Short bio

Ross B. Lampert has been in love with both science and words—and hence science fiction and fantasy—since at least third grade, when he wrote a one-act SF play. After detours through public school, college, and the Air Force, he returned to writing full time in, appropriately enough, 2001. Today he blogs, writes occasional op-ed pieces, newspaper articles, and short stories, and crafts novels in southeastern Arizona. His debut novel, The Eternity Plague, was published in 2013 and its sequel, Chrysalis, in 2015. The last book in The Eternity Plague series, working title Wild Spread, is in draft. You can follow him on Twitter, be his friend on Facebook or follow his Facebook author page, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Long bio

Ross B. Lampert’s loves for science and writing revealed themselves early: he wrote a one-act play recreating a flight of one of the Mercury spaceflight missions that was performed in his third grade class. (And yes, his mother kept a copy, which he now has.) These interests went dormant for a while, but in junior high school, 8^th grade science teacher Penny Ashby reignited his interest in science and English teacher Irma Mapelli did the same for his interest in language. Lampert discovered the two could be combined when he found British science fiction writer Andre Norton’s novel Moon of Three Rings in the school library. (Yes, he still has a copy of that too.) The rest, as they say, is future history.

Lampert dabbled with writing SF and fantasy through high school, college (where he just barely earned a bachelor’s degree in physics), and a more than 22 year career in the Air Force, but got serious about it after retiring from the Service. He received a Master of Arts degree in English (with honors) with a creative writing specialization in 2006. An early draft of his first novel, The Eternity Plague, was his thesis project.

While Lampert has published short stories in New Plains Review and Mirage, and occasional op-eds and news articles, novels are his primary interest. The Eternity Plague, was published in 2013 and its sequel, Chrysalis, in 2015. The last book in The Eternity Plague series, working title Wild Spread, is in draft. He has written a series of over 60 blog posts on how to critique other writers’ work–and your own–which are posted in the Critique Technique section of the SunSpots blog.

Lampert was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, and now lives in southeastern Arizona. In between, he went to college in Boulder, Colorado, was stationed in Arizona, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Germany, and South Korea, and deployed to over a dozen other countries. He is the cofounder of the Cochise and Upper San Pedro Valley Writers’ Groups. You can follow him on Twitter, be his friend on Facebook or follow his Facebook author page, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Why “Split\Sun”?

I used to live about a half mile from the foot of the Huachuca (Thunder) Mountains in southeastern Arizona. The closest of these mountains was Carr Peak. Half-way between the base and the top is a set of 350 foot high granite cliffs called the Carr Reefs. Two of these cliffs appeared edge-on when seen from my house. One is part of the Split/Sun Publishing logo.

Four times a year, for about three days each time, as the sun set, it was split vertically by one or the other of these cliff faces. During these sunsets, I could stand in the beautiful and ethereal silver-hued coronal light of the split sun, with shadow on one side and full sunshine on the other, until the sun slid behind the cliff.