowship of the Ring and Watership Down.
Yes, he became an unusually handsome geek.
His primary goal is finishing his first novel. His secondary goal is discovering new ways to approach the high fantasy genre, a genre heavily criticized for its lack of originality---something rather ironic considering it's one of the few genres that encourage writers to unbridle their imaginations so they may create palpable new worlds.
Nick's never met anyone famous nor has he seen the ocean. In fact, he's lived in the Midwest United States his entire life. There, he attended a prestigious community college where he ... didn't study liberal arts. (He built a career in computer science instead.)
At the tender age of nineteen, Enlowe met the girl he would eventually marry. She helped him through the rough times and became his best friend. And in May 2007, they said their vows. He can't imagine life without her. (Bonus: Their honeymoon was spent in Japan, giving Enlowe a much needed culture-shock.)
Fortunately, Enlowe's main personality is available for an exclusive one question interview:
~~~
Q: What possessed you to think you could write a high fantasy novel?
A: That's a weighted question!
First off, when I was little, my mother took the time to read books to me. Of course, that's an immeasurably important factor.
Teachers played an important role, too. My third grade teacher pushed me to read books above my reading level and already had me typing at a rate of over 20 WPM.
My fourth grade teacher encouraged me to write and submit stories for contests, resulting in getting a poem published in the local paper and earning a Young Author's award.
One of my seventh grade teachers had me stay after class just so she could hand me a copy of The Hobbit, thinking I might like it. Obviously, I did.
In college, I had an excellent English professor: Dr. W. She had an air of authority about her, was highly intellectual, and had a reputation for being tough on students. Halfway through the semester, she'd grown enthusiastic about my writing---so much so, she took me aside after class and encouraged me to change majors. She went as far as to offer writing a letter of recommendation, suggesting I could get into any prestigious college. Needless to say, it was a flattering and unforgettable experience.
One of my old roommates got me into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I put it off at first, but when I finally let myself get swept into Jordan's epic, I found my emotional attachment to his characters kept me turning the pages quicker than any other high fantasy novel I'd ever read. I was also impressed with the amount of detail that filled his world; the way he used underlying theologies and systems to enhance the overall verisimilitude.
A few years later, my wife's (unusually intelligent) brother surprised us all: He wrote a book. It was a great story, but made heavy use of an existing intellectual property. He self-published, getting the pages professionally bound. And he proudly distributed the not-for-profit tomes to all his friends.
The scope of the novel was very impressive, but I remember some of us secretly wishing he'd taken the time to create an original system so he could take a crack at getting his otherwise brilliant story published.
But, fate as it is, the real deciding moment was when I caught an interview with J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame. The final book in the series had just come out and it seemed like the entire world was abuzz about it. But there she was on TV, sobbing, giving a surprisingly human account of some of the adversity she faced before she started writing her first novel. It was in that moment I realized she was just a regular person who had the drive to see her project through. And maybe---just maybe---all the other famous authors out there weren't super-human, either. I remember thinking, "Oh wow! I really can write a novel."
~~~
Of course, that theory has yet to be proven. But Enlowe's working on it. ;)
