I’ve always hated writing these ‘about’ pages, because they sound so much like online dating ads. But, here goes nothing:

• I’m in my mid 40’s as of this writing (January 2013).
• I live with my wife Robyn on about five acres in a small Alabama town not too far from Huntsville.
• We refer to our home as Crooked Acres, because the house is 80+ years old and no longer straight anywhere.
• We love animals.
• A lot.
• Right now, we have 12 cats (however, in our defense, I should point out that several of them showed up as strays and we’re suckers).
• We foster cats for a local no-kill shelter, and have 2-10 extras at any given time.
• Our house does NOT smell like cat pee. Really.
• We have two Great Pyrenees who live on the back half of our property (we call this ‘the back forty’, though it’s really more like ‘the back three’) and guard the animals living out there.
• We raise chickens, and our flock is about fifty strong, mixed breeds.
• All the chicken and eggs we eat come from our flock; I process them myself because we want to contribute as little as possible to factory farming.
• We also raise pigs every year, to be turned into sweet sweet bacon every fall. I don’t process the pigs.
• We have a small pond, stocked with catfish, that I fight to keep enough water in. Summers in Alabama can be brutal.
• We have four ducks whose job is to keep the tadpole population in the pond down. They do this job very well.
• I feel pretty strongly about the way animals are treated, and all of ours have plenty of room to live. Factory farming pisses me off almost as much as PETA and vegans.
• I’ve planted 30+ fruit trees here over the last few years. When they start really bearing, I suspect I’ll regret that. We have six (Fuji, Jonagold, Winesap, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious) kinds of apple, plums, peaches, pears, nectarines, and cherries.
• In addition to the trees, we have muscadines, grapes, and blueberries.
• Each year, we plant a garden that provides about 80% of the vegetables we eat all year.
• I’m starting to feel like I’m obsessed with food.
• I am a computer geek by trade.
• I love my xBox, but I suck at it. The Call o’ Duty franchise is far and away my favorite.
• Sudoku rocks my world.
• I like to read, especially Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Lee Child, and Harlan Coben.
• From time to time, when the mood strikes me, I write fiction, but I don’t think of myself as a writer, despite that pretentious-sounding “AUTHOR FRED ANDERSON” I sometimes use.
• If you’re into the whole Myers-Briggs personality thing, I’m a classic INTJ. Fear the mastermind.