Introducing Myself

My real name is Phil Peterson (for now), though I will be writing under the pen name, James J. Rook. There are a few reasons for the name choice, but they aren't terribly important.

People seem to think authors choose pen names for super-secret reasons. That's not usually the case. Some authors do choose a pen name because of the content in their writing. For instance, Anne Rice, went by the name Anne Rampling when she wrote her saucy porn novels, simply because she didn't want to give her poor, Catholic mother a heart attack. (That, and Anne Rice's birth name was actually Howard.)

Others believe we choose pen names because we want to feel like super heroes. "My name is Butch Hammer; creator of worlds and defender of the written word!" That is also not... entirely true. I'm a writer, not a ninja. (Ok, I am a ninja, but that's unrelated.)

This is not the Phil Peterson
you're thinking of

The real reason we choose these unusual names is actually quite simple, and not very interesting. Google. Simply put, we want you to be able to find our work as easily as possible. Go ahead and Google "Phil Peterson". You'll find everything from realtors, to photographers and, for some reason, this photo:

Now! If you were to do a similar search for James Rook, things get much simpler. You'll find a handful of obituaries and something about a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Add in the middle initial and we're golden!

Alright, now that I've thoroughly justified my secret agent name to you, let me give you just a bit of background. I've been writing since fifth grade, when I first discovered my mom's electronic typewriter. I wrote dozens of small stories that my mother was kind enough to read to my brother and I as bedtime stories.

Years later, despite this loving family upbringing, I found myself as a homeless bum in the wintery streets of central Wisconsin. (There is a whole pile of content that lead to that, including cult wars, murder attempts and the FBI, but I'll save it for my autobiography.)

I was cleaning tables in a local diner in exchange for a hot breakfast each night. They also employed my artistic nature to sketch caricatures on their dry erase board to announce their daily specials. Then, sometime around Christmas, one of the waitresses gave me a set of really nice pens as a gift.

I used those wonderful pens to invent a character and sketch him onto the back of one of their placemats. Akara Krosse. I took all of the terrible things that had happened in my life and poured them into this mysterious figure. Then, I gave him the ability to shut off his emotions whenever he wanted.

Soon, an entire, epic saga began to develop out of this character and those horrid life events. This began the first draft of SNAKE EYES LIE, the first book in my science fiction trilogy, THE MALLIS TRAGEDY. I scribbled it all down in a notebook that I carried with me everywhere (along with my character sketch). That was 15 years ago.

Now, after a rocky career as a self-employed game developer, and at the repeated pleading of my fiance, I've decided to finally sit down and finish my novel. Granted, my writing from 15 years ago was still pretty awful, so I'm actually rewriting most of the old work, but I'm determined. I only have a couple chapters to finish up and it will be on to some heavy proofreading and critiques.

I will stop by and post my mad ramblings here whenever I feel like procrastinating. Some of it may be useful to other writers (or gluttons for punishment). Some may just be nonsense. Either way, I hope you enjoy and share your thoughts with me as well.