Author

Writing has been part of my life for decades.

I've worked in journalism and editorial writing, and over the years my work has ranged across narrative nonfiction, fiction, short stories, poetry, prose poetry, long-running online writing, and more experimental forms of storytelling. This has included projects such as Infiltrator — A Musicnovel and an ongoing body of mystery fiction developed over many years.

I am especially drawn to writing that begins with something encountered or noticed and gradually opens into something larger. Often there is an element of inquiry involved: something unexplained, incomplete, or simply worth following further.

My fiction often develops in much the same way. Rather than beginning with plot alone, I tend to begin with environments, objects, fragments, notes, voices, and traces — allowing a world or story to emerge through them.

I publish much of my writing on  Waldverloren, a notebook for following curiosity and sharing what I find along the way. 

Places

Places carry moods. They carry history. They affect perception.

Forests, streets, houses, rooms, landscapes, old buildings, and imagined worlds can all create a particular feeling: an invitation to explore, a sense of memory, an atmosphere that is difficult to name, or simply the urge to stop and look more closely.

Here, too, I am interested in character — in what gives a place its particular identity and presence.

Sometimes it is history. Sometimes light, sound, material, weather, scale, or the objects within a place. Often it emerges from several things interacting at once.

A place is more than a setting.

It can shape what we notice, how we feel, how we behave, and what we remember. Some places become landmarks in our personal lives. Some become characters in stories. Some remain with us long after we have left them.

Much of my thinking about perception begins here: by moving through places, noticing what is present, and becoming curious about what is not immediately apparent. A place often reveals itself gradually, through details, traces, atmosphere, and the relationships between them. 

Places are where perception, context, memory, things, and stories meet.

Games

I have been playing video games for more than forty years.

They have become one of the places where my interest in systems, relationships, stories, exploration, and decision-making comes together most clearly.

I am especially drawn to strategy and tactical games, card games, simulations, and highly narrative, character-driven games.

I am particularly interested in interdependence.

Characters complement one another. Cards combine into possibilities that did not exist individually. Resources create constraints. Timing and position change outcomes. A small decision in one part of a system can alter what becomes possible elsewhere.

Much of the pleasure lies in discovering these relationships and learning how the system behaves.

But games are also places to inhabit.

I enjoy games where companionship matters: where characters develop over time, personalities interact, choices affect relationships, and a group gradually becomes more than a collection of individual units.

Perhaps that combination explains why games have held my attention for so long: they allow us to explore worlds and systems from within — observing, experimenting, making decisions with incomplete information, adapting to consequences, and discovering what matters next.

Sometimes that experience remains simply play.
But often it leaves behind a question, an idea, a mystery, or a story worth following further.

Mystery

Mysteries are at the heart of my curiosity.

For me, a mystery begins with a gap between what is present and what is understood.

Something does not quite fit. A connection is missing. A pattern is incomplete. An explanation feels insufficient.

That gap invites investigation.

The appeal lies not only in finding an answer, but in the process of getting there: looking closer, gathering traces, comparing possibilities, testing assumptions, and following connections until a larger picture begins to emerge.

What interests me is the moment when something previously unclear begins to take shape.

A mystery is an invitation to look closer.

Where I Come From

For much of my professional life, I worked with systems, data, technology, and analysis.

I built databases and analytical systems, investigated problems, recognized patterns, and helped make complex information easier to understand.

This work was very much motivated by the same curiosity that shaped my childhood: a desire to know what was there, how things related to one another, what patterns might emerge, and what could be understood through context.

I wasn't merely interested in data, in information. It was, again, about relationships. The detail that changed an interpretation. The missing element. The wider pattern.

In retrospect, much of this followed the same pattern as a mystery: something incomplete, unclear, or not yet understood, waiting to be examined more closely. 

Today, the material may be different. I might be looking at a place, an object, a game, a story, or a question. But the underlying process remains familiar: observe, relate, interpret, and follow what seems significant.

The tools have changed.
The impulse has not.