Adam Furgang: About Adam Furgang

MY STORY:

First things, first. I did not start out as a writer. The path to get here was anything but direct. My youth was spent growing up in Queens, New York, on a steady diet of art, toys, comics, movies, and books. During high school, I took the subway to school each day to study illustration at Manhattan's High School of Art and Design. After graduation in 1988, I furthered my study of art at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, where I graduated in 1992 with a BFA in illustration.

After college, I moved back to Queens and lived the life of a graphic designer, screen printer, illustrator, and web designer. I worked on Star Wars t-shirts for Episode I, along with countless other brand-name t-shirts during the six years I worked at the Queens-based apparel company, Changes. From there, I surfed the dot.com wave at a pioneering social networking website, TheGlobe.com, until the bubble burst and the company closed in 2001. By then, my first son was born, and I became a freelance graphic designer and a stay-at-home dad. Soon after, my wife started freelancing from home as an educational writer, and we decided to leave the big city for a life upstate in Albany, NY.

While in Albany, I began helping my wife with some of her freelance writing projects, then eventually started taking on some assignments of my own in the middle grade nonfiction market. Throughout that time, I never lost my love of art and photography. After my second son was born, I spent years as a member and volunteer for a local gallery in Albany called the Upstate Artists Guild, and started many valuable friendships that continue to this day. And if you've ever been friends with a fellow artist, you know how encouraging they can be to friends pursuing a dream. And that's when I began pursuing my age-old desire to scratch a fiction writing itch that had been with me since childhood.

As a dad of two boys and a writer for the middle grade children's market, I became nostalgic for my youth and began rediscovering role-playing games that I could share with my kids. This furthered my desires to create and write, and I started a gaming blog called Wizards Never Wear Armor. All along, I kept plugging away at fiction manuscripts.

After many years of hard work, rejections, and some minor self doubt, I reached a very important milestone as a writer when I gained representation for Braxton Woods Mystique. Eventually Braxton Woods Mystique, was published by Ravenswood, In April, 2016.

Below are some key moments from my life to further illustrate how I got here:

A few early shots. One with my first pop culture hero, Lee Majors, AKA The Six Million Dollar Man. Also, my red, white, and blue bike from the 1977 bicentennial.

Here I am in high school. I still dress very much the same today as I did then. As you can see, I was into Hollywood-style theatrical makeup then. I'm the Terminator in the lower right. That was my Halloween costume!

This is the antique store my dad (and his dad) ran on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for over 50 years. It even made it on the cover of the Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique. I spent lots of time there.

Here is a photo I took of the World Trade Center when I was 16. The photo is now featured on About.com, along with many other pictures documenting the city back before we lost the towers on 9/11.