Crylock's Bio

Who am I? I’m a pilgrim on the road to nowhere, a traveler without a map. I’m the fool in the wood, the wild-eyed prophet shouting “Maybe!” from the highest tower. I’m the bedraggled lime-green jester’s hat in a sea of black umbrellas.

But you’ll want to know who I am in the physical world.

I was born in the Northwestern United States, to ostensibly fully human parents (now deceased, so prove me wrong if you can!). I was raised on the run, up and down the Left Coast, never two consecutive years in the same location. My legal name is Brian Thompson. Disappointing, isn’t it? Common and forgettable. But Thompson was the name of the lady who adopted my father when, as a baby, he mysteriously appeared in front of an orphanage in a weird baby-carrying container of some kind. Despite his strangeness, she took him in, fed him, cared for him, trained him to live within her culture and renamed him Wilbur. Yes, Wilbur. In the novels I write, and will someday see published, I call myself Brian Jones, Jones being, as far as anyone knows, dad’s original last name. Still common, but slightly better, right?

I was trained to kill during my four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, a skill I have never had to put into practice, and with luck never will. More practically, the Corps taught me to endure hardship and rampant stupidity, which have both served me well in the years since.

I attended two years of community college, and two more of a now-defunct commercial art school in Seattle, neither of which taught me my deadly artistic abilities. Those I learned on my own, by dead of night, deep in the forest where no innocents might come to harm.

Likewise my writing skills, which I also gleaned mostly by my own efforts, without formal instruction. In this regard, however, I must cast some of the blame on the Kitsap County Writers Group. This loose coalition of wordsmiths took me in when no one else would, and taught me some things that They Who Rule the Night did not, things like the difference between "telling" and "showing." For this I shall be eternally grateful.

In my life, I have been a Marine, a student, an actor, a janitor, a graphic artist, a creator of comic books, a photographer, an art director, a magazine editor, a set designer, a videographer, a video editor, a warehouseman, a free-lance illustrator and a security guard. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, New York, and various places in and around Seattle. I’ve not lived a boring life by any means. I’ve seen and done things very few can claim, some of which I can freely discuss in polite society.

I am and ever shall be, four years in the Corps notwithstanding, a nerd. Nerdhood is something you can overcompensate for, but never really overcome. Lately the popular definition of the word "nerd" has changed, apparently. It seems the tendency to obsess over the minutiae of popular culture has become the new litmus of nerdliness. By that definition I don't qualify. I don't care how many times Bones said "He's dead, Jim!" Nor can I quote every line from Star Wars. I don’t watch things over and over, unless it’s Monty Python’s Holy Grail. But I've watched plenty of sci-fi movies and shows, good and bad. I loved Firefly, MST3K, B-5, Farscape and Buffy. I thought the ending of Game of Thrones was perfectly in keeping with the style of the work throughout. I've fed my brain a fairly steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy books since I first learned to read. I've played D&D and similar tabletop RP games ever since college, and I still play them today. I taught myself to draw from comic books, and I consider the superheroes my earliest role models. And I paid my dues in blood and tears as a square-peg child. By my definition, I proudly claim the title of Nerd, and shall not be denied.

I have three natural talents: Acting, writing and drawing. I did some stage acting in college just for fun, and a few times since. It's great fun, and I get tremendous gratification out of making an audience laugh, but I've never pursued acting seriously. No, it's the drawing and writing that has consumed me and driven me to the brink of madness. I've always been torn between the two, and so divided my time to pursue both. I've written novels, which I'm currently shopping around to publishers, and I've been a freelance illustrator for years. I'm driven by twin demons to create, one demanding that I depict the dark images that haunt me, and the other flogging me to tell the twisted stories that writhe in the deep labyrinths of my brains. Only in the comics medium have I been able to reconcile both of these drives. In comics I can tell stories with pictures, and my demons skip tra-la-la down the path holding hands.

I value truth. Truth isn’t a belief system, and it offers no lens through which to view the world. If you believe something because it makes you feel good, that alone should make you suspicious. Chances are, it’s not truth. Truth is not warm and fuzzy. It’s often harsh. To find truth, you have to put your beliefs under a microscope. You must teach yourself to think skeptically. You must scrutinize everything. And you absolutely must question authority, because authority always lies to you for its own purposes.