As a young child, I had the distinct “pleasure” of growing up gay in a very small, rural town, where I graduated from the school of hard knocks. Looking back in hindsight, I’ve realized that also growing up on daily reruns of Star Trek must be what saved my sanity. It provided a much-needed, humanitarian escape from the drudgery of being exiled to such a savage, backwater planet, with so much rampant racism and homophobia.

A creative writing class in college opened a whole new world of self-expression for me, but then real life intervened for decades with various fun-filled jobs in foodservice, retail sales, and radio announcing.

These days, I live in the woods on the side of a mountain in rural Virginia with my partner of twenty-five years. I enjoy communing with nature, container gardening, growing tropical houseplants and carnivorous plants, and feeding and photographing hummingbirds and other wildlife. And now, I also get to write racy, romantic stories with the kind of passionate fantasies I could only dream about privately in my youth.

Oh, and yes, I’m still waiting for the Mother Ship to arrive to take me back home.

For more information, visit akwilliams.godaddysites.com.