An obligatory biographical blog entry
I know what you are asking yourself. Who is this genius who gave intellectual birth to the comedic masterpiece Blood Bruvs: A Mick and Lonnie Misadventure?
That’s what you’re asking yourself, isn’t it? Maybe it was something closer to what gives this guy the idea that he has the talent to write books. Either way, let me indulge in a little bit of a self-introduction.
My name is Steven Thomas. Pretty generic, and I did consider a pen name, but my ego demanded to see my name on a published book. I was born in the year of somebody’s lord 1970, making me 100% purebred Generation X. I grew up in Oklahoma, in a small city called Muskogee. Yes, the one Merle Haggard sang about. I had a very unremarkable middle-class upbringing, so sadly, I have no childhood trauma to fuel my creativity.
After graduating high school with a middling GPA, I attended Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Why yes, that is the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Look how smart you are! I blossomed academically in college and was president of the honor society, which was a cool but ultimately useless thing to put on resumes. In 1992, I left with a bachelor’s in history education, sure I was on the road to being a beloved high school teacher.
It's hard to picture now, but there were no teacher shortages in 1992. Also, if you couldn’t coach a sport, you weren’t landing a job as a high school history teacher. Fortunately, Kansas State University generously invited me to attend graduate school in beautiful Manhattan, Kansas. They hired me as a graduate teaching assistant, which meant they covered my tuition and paid me a small monthly salary. A dream come true, right?
Long story short, things didn’t work out, and I was done with grad school after a year. Still unable to get a teaching gig, I started a long and exciting career in the glamorous field of retail sales and management. Here’s a probably not comprehensive list of the businesses that trusted me with keys to one of their locations: Fan Fair, Camelot Music, Borders, Hollywood Video, Famous Footwear, and Barnes and Noble. I’ll skip the joke here and confess that this was a pretty miserable two decades of my life.
While pushing the retail boulder up the hill every day, I managed to find time to get married, have a child, and get divorced. I trudged through each day as a single dad with joint custody, working paycheck to paycheck. I know there were good days mixed in, but I think I have pretty successfully blocked out almost the entirety of my twenties and thirties. My therapist once suggested that that isn’t a super healthy thing to do, but oh well!
How many people do you know who can say their life took a wild turn for the better at 40? Well, now you know at least one! I met a beautiful nurse who married me, and I ended up with one of my better retail jobs at Barnes & Noble. I enjoyed my job, loved my wife, had another kid, and even visited Spain and Costa Rica. What a second act in my life! Then, a friend told me I could return to Kansas State and enroll in a new year-long intensive program that would result in a master’s degree and a certificate to teach elementary school. Like the lady sang, everything’s coming up roses!
My wife supported me through the program even as she was getting her doctorate, and I became a fifth-grade teacher. Thanks, teacher shortages! Teaching was a mixed bag, sometimes wonderful beyond words and sometimes soul-crushingly awful. After seven years, I tapped out and went to work doing the books for my wife’s new business. That left me with one thing I’d never had before – plenty of free time.
And now we come full circle. I used that free time to achieve a lifelong dream of writing a book. For a dude’s first book, I think it’s pretty damn solid. I’m about halfway through the sequel now, and I even have an idea for a different series. If I didn’t also have to be my own publicist, I’d say life for me is almost perfect!
If you plan to join me on my storytelling journey, here are a few other quick things to know. I’m a woke, progressive liberal. I will always support the end of the patriarchy and stand with the LGBTQ community. I believe we can do better than capitalism, and I oppose fascism, both the mid-twentieth-century German variety and the 21st-century American version. I’m an agnostic who’s likely an atheist and also enjoys secular Buddhism. Sporting Kansas City is my team, for better or worse. I love to read, and I can’t imagine a world without music.
That’s probably enough about me for now. Everything you really need to know about artists you can find in their work. Even if that work is about an emo vampire and his slacker werewolf best bud.
