Biography
| When he's not writing, Hank Schwaeble is a practicing attorney in Houston, Texas. A former Air Force officer and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Hank obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Florida and earned a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt Law School. He also graduated first in his class from the Defense Language Institute's Japanese Language Course and prior to that was a distinguished graduate from the Air Force Special Investigations Academy. While in law school, he was an associate editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and the recipient of several American Jurisprudence Awards. A student of literature his entire adult life, Hank studied creative writing under Padgett Powell as an undergraduate at UF and modern horror under Professor James Twitchell. Hank's philosophy of writing is based upon what he has distilled from a lifetime of avid reading and study. He believes the paramount duty of a writer is to present a story, and to do so in a manner that engages and challenges the reader while providing enjoyable entertainment. The effectiveness of any story, be it horror or romance, depends upon character, plot and verisimilitude. Because the human mind is trained to process patterns, structure and symmetry are also important components that are, unfortunately, often overlooked. And because words are the writer's chosen method of conveying all of the aforementioned elements, prose that is expressive, fluid and as devoid of needless words as possible is, in his opinion, an absolute essential. Hank strives to make his writing a vehicle through which characters reveal some essential truth about themselves, the world, the reader, or others. But the key to good storytelling in Hank's view is that the characters should be the revelators whenever possible, not the author. Really, it is their story being presented. |