Author Biography
I guess you could say that I was born to write. I was born to tell stories. I was born March 12, 1977 in Tuscaloosa, AL. I practically grew up in the shadows of Bryant-Denny Stadium. When Coach Paul Bear Bryant passed away in 1983, Mrs. Taylor took our kindergarten class out to watch the funeral procession go down McFarland Boulevard. I have attended close to 100 Bama sporting events. In other words, the Crimson Tide is in my blood. After graduation from Tuscaloosa's Central High School in 1995, I matriculated across the street to the University of Alabama. Most of my education was within a few miles of each other. It was while I was a student at Bama that my love of storytelling grew. While I majored in Journalism I was not drawn toward the ink, but toward the radio. I even had my own radio show five days a week, which was hosted by Alabama broadcasting legend Doug Layton. But that's not where my love of storytelling was born. It was in a small pasture outside Ashford, AL in the summer of 1987. I was all of 10 years old. My sister and I were visiting my grandfather. Melborn Ivey was a nationally known farmer and veteran of World War II. While fighting in the battle of Guadalcanal he took a Japanese bullet in the left arm and was awarded the Purple Heart. But granddaddy was the single best and most natural storyteller I've ever known. As he and I were seeing if one of his irrigation rigs was functional one night, he told me a story that had me convinced that a race of alien monkeys had sabotaged his equipment. There were no alien monkeys - only fireflies. I wanted to turn Monkeytown into something he could read. So my mom and I put something together for him the next time we visited. He loved it and that became my very first byline. My mom and grandfather were instrumental in my development as a writer. My love of storytelling and my love of writing are owed to Ann Ivey Hall and Melborn Ivey.
