{"id":278,"date":"2015-08-25T14:03:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T18:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/?p=278"},"modified":"2026-02-28T17:15:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T22:15:44","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2015\/08\/25\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I grew up in the countryside of north Delaware, surrounded by woods, corn fields, and acres of unexplored wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that kind of a world, who wouldn&#8217;t be drawn to adventure? Rock climbing, caving, hiking, cycling, canoeing, and hopping freight trains as they rumbled through Newark were all a part of my growing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose you could say that wasn&#8217;t always a good thing, but I adventure the way some people buy clothes, trying on different experiences to see how they fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I wasn&#8217;t exploring, books and games were the centerpiece of my life. I read voraciously, and my friends and I played just about any game we could find, making up our own as often as not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I worked through college as a software developer, and after graduation I moved to Chicago to continue that work. Chicago was an entirely different sort of wilderness than the one I was used to, but every bit as exciting, with adventures all its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a few years there, however, I was ready for something new. I moved to Florida to help a friend start a software business and spent the next fifteen (or so) years building it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My love for games, reading, and writing never left me. I started my own game company (Live Oak Games) on the side, and began working more seriously as a writer.\u00a0I wrote a newspaper column called DaddyTales, worked as a contract reporter, and produced the Games for Educators website with Mary Couzin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2007, I sold my portion of the software company so I could spend as much time as possible with my kids.\u00a0I worked from home, running the game company, writing fiction, and doing contract software and game development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I still work from home, but am back in the corporate world, working as a technical product manager. I also run <a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondstoryup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Second Story Up<\/a>, the imprint where I publish my fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My latest book is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondstoryup.com\/emil\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Emil<\/a>, a fast-paced sci-fi thriller about an AI and a human struggling to survive. You should check it out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Interested in keeping in touch? Join me over at <a href=\"https:\/\/orlandopat.substack.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Substack<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interested in learning more about me? Here&#8217;s my bio!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,57],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-fun","tag-interview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-4u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37727,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/37727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}