J.D. Robinson was born in the last year of the 60s, smack in the center of the United States—aka Tornado Central. He was quickly whisked to the East Coast, where he spent his formative Virginia days entering obscure machine code from the backs of magazines, reading science fiction books by nightlight, falling asleep over his doodles in class, and attempting to write stories. Nothing came of any of it.
Well, that’s not strictly true. He amassed notebooks and loose scraps of paper filled with unattached musings and thoughts. Each was like a solitary voice with—seemingly—no way ever to find its way into a coherent story. It wasn’t until nigh upon his forties, after he fled for the West Coast, that a close friend suggested that they co-author a story. This was his first novel-writing venture. But, though that collaboration never yielded a book, the spark had started something terrible.
“Terrible” may be too strong a word for it, but for better or worse, writing is now what he spends every free moment on. (And sometimes moments when he should be otherwise engaged.)
As of this writing he’s completed four stand-alone novels, with a fifth now in the editing phase. Novel six is in the early planning stages.
His short story, “Fruiting,” will appear in print in the February 2021 anthology Twilight Tales. A second upcoming short story will serve as the prologue to book six, which is cool because no one likes prologues.
J.D. Robinson’s science fiction stories pit fallible characters against myriad existential threats, but always return to the question: what makes us human? (And if we became something else, would we even know?) You know, the usual stuff. A reclusive nerd, he now lives in Northern California where he’s waiting for the big one. The singularity, that is.
Follow the author’s posts on Twitter at @scamper.
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Your use of ellipses is very precise & satisfying. Not a bit of excess, nor too little. Reminds me a bit of Haruki Murakami, but more technically precise & less ethereal. Neither one is better than the other; each style has its own merits.
–Imogen S.