It’s a fine line between ‘dilettante’ and ‘polymath’. I took graduate degrees in both law and english literature (I studied under prominent deconstructionists, feminists, marxists, and other -ists and learned very little except that it's not very nice to become an ist, generally speaking. It took me years to recover from theory), practiced law for a while, did residential design and construction for a while, got married and started a family, practiced law again, then took up the pen. I had long vowed to complete a novel before age 50. In the event, I did it way early, but as any writer will tell you, it’s never enough to finish a book but that you have to write another.

I've had a lay interest in the sciences, particularly physics and genetics, since forever. I had toyed with a story idea at the intersection of these fields for some time, but it was not until Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science came out a few years ago that I found suitable scientific underpinnings for the characters and plot line I had been developing in my head. Everything snapped into focus when I read Wolfram's ideas about cellular automata, the simple programs that are capable of creating systems of great complexity.
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I began writing every day in 2007, though I had begun writing a story that I thought was about Henryk alone in 2006. I write in the morning before I go to my day job, then write or edit -- depending on how fried I am -- another shift in the evening after my wife and I get the kids to bed. I often write a page each day, but I’m happy with half that. On days when I tear through several pages, there’s always a lot of editing to do later. Still, it can be very satisfying to throw out a huge chunk of plot or dialog that whisks the book along.

I live in Austin with my wife Kathryn, children Peter (7), Daniel (5), and Luke (2), and we have one cat. We completed a new home in central Austin in mid-2007, about a mile from my law office. I enjoy law practice -- or rather, I enjoy being self-employed as a lawyer, since working for The Man didn’t work out so well for me (see my blog).
Email me: jpatricksutton (at) jpatricksutton (dot) com