Border, KS

Who are you?

My name is Matt Parker, and I’m an attorney living in Omaha, NE and not currently practicing law (since I have a Colorado, not Nebraska, license).  I’m originally from Denver, CO and went to undergrad at the University of Northern Colorado.  I attended Law School at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, KS, which is also where I first encountered Kansas and began visiting the people and places who would help inspire Border.

Why Border?

Border was inspired, as many things are, by jealousy.  I’ve been lucky enough to be friends with webcomic artists and have seen how they can create and immediately put their work out to the world.  Since my stick figures look like they have scoliosis I assumed I would never be able to do the same, until I realized I could publish written fiction in the same way they publish visual fiction.  If I may brag it seems to be something of a different view, publishing serially like a web-comic instead of posting chapters like large novel chunks.

Why not write legal fiction, you are an attorney right?

I’ve always hated that idea, and how prevalent it is that attorneys will right legal fiction and doctors write medical fiction.  Jim Butcher isn’t a wizard but gets to write wizard fiction, while I have to write about the law? Screw that.  We write the stories that live inside of us, regardless of what genre that is.

What do you look like?

Ooh, an author picture?  Well, doesn’t that make me seem all professional.

Me, in a tuxedo.

A Note About Grammar

Sometimes you have to eat a little crow. It was recently shown to me that I had been doing the grammar of my dialogue wrong, and not even realized it. As someone with an English degree and who obviously wants to write (and has some published writing work), this was obviously tremendously embarrassing. Unfortunately to change it in every archived update of Border would be a task that would probably prevent me from writing it for a while, which isn’t optimal. So for the moment, I am going to leave it. Anything after about July of 2015 is fine and should be done correctly. My plan has always been to collect the first arc of Border, and sell it as a complete novel. At that time I will go back and fix the dialogue grammar that was incorrect, and hopefully re-post the corrected versions. Until then please consider this one of the charming benefits of reading it as it goes up live, and thank you for reading.