Pull Up a Chair: Welcome to the Back Porch

I'm Jon, J.D. Coker on the covers, and this is the part of the website where I stop being "The Storyteller" for a minute and just talk to you like we're sitting on my back porch. Which is exactly why this blog is called From the Back Porch.

Here's the short version of me. I'm 47. I was born in upstate New York and moved down to Durham, North Carolina when I was twelve, which makes me a Southerner by a couple of decades but a Yankee by birth certificate, a distinction people around here are kind enough to let slide. I've been married since I was nineteen to a woman who is, by a wide margin, the best decision I ever made. We raised three boys who are now grown men in their twenties, which is a strange and wonderful thing to be able to say out loud.

For fifteen years I worked in manufacturing. Good work, steady work, the kind that pays the bills and teaches you things about patience and process that I didn't realize I was learning until much later. And the whole time, in the margins of lunch breaks, late nights, and the quiet stretches, I was building a universe. A galaxy reborn from the ashes of Earth, three thousand years after humanity left it to die. I've been developing the Shaper Universe for over a decade now, long before there was ever a book with my name on it.

Not long ago, I quit the day job to write full time. I'll tell that whole story in another post, because it deserves one. But the short of it is: I bet on the thing I couldn't stop doing anyway.

So what is this blog?

It's the back porch. It's where I'll talk about the books and the universe behind them: the lore, the science, the strange corners I've been building for years. But it's also where I'll talk about the rest of it. The tobacco pipe and the old fashioned at the end of a long day. The four ridiculous dogs who run this house. The sci-fi and fantasy I grew up loving. The low-and-slow art of a good brisket. And whatever else comes up when the evening's cool and there's no reason to go inside yet.

No politics. No sermons. Just a guy who loves this stuff, talking to people who love it too. If you're a reader of the Shaper Saga, welcome. You're going to get plenty of what you came for. And if you just wandered in and stuck around because the vibe felt right, welcome to you too.

Grab a chair. The good ones are by the railing.

— Jon