A long-haired GenX metalhead from New York exiled to the wilds of Pennsyltucky for his sins, Matthew Graybosch is an out-of-print science fantasy author and a full-stack thaumaturge. At his day job he builds cathedrals on quicksand from blueprints sketched on bar napkins. He’s got a face made for radio and a voice made for print. A careful reader should be capable of inferring his preferred pronouns.
Where I Stand
I am content to let other people do their own thing, and demand the same courtesy in return. I am doing the best I can to make a life for myself in a world that wasn’t made for people like me. I believe that the law should protect all and bind all in equal measure. I think that religion should be as personal and private as sex.
I am never an ally and rarely a friend. I look out for myself, first and last and always. I have little patience for self-righteousness or idealism unleavened by realism. I am not nice, but I try to be kind.
How I Got Here
I had grown up as a musician, which influenced my writing once I had become a man and found dreams of my own instead of making do with the ones my parents failed to realize for themselves. I play the piano, viola, and bass guitar — all poorly, but I can hold a tune and stay on the beat. I used to sing tenor in choirs, but my voice has probably changed over the years.
As I reached the edge of adulthood I realized that while I had grown up being told — for no better reason than that I had taught myself to read before kindergarten — that I was a “genius” and could do “anything I wanted”, there was nothing I particularly wanted to do. With better advice and encouragement, I might have found a way to make some kind of living as a musician, but neither was forthcoming. I had begun to write, and knew I would need a day job.
Since I had found myself able to make sense of computers once I got my hands on some manuals and indulged in some unauthorized tinkering with school-owned machines, I became a programmer. If I had had any sense, or had gotten better advice, I might have become an electrician instead. Nevertheless, I managed to drop out of college with both an ex-girlfriend and a working knowledge of UNIX. That’s more than a lot of techies can say for themselves.
I had not known as a young man that I was autistic. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was in my early forties. I wasn’t autistic enough to get diagnosed as a kid in the 1980s. This is probably a good thing; if you were diagnosibly autistic back in the day, you would probably be institionalized, or at least subjected to autistic conversion therapy, or “applied behavior analysis”.
The upshot is that I grew up and went through adulthood without even the minimal support that people with what is now called “level 1 autism” are expected to require. I nevertheless made a life for myself as a mostly self-taught programmer and sysadmin by trade who write on his lunch breaks, nights, and weekends. I did online dating before gameified apps owned mostly by Match ruined it for everybody. It was how I met my wife of almost twenty years. I’ve published novels and short stories through a now-defunct small press. I celebrated my wife’s fortieth birthday in Paris, and seduced her in the gardens of Versailles. I supported her, mostly alone, through her struggle with breast cancer and the aftermath of her treatment. I’m a homeowner, something many in my generation haven’t managed. And I’m still writing.
I think I’m doing pretty well for myself. Whether you agree is not my problem. I am not answerable to anybody my wife.
Other About Pages
Updated Author Bio
The original is on my Badreads profile...
According to official records maintained by the state of New York, Matthew Graybosch was born on Long Island in 1978.
Urban legends suggest he might be Rosemary’s Baby or the result of top-secret attempts by the USA’s military-industrial-Congressional complex to continue Nazi experiments combining human technology and black magic. The most outlandish tale suggests that he sprang fully grown from his father’s anus with a sledgehammer in one hand and the second edition of The UNIX Programming Environment in the other — and has been a royal pain in the ass ever since.
The truth is more prosaic. Matthew Graybosch is an author from New York who lives with his wife and cats in central Pennsylvania. His existence is — for his parents at least — an unfortunate and preventable accident. He is also an avid reader, a long-haired metalhead, and an incorrigible nerd who plays too many video games.
His novels include Without Bloodshed and Silent Clarion, and he’s got a couple of projects called Spiral Architect and When You Don’t See Me on the back burner. He has also written several short stories, among them “The Milgram Battery” and “Limited Liability”.
His day job is software development, and we’re not sure how he remains sane. We could ask, but we suspect he’d say, “I’m not sane. I’m just high-functioning.” This, of course, was before he was diagnosed as an autistic person himself. Nowadays he’d just ask, “I’m not sane, and I’m not sure if mental illness is a prerequisite for a STEM job or an occupational hazard.”