Sam Ogden

The state of Texas has produced some of the sharpest, wittiest minds in the country. It also produced Samuel "Sam" Ogden.

Sam developed a wonderfully skewed vision amid the expansive and varied backdrop of the Lone Star state that would help later in life when he would finally turn to writing. Fortunately, the condition was easily corrected with some prescription lenses and some eye drops, and his writing became what it is today.

Growing up surrounded by churches and self-righteous people wasn't easy for the semi-precocious kid. Those often irrational and erroneous influences occasionally had an adverse effect on his worldview, his reason and judgment, and his ability to pick up chicks. He was dumped as a lover more than once by Baptist and Catholic girls alike for an offense the church calls "asking questions".

In his youth, Sam was often emotionally untethered, as he was unable to recognize the stabilizing factors that were right in front of him. He searched for his real father for nearly a decade before realizing that he wasn't adopted, and for some reason he called his mother "Larry" until he was 15.

Early in life, Sam worked as a greens keeper at a Houston area golf course, even though they didn't pay him or even acknowledge his existence. It was there that he nurtured a love for the game and an ambition to become a professional golfer. Fortunately for the literary world, he developed an irrational fear of multi-colored polyester and a slight aversion to sobriety while attending the University of Texas, and his links dreams were shattered.

Undaunted, however, Sam turned to sculling as a way to fill his love of sport, and to earn an easy credit that would keep him from being kicked out of school.

"Sculling is a metaphor for life," Sam insists. "The harder you pull on a stick, the faster you glide across the surface."

For the remainder of his college days, that vaguely nonsensical philosophy kept Sam in the top three-quarters of his class and earned him a reputation as an adequate if not underdeveloped oarsman.

His college career might not have been stellar, but at least it was awkward and uncomfortable for everyone he encountered.

To make ends meet while at UT, Sam bought tweed jackets wholesale and resold them to uppity English and History professors, and often worked on new comedy routines at open mike nights around the Austin area.

His routines, however, were deemed unfunny and morose, as the comedy world seemed unprepared for a performer who stood alone onstage reading obituaries with a silly accent. Its tastes were more sophisticated at the time, leaning more toward performers roller-skating around the stage, smashing fruit with a sledgehammer.

Upon graduation, with a briefcase full of ambition, determination, and some pens, Sam hung up his oar and his microphone, and stormed into the adult world with abandon. He started the South East Texas chapter of the Zamphir fan club, and went to work as a freelance writer all in the same year.

As a freelance writer, Sam learned firsthand the meaning of the term "slave labor" when a particularly nasty editor loaned him an unabridged dictionary. From then on, the freelance game was never the gilded career it had once been, and he was forced to find other employment.

Fortunately, the computer/software industry needed people who could string sentences together in a coherent manner, and after practicing for a couple months, Sam finally landed a job as a technical writer.

The computer/software game afforded him things he had never had before, like a paycheck and deodorant, and he was able to hone his creative writing skills at nights and on weekends and when the boss wasn't looking.

Sam has written several novels and a multitude of short stories, all of which are unpublished, but his technical manuals flood the Internet, computer boxes, software packages, and dumpsters the world over.

Aside from his writing, Sam is proud of his talents as a part-time ventriloquist, and never fails to wow people at the bars and pubs he visits regularly by displaying his ability to operate chopsticks with his toes.