Biography on Garrett Krueger

Hmmm, like what kind of things?
Battlefields, like electric football, where you could switch them on and the battle would take place -- complete with dying soldiers and so on. I submitted the ideas to several toy companies too...

And did they ever take you up on these toys?
Well {lauhing} not really, no! Most of them sent me back the "thank you for your idea" letter. Occasionally I'd get a free toy from them as a thank you gift. Really though, the closest I've seen to my toy ideas so far would lie in computer software games, but nothing physical has been built that I'm aware of.

So you think that somehow these toy ideas led to writing?
Like I said, I was always very creative. That's what led to writing! I had a great many ideas floating around in my head. Actually, in a way, maybe the toy ideas did lead to it. They really weren't going anywhere, but I still needed an outlet -- thus came the stories.

And how did you start?
With science fiction -- yup, basically with science fiction. I think I was around ten or eleven years old... I have always been fascinated with the sciences, outer space, astronomy, and that kind of stuff, so I started to write about really high tech space ships cruising around "out there." The stories didn't have much for plots at that time -- they were just very technically or idea oriented!

What was your first story?
Well, my first major attempt at writing was a futuristic story on what the world would be like by the year 2000. From my fifth (or sixth) grade brain, we were going to be living in elevated space towers and flying regularly in little spaceships -- kind of like the Jetson's. Within the next couple of years though, I wrote this story about a young man who was basically everything I was dreaming of becoming at that time. He had the perfect black Trans Am, the perfect dog, had the perfect job as an astronomer / astronaut, and ended up getting the perfect girl in the end (laughing).

'Sounds perfect! So was that something you published?
Oh, God no! As a plotline, it was horrible! I think I knew that at the time (smiling). Actually, the first thing I ever had published was some sort of poem / story I wrote about my dad. There was this magazine -- Sunshine, I think it was called -- and it seems they had a contest. I either won or was in the top three -- something like that -- but mine was published; Dad seemed really proud of it too!