Greetings

So I grew up to become a very independent minded Baptist Christian, I was a homeschooled kid, an Air Force military brat, [the good kind] and one who has been privileged to travel all over the country and - well - just about everywhere else in my short life so far.

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I was born in a hospital in central east Florida in the 80's so one might have called me a beach baby as (I am told by my Mom) I did spend ample time on those gorgeous warm beaches with bright blonde hair that inspired my grandpa to call me "Canito". Of course my curls have darkened since.

 

As the son of an Air Force Civil Engineer my family had the priviledge of living all over this huge and incredible Republic as well as in the Far East and even on an island paradise where we enjoyed a beach day on Christmas Eve together and danced and played in the warm tropical storm rain at times. Together we Carmonas travelled across country at least three times as a whole and a few other times in smaller groups making us all quite familiar with this vast and diverse land. There's only 4 states I haven't been to yet. One of those cross country trips was an almost month long vacation complete with: camping at Yellowstone National Park, visiting Mt. Rushmore and Niagara Falls, staying in my grandparent's Brooklyn apartment and visiting the World Trade Center Plaza in the early 90's as well as peering from the top of the Empire State building, partaking in a big family reunion BBQ at my Uncle's central Maine country property, checking out and climbing all over the northern original version of Fort Knox, and so on and so forth; you get the picture; it was a grand adventure and that is just the one trip all done in a Ford, Club Wagon van.

We are not and have never been rich by any stretch of the imagination but American life is such that almost anyone can partake in amazing journeys and see incredible sights even as lower middle class people. My siblings and I were amazed to gaze upon and walk under the majestic giant Redwoods and Sequoias of California, peer across the then moon like landscape spread out before Mt. St. Helens, climb the mighty snow clad sides of the largest mountain in the continental U.S., Mt. Rainier - which we could also regularly see from our home in Tacoma most days; it literally dominated the eastern sky appearing to float up in the atmosphere on every clear blue day. All this and so much more has fed my imagination in ways most people only see on screens and in their dreams. My life has truly been a  life most blessed. Me and my family had it very good growing up.

 

 At home our life was no less fascinating. Our Dad showed us the classic films and best TV shows or helped us relax as he serenated our ears with incredible music from his top of the line Sony sound system when he wasn't working which was almost always. My Mom is also a polymath kind of person or "jack of all trades" as some of her friends would call her. Her skillsets are plethora. Just check out her YouTube channel to see for yourself what all she can do! She is an incredible woman! I learned much from her; we all did and still do. We Carmonas were and are an imaginative and lively bunch; friends and other families loved to come over and hang out with us all through our childhood and teenage years. With five brothers and one sister it was a unique setting for others to interact with; most of whom had only one other sibling in their homes. As the oldest I was relied on heavily to help in caring for my younger siblings and I am told I did a very good job at that. This is one of the big reasons why writing my main characters (Daniel and Aaron) as the older brothers comes so naturally. My Mom was my first and biggest inspiration as she is one of those super Mom's who accomplished an array of outstanding feats including successfully teaching, feeding, and raising us six all the while Dad faithfully worked day and often nights to bring in the income which sometimes was strained to the last penny. But with clever thriftiness and frugal utility, my Mom accomplished a very successful family life for us. It inspires me to this day and is a pivotal foundation to how I write and design my character's home life in the Lord Vondor series books besides how it has clearly inspired and informed my siblings in all the excellent homes they are creating. As of this writing I am the only single sibling and I have 14 nieces and nephews!

