About

T. L. Ryder. . .

. . .writes Speculative Fiction for readers who like quirky stories that blur genre boundaries.

I was raised with what is sometimes referred to as the “self-sufficient spirit of the great American West”. In my family, we called it Jack of all Trades. After I grew up and got a fancy education, I started referring to it as being a Renaissance Person. It means, in practice, that I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Fiction is informed by the writer’s experiences, even if we’re writing Fantasy, Science Fiction, or a story set in a historical epoch far removed from our own. My view of the human experience colors my stories, shapes my language, and informs my character development. When they say “write what you know”, it doesn’t especially mean that we should write the minutia of our everyday lives, though I’ve seen some very talented excel at just that. Mostly I write about whatever shiny things in the magpie nest of my mind that seem most attractive at the time.

Writer and theologian Carl R. Rogers said: “what is most personal is most universal”. Those contradictory experiences, the ones that seem the most mundane and the most specific, are the ones that speak most authentically.  In those passages, reader and writer share a moment together that transcends time and place.