Drew Briney is a New York Times Bestselling author who is about to release his tenth book entitled Unproven. …  Well, at least he aspires to be a New York Times Bestselling author and expects that it will happen sooner or later.

In his own words:

I spilled over a half million words publishing my first five books but they were all historical nonfiction – quite stuffy footnote laden historical treatises!  Currently, I’m 177,000 words into A New Breed of Dragon, a fantasy novel that may well be my magnum opus – I started writing it several years ago but didn’t get serious about writing fiction until a few years ago when I decided to take a break from A New Breed of Dragon to write Moon 514.  In the meantime, I’ve penned several short stories, a couple drabbles, and a number of other things that will hit this blog sooner or later.

At the demand of social pressure and traditional online expectations, I suppose I should mention that I’m happily married, I have a boatload of children, and that I’m recently divorced from my day job helping people hate each other (retired attorney).

After graduating from BYU (Phi Kappa Phi) with degrees in history, music, and logic, I entered BYU’s law school on scholarship and began teaching philosophy at UVU.  Forsaking exotic and life changing trips around the world with jazz bands (Europe) and symphonies (China and the Philippines) and recording on CDs (only two), I began my new journey of helping people beat each other up with reams of paperwork that cost ungodly amounts of money and that are only read by a very small group of people.  I suppose I’ve drafted millions of words in that vein – including a number of thousand that made their way to the United States Supreme Court (we won).  None of that persistent fighting saturated my appetite for violence so I dedicated my evenings to pursuing my black belt in karate.  Don’t worry, I didn’t do it alone – four of my kids are black belts!  It’s illegal to beat them at home but at the dojo, we just called it sparring so it all worked out fine!  Sadly, I missed my goal in 2015.  When only months away from my black belt test, I crushed three of my vertebrae, ruptured two discs, broke a spindle, and tore my hamstring.  While unable to walk a straight line, I hit the gym and started lifting weights off my back.  My therapist later told me that decision kept me from becoming permanently crippled.  I’m still recovering.

Oh – I almost forgot something important:  while in law school, I thrust my obsessive compulsive personality disorder into a good cause: I returned to my childhood juggling addiction.  I was awarded Utah’s Best Professional Juggler award in 2001 and have retained that title ever since (mostly because they quit having the competition but I like to brag about it anyway – did I mention I can juggle 8 balls?).  I juggled as a performer at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics.  I competed at the 2006 International Juggler’s Association in Portland, Oregon and handily lost because I dropped too much – but at least I saved one drop with an epic sidekick that really wowed the judges!  I have also been a staple performer at the Timpanogas Storytelling Festival for more than a dozen years because I’m the only juggler in the world that tells stories while juggling.  Really – it’s true: I bill myself as the Story Juggler for that very reason.  You can hire me to juggle for insane amounts of money (please…) or you can just watch me on YouTube for free – your call.

Just like any other attorney with a conscience (I met at least two others in sixteen years of practice), I had to find some sort of therapy to dull the pain of litigation (I can’t afford a professional therapist with my gaggle of kids – between their incessant food addictions (all of them eat every day), their propensity to get hit by trucks (whew – only one…), and taking music, karate, dance, gymnastics, and other lessons, I lose thousands of dollars every month!), I started writing again.  …  And now that my temporary amnesia is past: I remember why I loved that creative writing course in highschool: this is my true passion.  So, off I go to write something more exciting than self absorbed bio bits.