Ray Anselmo was born in San Francisco on December 9, 1969, and grew up in the Sacramento, CA area. Since 1987 he has lived in Stockton, CA (not always by choice). He has been married to the former Nina Harting (aka the Supermodel, Jennifer Garner’s Double, the Grace of God) since 1999, and they have two children.

At heart, Ray is a storyteller – sometimes to the chagrin of people who wish he would shut up once in a while – and has found that writing is a socially acceptable way to be himself. He has survived his parents’ divorce, his father’s alcoholism, unemployment, Dilbertesque job situations, club foot, diverticulitis, cataracts, car accidents, not having his Asperger’s officially diagnosed until he was 42, and living in Stockton since 1987. You won’t scare him with any zombie-apocalypse nonsense, trust me.

Favorite Authors (in no particular order): Bill James, Salman Rushdie, Spider Robinson, Malcolm Gladwell, Joe Haldeman, Brennan Manning, Robert Harris, Orson Scott Card, Donald Miller, Bill Simmons, Philip Yancey, Neil Gaiman, Geralyn Beauchamp.

“I had a lot of creative energy locked up inside. When I was a kid at school, I had a lot of outlets for that. And then time passed and I was suddenly married with two babies, and all this creative energy was in there. And I was sick all the time, because I couldn’t let it out. Once I started writing, I could let it out, and I got well again … If you start thinking about your legacy when you are writing, it’s not going to work. You can’t start thinking about lasting impact or what a critic would say. I write because I can’t NOT write. I can’t help it. It has to come out.” – Judy Blume