the website of author and local favorite blake michael nelson | about | x | substack | patreon | contact: theblakeshow@gmail.com
I don't like writing these kinds of things, because I feel like I'm not a very interesting person, but here goes:
My name's Blake Nelson. I was born and raised in a rural part of western Minnesota, and I've lived here pretty much my whole life. I graduated from high school in 1998 and attended the University of Minnesota for a few years, but dropped out before getting a degree. I started writing my own stories when I was about eight years old, and started publishing them on Amazon around 2010. Since then I've written seven short stories, four novellas, and fifteen novels: the Azuraan fantasy series, the Signalverse superhero series, the pulp throwback Sam Fortune series, the Chemical Empires series, a collection of hard-boiled kid-detective stories called Playground Noir, and a serialized fantasy called Lillandra. I publish my books under my full name (Blake Michael Nelson) in order to avoid being confused with writers Blake Nelson and Tim Blake Nelson. I actually used to receive fan mail meant for these two. I have very ordinary hobbies -- I mostly just sit around playing video games. But I'm also into boxing history, the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, collecting Mumm-Ra figures, Axe Cop, the Sega CD, 1940's pop hits, old cars, good pasta, the Three Stooges, early Christianity, Calvin and Hobbes, MST3K, and the Cantopop group Twins, among other things. My favorite authors are Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Raymond Chandler; my favorite fantasy authors are Robert E. Howard, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Greg Keyes, Brian McClellan, and I suppose George R. R. Martin, for the first three Song of Ice and Fire novels, but I have kind of a love/hate thing going on there. For many years I did contract work for the local power company, installing water heaters and working on their load management program. Very often I found myself in disgusting farmhouse basements and filthy dairy barns, wrestling with gigantic, grimy water heaters. You can read about some of my work-adventures here and here. I'm a quiet guy and I'm not very active on social media, but I am on X for some reason and I readily respond to emails, so feel free to send me a message if you've got a question or if you want to talk about my books or something. I also have a Patreon, so if you like what I'm doing here and you'd like to support my work, please consider becoming a patron. I'd be extremely grateful. |
