Andre started reading late by some standards. Being a kid with ADHD, the idea of reading a whole book was daunting to him. His mother, herself a teacher, started to worry that if she didn’t do something he would fall behind in his reading comprehension. So, when he was ten, she started reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to him in the evening. The story introduced a world of storytelling he’d never imagined possible before, and he instantly fell in love. Within the year he had finished the entirety of the series on his own, and so began his love affair with storytelling. By the age of fifteen, Andre was a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy and had decided he wanted to be a storyteller too. There was no other option as far as he was concerned.
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The summer of high school graduation he met the love of his life, Jessica Lough. When their eyes met the attraction was instantaneous. From that moment on there is no story about Andre without Jessica. She too loved stories, and for the next twenty-five years they made stories together through tabletop roleplaying and other creative projects. They were each other’s best friend and constant companion, creating a family of many fur-babies and rarely spending a day apart. Though he continued to write, Andre was satisfied with telling his stories to his biggest fan and focused on other matters in life and less on getting his work published.
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At the age of 37, Jessica was diagnosed with an extremely rare and universally fatal soft-tissue sarcoma. She fought as hard as any one person possibly could, keeping an unbelievably upbeat attitude while enduring treatments that Andre could never have managed himself. She made it another two-and-a-half years. Andre was there, caring for her until her final moments. When she passed, he was devastated. In the following days, weeks, and months, Andre discovered a darkness he’d never experienced before. The thing he’d feared most had happened and, without his guiding light, he was lost.
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It was during that period that he made a decision: he could give up on life, eating and drinking himself to death, or he could focus on being the person Jessica always saw in him. That meant finally writing and publishing his first novel. Within the year, he finished The Last Protocol, his tribute to Jessica and the love they shared.
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Andre lives in Bellingham, Washington, in the house he once shared with Jessica. There, he continues to raise their fur-babies and is inspired by the life they built together every day. He still has a lot of stories to tell and hopes his readers and Jessica enjoy them.
