I'm Rustin Petrae, a graphic designer out of Ohio. I was actually born in San Antonio, Texas but spent nearly half my life overseas. I grew up on Misawa Air Force Base, Japan and then went on to Seoul, South Korea and then onto Osan Air Force Base, South Korea where I graduated from Osan American High School. I loved that life. I loved living in a country where I was able to absorb different cultures and traditions. I learned a lot from that and I use a lot of what I learned in my writing. I started very early on. In fact, I can remember one of my elementary school teachers asking us all what we wanted to be when we grew up. My answer was that I wanted to either be a cartoonist or an author. Well, I didn't end up being a cartoonist (although I still draw and create my own characters).
I went on to pursue the graphic design route, but I never did give up on writing. I think I really started to pursue it again when I was a senior in high school. That's when I tried to get a little more serious about it and also when I completed one of my first short stories. Ever since then, I have written several stories, flash fictions, a couple of novellas, and two novels. I've always enjoyed the creative process. I love taking things and seeing them through until they are something real. Something you can actually grab onto. For me, the creative spark really began in Misawa, Japan. All of my friends, myself included, would make up characters, cartoons and the worlds they would go in. Shortly after that I started drawing and spent a long time creating even more characters. It wasn't until a couple of class projects where we had to write and make our own books that I realized I could write about the characters that I drew.
Everything just sort of spun off from that and I've spent nearly my whole life creating these characters and sharpening them and their worlds until I have stories that I like.
I hope that everyone else likes them too.