 

Our homeschooling and daily schedule was a top notch ordered affair. From the time we got up to the time we went to bed, we had a good and practical way of doing life to include plenty of outdoor play time in the afternoon. In our younger days Mom tried her best to relegate most TV watching and game playing to weekends or holidays only. Few other homeschooling experiences I have come across or heard of compared to ours. Mom took our education and upbringing very seriously. For academics we largely used Abeka Books and BJU Press materials if Mom didn't straight up create the curriculum herself which she often did for our younger classroom days; pulling from and using a wide variety of other resources to produce a first class learning experience and classroom set up. She also worked to enhance and augment our education in a great many ways; taking us on educational outings, doing specific field trips, having us watch certain documentaries, going over information in a lecture type session, having other teachers come in for guest lessons, and so on. Mom took our education very seriously and spared no expense, making ample effort to ensure we were well and truly intellectually upgraded in the truest sense of the word which is saying something as she was often working with a poor man's budget. But she endeavored and succeeded in providing a high quality and first class homeschool experience. She wanted us to be free thinkers of high intellect. She encouraged and made sure reading happened in our home; providing what would eventually become an 800 plus volume home library. We were encouraged to ask questions and push ourselves academically. There was a good balance of strictness where it was necessary and leniency when we needed a break or just some good down time to relax and have fun. We were encouraged and often played outdoors, climbed trees, built forts, dug in the dirt, had friends over and enjoyed a plethora of pets almost all of my childhood and teenage years from the common cats and dogs and hamsters to the uncommon geckos and snakes and painted terrapins. As mentioned before there was also excellent assistant staff (if you will) along the way in the form of several other homeschool parents and video teachers and church leaders over the years who helped invest their time and energy into us Carmona siblings too. I remember one other homeschool Mom who created some very fun science experiments for us to all do together in her home and another who set up field trips to an Airport terminal to see how baggage handling took place and then to a different airport for a special little air show they put on for our little group. I very much appreciate those efforts made for our sake. Those were good times. I definitely enjoyed being homeschooled and am proud of being among that group today.

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Dover Delaware would be my high school home (where I actually attended a private Christian school at my Mom's prompting) and is a place I now consider my “true home” as I lived there the longest of any place else and it is where I will likely settle in the near future. I have many good friends there still to this day including some who attended Capital Baptist High School with me. Twas a good school with just under a hundred high schoolers back then (it’s much smaller now). That said, I still graduated in a class of only 5.

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Now because I was an introvert, I did not fully enjoy going to school as much as I could have and was "forced" to play at least one year of each sport (baseball, soccer, and basketball) by my Mom for my own good of course. I hated doing sports as I was not at all athletically inclined nor interested in the endeavor in any way but suffered through it fairly well, I suppose, being a good submissive and obedient boy. I did not care if I sat on the bench most times and did not make any close friends there as I usually was successful at being the quiet and alone type which suited me just fine. Even my first job as the school and church janitor was a sole person job most of the time which I appreciated very much. That said, my 5 younger siblings all seemed to excel at sports and were much more inclined towards social interaction. They not only loved sports but often got MVP awards and were usually the best players on their respective teams. So I did indeed witness the great benefits of athletics for myself, I just never got into it as my siblings did or even most other of my school mates did. But this is common among us introverts. We are much better (and more comfortable) observing our worlds than necessarily participating in them when it comes to physical activity. We make great geeks and nerds more often than we do sports stars or athletes in general. Give us introverts a book, an outdoor adventure, a computer, or a board game and we will likely excel. Give us all this and ample alone time and we will thrive!

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That said - extra curricular activities at school are what I very much did enjoy! I especially loved when these activities intersected with my interests. We put on a huge High School play once (which my Mom produced and Directed) and that was a blast! I got to paint and draw and then act as a key side character; it was quite fun to be in costume and all my siblings and classmates got to take part. We all loved it! Then there there two occasions where I was awarded a fully paid week long trip to Washington D.C. as part of a future leaders training program where I got to learn the ins and outs of politics and American government from the pros. I got to meet and speak with Conservative and Christian Congress people in person as well as hear directly from experts in their fields all while touring our nation's capitol which I would visit on my own another 10 times more in the future.

