Randall Schanze is a Science Fiction author and blogger from Florida. He's the child of a NASA engineer and an immigrant, and has had a life-long fascination with space and exotic cultures. He's wild-eyed, engaging, chatty, smart, interested in nearly everything, and hence almost instantly annoying in person. Just the same, his writing has been praised by several well-respected professional SF authors. His first love is Science Fiction, and he's been writing for 30 years, though much of that time was spent writing under various pseudonyms. The most noteworthy of these was "Kevin Long," a name he used to publish four books. For half a decade he was the head writer and editor on the Republibot website but he has since retired. During that period, he went by the nom de web "Republibot 3.0" in a paranoid bid to protect his identity from his stalkers, though obvious since he's using his real name now, he's gotten more laid back about the whole thing. He's middle aged, happily married, and has a family. He also sings.
Jim was born in Bushey, Middlesex, England and grew up in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. He passed selection for the 21st Special Air Service Regiment at age 17 and was later commissioned into the 3rd Battalion, The Queen’s Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He spent several years in Northern Ireland during the late 70s and early 80s. Since leaving the army in 1986, he has worked in Malaysia, South Africa, Belgium, Singapore and Hong Kong. Jim started writing scifi in September 2010 and has since published SCAT and BIRDIE DOWN, both based on events in Scat’s Universe. ARMY of SOULS, the sequel to SCAT is also available from Amazon and Smashwords. SCAT is a big 'what if'. ARMY of SOULS is more of a 'what now'. Both are space operas, which question political systems, economic dependency, compromised regulators, and too big to fail businesses, and go on to question conflict between knowledge and faith. BIRDIE DOWN and the up-coming PHARMA are rebellion 'shoot 'em ups'. Jim now lives with Vivien, his Malaysian-born wife, two East Asian street dogs and four pampered cats in Asia’s World City, Hong Kong. It is the company-run city which inspired Go Down City and the Lynthax Corporation in Scat’s Universe.
