I believe literacy is one of the most important and essential requirements of a modern society.

I was born mostly deaf because of fluid in my ears. Two surgeries and 3 1/2 years later I could hear, but was also behind. When I was three, I spoke at an 18 month level. I have been told that when I was 4 I made up for it.

I was often asked to come in early or stay late in school to work on my reading skills. Because I was behind my class in almost every aspect of literacy, especially reading speed and size of vocabulary, I found reading to be a chore. With the help of patient teachers, determined parents, and two sisters that were probably paid to put up with me, I started improving. Somehow, I caught up to my peers in sixth and seventh grade (except for reading speed). Reading finally became fun.

I used to read a lot in Jr. High and High school, mostly classics or recommended books. I wrote too - poetry and a few short stories. I was even the president of our school literary club for a semester. However, I lost that somewhere along the way (I blame Calculus and Linear Algebra textbooks). Fast forward 10+ years...

One day, before I was going on a six hour flight, I was asking around the office for a book to read that I could finish in 12 hours. My friend/supervisor handed me a book that he had just finished, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling). I did in fact finish the book during the round trip flights. I was completely taken to another world.

My reading tastes have changed since high school, but the love of reading returned. And shortly after I started reading again, I also started writing. To get an idea of what I write, I thought I would share my reading list of the last few years.

  • Foundation (Asimov)
  • I Robot (Asimov)
  • The Da Vinci Code (Brown)
  • Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (Card)
  • the Hunger Games series (Collins)
  • the Lost Books series (Dekker)
  • the Spiderwick Chronicles (DiTerlizzi and Black)
  • the Books of the Ember series (DuPrau)
  • the Hornblower series (Forester)
  • I Dreamed a Crooked Dream (FSFW)
  • Legend, The King Beyond the Gate, Quest for Lost Heroes, and Waylander (Gemmell)
  • the Sword of Truth series (Goodkind)
  • Helm (Gould)
  • the Jumper series (Gould)
  • Wildside (Gould)
  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving)
  • Who Moved My Cheese? (Johnson)
  • Dragon Champion (Knight)
  • Bird by Bird (Lamott)
  • the Chronicles of Narnia series (Lewis)
  • The Bourne Identity (Ludlum)
  • When God Whispers Your Name (Lucado)
  • Host (Meyer)
  • the Twilight series plus The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Meyer)
  • Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Newell, Avery)
  • Boneshaker (Priest)
  • Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Riordan)
  • the Harry Potter series (Rowling)
  • The Hobbit (Tolkien)
  • the Lord of the Rings series (Tolkien)
  • The Shack (Young)
  • A ton of baby books
These are my inspirations and influences. The characters and authors are some of my heroes.

I have now written two books (working titles of Spring Meets Winter and The Open Door - part of the Passages of Consequence series). I am working on two other books: Untitled Sequel to The Open Door and The Cleansing - part of the Chimree Republic series. I am also developing ideas for other sequels.

I have a short story published, The Bakrra Encounter. It is a modified excerpt from the unfinished and unnamed sequel to The Open Door. The Bakrra Encounter was published in an anthology, I Dreamed a Crooked Dream. It can be purchased at the FSFW store, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Feel free to look around my site and come back for updates on publication and, eventually, appearances.

R. G. Wilson