 

Its one of the benefits of living in Delaware; you are within a 4 hour drive of almost all the big cities of note. Thus New York city was also a regular place of visiting for me. I love visiting the Big Apple and our nation's capitol; they are such fun cities to explore! But back to trips and activities that I loved: my high school also participated in an annual Fine Arts competition held at BJU in Greenville South Carolina where I could try out my skills as an artist among other sketchers and painters from around the nation. Thousands of us came together at that college to compete and win awards based on rankings by judges. This college actually hosted the printing press we got many of the books my Mom used in our household curriculum so I was excited to get to see where this quality material came from in person and was not disappointed. This would play a big part in where I chose to further my education.

 

When I finally began to spread my wings and leave the nest after graduating Salutatorian from my high school, I went off to the brass buckle of Christian Fundamentalism; Bob Jones University in Greenville SC in 2004, for my initiation into College life. It was great; I loved it there - I still have very fond memories of that beautiful place. Though now days I am a lot less fundamental than my upbringing would indicate, I still love these good Christian folks. They truly are the salt of the Earth. The southern people are true to their stereotype too; they are awful nice and super friendly folk. But yes; I really loved college life as it was where I felt like I grew up, mentally matured, and learned how to not be so darn introverted; at least mostly. Though, truth be told, a big part of who I really was still had to be internalized in the decades to come, but that is just how life is among us introvert types I suppose. It takes us awhile to figure out who we are. But back to college - I also enjoyed the cool architecture of the campus, the general excitement of energetic young people eagerly pushing forward with their dreams of the future, and the solidly good vibes BJU had in 2004 and 2005. I loved almost everything about the school except for a few stupid rules like: having to wear ties up till after noon Chapel was finished, being allowed to only get one breakfast sandwich if you grabbed a "to go" meal in the morning, and being only allowed one piece of cake at the dinner line. That last one really perturbed me. Back then, BJU was lively with around 7,800 students on campus so the Dining Common was a packed out place at meal times. I secured a student job in the Dining Common where I saw first hand that much of the large sheet cakes they made were being thrown out so thereon after I determined to break that last stupid rule as often as I could since it was a terrible shame to see such good cake go to waste... and two pieces of cake is always better than one.

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College definitely had its positive effect on me. Besides learning how to do academic research I also learned more about how to be comfortable with myself. My younger brothers all told me how “cool” I had become when I came home so I knew that I had indeed finally progressed and changed; coming out of my shell one could say; something I’d always wanted to do since I was a little tot, but apparently never could do on my own no matter how many church or social events we took part in growing up. We introverts spurn socializing and thrive on isolation. But in college I finally learned how to affectively do the socializing thing and be at ease while still thoroughly loving any alone time I could get.

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But alas, I did not complete my academic life as far as a degree goes; limited finances denied me that option as I came to the end of the third semester in December of '05. Thus I returned to a new home in Hartsville, SC where my family had by then moved – they had somewhat followed me to the Deep South – and got comfortable as I looked for work to take down my by then $12,000 dollar plus school bill. My younger siblings were at this point doing live satellite school and some were attending high school classes at a large local private school too; so I was glad to see how much they enjoyed this version of homeschool life. Homeschooling was progressing into the new millennium with new technology and a dynamic means of acquiring education. At home we really enjoyed each other's company at this time when I was back from college; all of us being teens or older being a huge factor. The Carmona kids were even more fun to hang out with than before and I noticed others in the church and school community thought so too. That was awesome! My brothers were more or less the center of attention at their school.

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Our new family home was in the country or in the sticks as they say. The local towns were small and quiet and surrounded by either somewhat ugly loblolly pine forests or large fields of cotton, soy beans, or tobacco. There was corn too; depending on the crop rotation year it felt like all we saw was massive fields of corn sometimes. The closets "big" city was a 40 minute drive away and the local Walmart was the center of town in many respects. At any rate, here in this warm southern space I settled in and took a few odd jobs for a couple years (including one where I got to work security at a Nuclear power plant - that was such a cool job!) until I finally deciding to join the military as a better career option.

 

So I enlisted in the Air Force in 2007 and completed Basic Training in Texas and then went to Gulfport Mississippi to be educated in structural engineering and building maintenance and finally was sent to a home station for the next 6 years of my life where I was either working stateside in my home base of Dover AFB, (which was super cool since that was right near my old high school home and church) or deploying out for about 6 months at a time to Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, or Qatar in the Middle East.

