Anthony D Faircloth

I was born in 1962, and grew up in the farm country of East Central Indiana. I worked on farms; baling hay, taking care of cattle, and basic yard work for the farmers. Having few friends and little to do, out in the boonies, I hiked the roads and fence rows of the countryside and fantasized about how life could be in a medieval kingdom, or on a distant planet.

After graduating from Wes-Del High School in 1980, I tried college but found I wasn't very tolerant of classes not in my major, so in 1982, I joined the United States Navy Submarine Service where I served for 10 years as an electronics technicians for submarine weapons systems.

In the early years, as a seaman and a member of the Deck Division, I cleaned, chipped paint and painted while we were in port, but underway I was trained to drive the sub and was a member of the control room crew. Later I was sent to school to learn both basic electronics and how to use that knowledge to maintain and repair the specific weapons systems carried by the ship. Underway, I also was made to learn all the systems of the submarine; from the nuclear reactor and propulsion systems, to the oxygen generator, and plumbing. Again, hard work but I developed an understanding of systems and redundancies. And, in my off hours, I found little nooks in which I could sketch places and creatures, and to make notes about them.

Leaving the military after 10 years, I took a job working with the government in Pensacola, Florida. It was both a culture and climate shock for an Indiana boy use to the winter temperatures and snow. During that time I welcomed my son, Samuel, into the world, and became a youth leader, and later a youth pastor at my local church. I also started a faith-based Friday night youth outreach called, FireHouse, geared to give teenagers a safe place to hangout. Eleven years later I finally closed the doors on FireHouse, but opened the doors on a aquaponics project meant to gather information about the usefulness of this technology at missionary facilities in third world countries. I ran that project for six years, and was the thing that facilitated my first and best selling book, "Building and Aquaponics System."

I wrote the aquaponics book in 2012, and once I realized I could do it, I followed it with two other short, informational books. I then decided to utilize all those creative thoughts I had had since childhood and write a novel. I got the idea of, "Pet Haven" from an old rusty gate, which was the entrance way to the pet cemetery. The story was a creepy thriller for tweens. It wasn't a large work -- I wrote it in my head one night, while driving back from my writer's group, but it was my first, and the propellant for the works that followed. Next came a science fiction story called, "Just Us," then "Nick Saint" -- a story that was meant to be a short story with a weird Christmas feel, but it grew into a sci-fi adventure novel. After Nick Saint was, "Northwest Goldberg Mystery," an inner city police adventure with a supernatural twist, and then a steampunk inspired novel called, "The Lightning Lord." It was the largest work I had yet done and my first in that genre -- one that I love reading.

Stuck in between those novels I wrote, "How to be a Happy Writer," a reaction to negative feedback I had heard all my life from people who didn't write to people who did, or at least wanted to. The small booklet was written, not as a 'how to,' but as encouragement for people who wanted to write but had been burdened with textbooks full of rules. My book basically told the rule writers to shove it, and the writers to write.

As I write this I am in the editing phase of my next novel, "The Extraordinary Case of Bliss Carter," a modern Nancy Drew-esk supernatural thriller, and after publishing it I will need to pick another story -- I have notes for several. I have so many stories that want to be told. Its been a great ride so far and I look forward to publishing many more book, both informational and fictional.

Visit my webpage at www.anthonydfaircloth.com to read some of my short stories.