THE SHORT BIO
Stacey Cochran was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1973. He was selected as a finalist in the 1998 Dell Magazines undergraduate fiction competition, and that gave him the determination he needed to pursue a career as a writer. In 2001, he made his first professional short story sale to CutBank. He has since published three novels and a short story collection and has four times been selected as a quarterfinalist in the Writers of the Future short story competition. In 2004, his novel Culpepper was selected as a finalist for the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Dr. Susan K. Miller-Cochran and their son Sam, and he teaches writing at North Carolina State University.

Here's an interview with Stacey: Authortrek interview.

THE LONG BIO
I was born on October 24, 1973 in South Carolina, the youngest of three boys of Steve and Margaret Cochran. My dad was a Marine Corps officer and pharmaceutical sales rep, and my mom was a nurse.

My family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1975, and I grew up in a hardworking environment. There was security in Raleigh, even if we were always fighting to stay ahead of the bills. I learned the value of persistence and hard work at home.

At five years of age, I signed my first contract in the "publishing business" with the Ad-Pak of Raleigh, North Carolina. My job was to deliver about 100 papers to homes in my neighborhood, and I kept the job for ten years and came to learn about advertising and distribution for a small newspaper. The job made me think about those things, though I didn't really know it at the time. I was just doing it for the monthly check.

Also as a kid, I worked the public address system for my church at our yearly barbecue station at the North Carolina State Fair. Again, this was just one of those things nobody really thinks about at the time, but it taught me firsthand what drew hungry folks in to eat and what did not. It also taught me to overcome my shyness by speaking to passersby through a microphone. You say the wrong thing to people, and they just keep on walking. You say the right thing, and they buy a Bar-B-Q sandwich and a Mountain Dew.

My first fiction writing experience came in the second grade, when my second grade teacher asked me to write about my summer vacation. I wrote a fictional story titled "The Pillsbury Doughboy," and the teacher brought it to the principal's attention. The principal called my mom and arranged for her to come to school. That was a big event very early on. I was like seven.

In the spring of 1985, I wrote my first real short story. It was a Western that filled twelve pages of a spiral bound notebook, and I showed it to my mom, my brother Daniel, and one of my best friends.

As juvenile as it sounds, right around that same age (about fifth and sixth grade), I remember writing short stories with two or three friends. Most of the time we were ripping off Westerns like Pale Rider or making up funny lyrics for well known songs by Hank Williams Jr., George Thorogood, or Johnny Cash. But we shared the work, and it was pure adolescent entertainment. It was also my first experience writing and critiquing with others (though the aim was usually to make one another laugh). It was a lot of fun.

In the fall of 1986, I was elected class chaplain in middle school and in spring 1989, class president for my sophomore year at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh. I was re-elected in spring 1990 for my junior year. I developed a track-and-field talent during high school and broke a couple of age-division state records. I eventually won the southeastern US regional championship for the 1,500 meter dash and placed eleventh at the nationals (earning second team All-American status) in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1988, I typed and sent in a letter to Beckett Baseball Card Monthly. A mention of my name and a paraphrase from the letter was published. It was the first time I wrote something, sent it somewhere, and had it published. That was an important realization for me to make: that my name and something I wrote could end up in print. I was fourteen at the time, and was well on my way to learning how to submit work.

By 1990, I had written my first science-fiction short story on our family's electric Smith-Corona typewriter. That year, I sent a type-written poem to Bantam Books and was friendlily rejected with advice.

In November 1989, I was hired to work at a Carmike Cinemas theater as an usher, and within six months, I was promoted to projectionist. As a projectionist, my job involved putting together movies when they arrived at the theater. I worked with 35mm films and learned all about pacing, character, setting, dialogue, and genres by watching many films.

In the fall of 1992, I entered East Carolina University, where I lettered on the cross country team and majored in English. It was at this point that I really began writing fiction with the intent to publish. From this point forward, I was writing full time, constantly sending out work anywhere and everywhere, and filling up an old Adidas shoebox with the rejection notes.

In 1997, I workshopped a chapter from my first novella The Drunk, and later, I noticed a flyer announcing a contest for the 1998 Dell Magazines Award on the English Department's bulletin board. I filled out an entry form, paid the five-dollar fee, and sent in the chapter, thinking I'd hear nothing more about it.

During that period, I was living in a three-room shotgun shack in Greenville, North Carolina while attending school. In late January 1998, I came home one afternoon and listened to an answering-machine message from the Dell Magazines Award contest administrator letting me know I was a finalist and that I was invited to the IAFA conference in March. I attended the conference and met writers Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, and Peter Straub (who, with Stephen King, co-wrote The Talisman and Black House).

I took my undergraduate degree in the spring of 1998 and began a graduate program that same year. As a graduate student, I wrote every day and taught classes. I worked as an editor on The Concord Saunterer, a scholarly journal. I also wrote weekly columns for the university newspaper The East Carolinian. I finished at East Carolina in 2001, receiving an M.A. degree in English.

In July 2001, I moved to Oracle, Arizona, where I completed my novel The Band in the spring of 2002. By December 2002, I finished the first draft of my next novel Culpepper and then began working on Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone, the first draft of which I finished in May 2003.

I followed Amber Page and the Legend of the Coral Stone with The Colorado Sequence, the first draft of which I finished in Oracle in January 2004.

In 2004 and 2005, I had four short stories ("The Kiribati Test," "Harvest Time," "The Cuda," and "The Con Artists") selected as quarter-finalists for the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and in October 2004, my novel Culpepper was selected as a finalist for the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest.

In early 2006, my wife Susan accepted a faculty position at North Carolina State University, and in June, we moved to Raleigh with our two dogs, Steinbeck and Zoe. In December, we had our first child, a boy named Sam.

I currently teach writing part time, as well, at North Carolina State University.

Stacey