 

Each deployment was unique and eye opening. We Americans got it SO good! Being deployed always made me miss home so much. But it was fascinating to see these far flung cultures first hand as well. Even though those people did not have much, they seemed very happy and content with what they had in many cases; though they clearly liked us and wanted our cool things as far as the locals that lived and worked with us went. Obviously some "other malcontent locals" did not and were the ones shooting at us. But I remember an Afghanistan local village chief who was so proud of the fact, and extremely happy, to have been able to trade a weapon for a DeWalt nail gun! Construction for him had just been greatly improved as he could get nails from the local city near our main base; that was neat to witness. But going back to the locals who did not like us, while serving in a particularly hot place in Afghanistan called the valley city of Senjaray, I did come under fire (along with my construction crew) and got a few bullets fired at me once; so that was exciting. Its not every day someone tries to kill you. But except for that situation and a few times when rockets landed in our military base of Kandahar within a few hundred feet of me, I felt pretty safe most of the time in that war zone. No one I knew personally got seriously injured on that deployment so that was a blessing. This all happened in my second deployment back in 2010 by the way. That once 40,000 NATO personnel strong base no longer exists; or what is left is a military ghost town these days. But the first deployment to a former Soviet Country and the base at Manas was pretty chill and the last deployment to a first world Persian Gulf nation and the Qatar was basically ally territory so very nice and friendly; they had a modern city (Doha) with skyscrapers boasting giant display screens and a huge fancy mall with gold leaf inlaid in the main corridor floors. But besides the travel aspect of my work then, I also took advantage of academic opportunities. During my enlistment I did a couple years worth of study at the then Baptist Bible Institute for my local church. It is now a full blown seminary: Independent Baptist Seminary. I also did some classes with a university that had a deployment annex available to us Airman in Qatar, the University of Maryland College.

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After finishing my career in the Air Force, I used the GI bill to do some more college at BJU and the came back to Dover to continue with Wilmington University, coming super close to finishing a 4 year degree in Political Science with a focus on Historical Studies. I also spent allot of my free time nerding out and researching all manner of subjects to include red pilling myself and going down many rabbit holes of conspiracy theory. I learned an incredible amount of facts and theories in those years; hidden information about our real history, governmental corruption, and the military industrial complex of secrets. [See my conspiracy web site here] But once again money - or the lack thereof - got in the way of me finishing a degree so I made an end of attending college at that time. When I finished taking classes in May of 2017 I realized that I needed to find work and figure out what to do with all of my knowledge.

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It was at this time that I really got bit hard by the writing bug and began knocking out the first 3 books of the Lord Vondor Series in just a couple months. I had spent so much time prior to this imagining a character and world that when I sat to write it all out in story form it just came naturally. Once I started writing it felt as if the story of Daniel just flowed naturally from my mind to the word document! It was incredibly fun and thrilling work! I also quickly found that my years of research was coming in handy when performing the in depth world building necessary for this new Universe I was creating. And so by the end of 2018, with my parents still living in SC, they saw that I was finished school and desired my Air Force construction skills to help them remodel their house, I jumped on that opportunity so that I could both help them and have ample time to write. So I moved south again and while there volunteered for the local church and performed allot of free lance labor for some business owner friends of mine for about 5 years before life dictated that I go back home to Dover, DE and focus more on actually getting published. By the winter of 2023 I had 5 full novels written with 3 more planned out and several other side stories in the works. My imagination has been soaring ever since! I love writing; I mean I absolutely enjoy doing it and every aspect of it - editing, worldbuilding, studying and so on. It is clearly my life's work and purpose for existing. Or at least its my main drive though I do want to do other things in life too. I have a great many business ideas!

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But I now live as an aspiring writer hoping to soon be published. Life has been quite an adventure already and I greatly look forward to this exciting new chapter of life – the challenge of being a published novelist!

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J. R. Carmona, May 2025.