Although author Vann Turner was born in West Palm Beach, FL, he cannot call that home. He attended thirteen different schools, in thirteen different locales, before he graduated from Pensacola High School in 1966. His parents thought the best graduation present would be a suitcase. Vann took the hint and left. By tending bar and cooking he earned his BA in English (with Latin minor).
He went on to teach high school one year, became an avid backpacker, did a stint in the Army, then tried homesteading in upstate Maine. Failing at that, he merged into the hordes of homeless veterans on the streets. His medic training in the Army enabled him to pull himself up to work in hospitals and he became an amateur bodybuilder. He went on to transcribe medical dictation for a group of neurologists (using WordPerfect 5.1). During this time he wrote three gay short stories. The first magazines he sent them to bought them. Maybe he could tell a story and had something to say besides.
He then began working on his first novel, completing it in 1992. That novel came close to acceptance by a major publisher, but in the end it was no cigar. He told himself he needed to write full time, but he needed an income so he could quit his job and write. If he had something to sell on that new fangled thing, the World Wide Web, that'd provide the income he needed.
So he learned coding. He wrote and sold medical transcription software, MedPen, on the internet. But that decision did not pan out as he had hoped. It sapped all his time and creativity and he wrote not a word of fiction until he sold the business in September, 2012.
The next day his long-time partner (and future husband when it became legal in 2014) asked him what he was going to do with his time. He said he was going to write. Bob nodded and asked him to dust off that 1992 novel. Vann responded that he had other stories to tell as well and he was going to write a novel set after the fall of Rome but before the solid onset of the Dark Ages, a time ripe with conflicts, Roman tradition versus Germanic custom, Christianity versus the old gods, the human heart struggling against itself and external constraints.
Vann has always been a shy person and now is something of a recluse in his mountain home with his dogs. (His husband passed in May of 2017.) He is not on Twitter, but dared to venture into the strange world of Facebook for seven months, finally deleting his account in February, 2020. He found the FB environment toxic to him. It sapped energy. Maybe it was just too many people shouting for attention all at once. But he loves interacting with people one on one. So if you'd like to send him an email, he will answer you. You'll find his email address in the appendices of his novels and on his website, www.vannturner.com (Amazon does not allow posting it here.)
