. (And yes, I'm looking.)
I'm Jon. I was born Jonathan Robert Konrath on January 20, 1971, at Grand Forks AFB, ND. Since then I've lived in Edwardsburg, MI (1972-1978); Elkhart, IN (1978-1991); Bloomington, IN (1989-1995); Seattle, WA (1995-1999); Astoria, NY (1999-2005), New York City (2005-2007); Denver, CO (2007-2008); and now I live in Los Angeles.
I went to college at Indiana University, and tried to study computer science, but got too wrapped up in the internets, which Al Gore invented many years later. I ended up with a consolation prize of a degree in General Studies, some skills with the interwebs, and the crazy idea that I was a writer. I didn't know what to do after college, but my student loan company had a great idea that involved me sending them a check for a hundred bucks a month for the next hundred years. So I started faxing my resume to every tech-related job that might take me.
At that point, a friend of mine conned me into becoming a technical writer, and somehow pulled me into a job in Seattle. I was not plugged into the whole scene of flannel, coffee and Microsoft, but it was better than Indiana, and the money helped. I kept writing fiction, books and zines and short stories. I put out a print zine called Air in the Paragraph Line that didn't sell many copies, but got good reviews and had some great writing, plus it gave me the kick in the ass to turn out some good stories. And I made money at the day job, but I also spent money, so I was just as broke as when I made a buck more than minimum wage. I spent all of my time wondering if I should run off the Mexico City or Tangiers or Alaska or something, but Ford Motor Credit Company thought I should maybe keep working an office job. I also found out about the whole TPS report joke long before it was in Office Space.
I eventually ended up in New York, but not because I thought New York was the best damn thing in the world in the world, which was the attitude amongst everyone else around. (New York is one of the ten best cities in the country, and five of the worst.) I made a much better salary once the whole dot-com fraud started, but most of it went to my shithole apartment in Queens. I did get a really big LCD monitor and a lot of DVDs, though. And I wrote.
Print on demand books came out around then, so I started scraping together the words on my hard drive and putting them out there for everyone on Amazon to buy and enjoy. (Well, three people, anyway.) My first book was Summer Rain, a huge and pretty straightforward novel about a summer back in college. Then I got together Rumored to Exist, which is I guess more experimental and William S. Burroughs, with a lot of humor. I also put out a book of my online journal entries, an expanded and annotated version of Rumored, and a travel book about Las Vegas called Dealer Wins. I haven't really looked into real publishers or agents because I don't really want to deal with the doors-in-the-face, and because I'm not writing a book about the Davinci Code or Atkins diet or whatever.
What else: I live in Playa Del Rey, with my wife, Sarah. We have two cars and two cats. I like my PlayStation 3, and my Mac is cool too. I don't eat mushrooms. My worst fear is dental trauma. I'm a recovering collector, mostly CDs and DVDs, but I still love my books.
If you're really interested in my work history, go read my resume, or check out my . (And yes, I'm looking.)
Need more? Here's me at a few other sites:
And don't forget to see the rest of rumored.com for more of my writing, projects, photos, and other junk.
Last updated
Monday, 03-Mar-2008 18:46:09 EST
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Rumored.com