I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1960s and 70s, at just the right time and place to witness the space race, the American racial and social revolutions, the beginnings of the transistor age, the first color television programs, and America’s 1970s environmental crisis.

Having no idea that I was growing up so close to “ground zero,” I delighted in the science fiction and fantasy books of the era, especially from the likes of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, and peppered with the science-fiction-heavy comics that were becoming all the rage. I also had a distinct appreciation for the pulps of an earlier era, most notably the Doc Savage and Perry Rhodan series, and today own the entire run of Doc Savage novels. My young mind was also molded by the television of the day, most notably programs like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, and sci-fi and adventure cartoons from America and Japan too numerous to mention. For a brief time, my interest in science and SF led to my being given the nickname of “Flash” Jordan.

Luckily for me, that one eventually wore off.

I am a self-taught graphic artist and web designer, who began to experiment with writing when I found more and more trouble finding content I wanted to read. After putting a number of stories together, I tried to get them into a publisher’s hands. But the publishers declined to even review the material, leaving me very dissatisfied by the experience of trying to get into the “publishing castle.”

Exploring other options, I came across ebooks and self-publishing. Ebooks, I believe, are the natural progression in the delivery of literature to the public. As our environmental impact demands that we preserve our natural resources as much as possible, and as more and more people worldwide obtain electronic devices that can read digital documents and literature, so it makes sense to support the transition from paper-based books—which are bulky and require extensive resources and power to produce, transport and store—to electronic books, which require virtually no energy to reproduce, need no space to store, and can travel electronically. Ebooks fit our environmentally-sensitive, space-conscious, ultra-portable world of today and tomorrow.

Researching ebooks through various online forums, I decided to sell my books myself, and began to build a following on my own. I registered and self-produced SteveJordanBooks.com in 2006, and created an initial sensation as I released a novel a month for the first six months of operation, each one with its own original cover (done by myself), in multiple ebook formats, at attractive prices, and with no DRM. Full disclosure: The books were already written, and only needed to be converted to ebook formats and added to the site... but it created quite the furor at the time!

As I continued to write and develop the website, often referred to as The SJB, I also regularly contributed to ebook-dedicated forums, becoming known as an independent authority on ebooks, ebook production, formats and self-publishing. I've been interviewed for articles in the New York Times and in various blogs, including DigiReader and The Tainted Archive. I've also lent my web production talents and support to the Read an E-Book Week website, elucidating on and encouraging ebook reading around the world. I've recently undergone a “reinvention” of my website and work, now available through my pages at RightBrane.com.

I continue to write from my home in Maryland, or wherever I have enough room to write, including on vacations and on the commute to work; I've often been caught banging out chapters on my smartphone when I've had a free minute. I am urged on by my wife, spoken fondly of by my family and friends, and tolerated by my cat (who sleeps with the angels now, when her soul's not sleeping next to me).

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