Author Joshua Buller | Sacramento, California

Jul 22

Jul 22 Joshua Buller

Author biography

Joshua Buller was born July 19th, 1986, in Sacramento, California. His close family consists of his mother, father, older brother, two younger brothers, and younger sister. Joshua has spent nearly his whole life living in Sacramento, though he did once spend a year in Reno, Nevada. He says it’s a nice place to visit, but he wouldn’t want to live there again.

Growing up, Joshua quickly discovered his taste for fantasy and heroes. His earliest memories consist of playing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures with his older brother. A bit later on, he would find a love for a new fad called Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. And thus, his love of heroes with special powers defeating outlandish villains was cemented.

As he grew older, Joshua discovered a show that would forever alter his hobbies and preferences: Dragon Ball Z. Filled with over-the-top fights and humorous characters, he fell in love with the series, and carried this love with him into high school, where he started exploring the depths of Japanese animation and manga.

It was around this time that Joshua and his friends began roleplaying online, creating characters that they wrote stories about on internet message boards. While a lot of the settings and characters were ripped from the group’s favorite books and shows, Joshua’s favorite character was a more original work he called Uraj, the King of Darkness. He enjoyed the character so much, he adopted the name as a common online moniker, and still does to this day. If you look at some of his works, you may still see Uraj make an occasional appearance, too.

Joshua’s increasing enjoyment of writing and fondness for manga and anime inspired him to start making more original work of his own, hoping to one day create a manga series of his own. However, he also started working part-time after junior year of high school, and quickly found his free time to work on improving his art and writing drain away. As the part-time job turned full-time and Joshua moved out to start life for true, he found that time even scarcer, and his dream faded for a time.

But eventually the itch to write became too strong, and Joshua returned once more to coming up with new ideas for stories. Unconfident with his ability to draw, he instead focused on the writing aspect, partially thanks to a natural disposition towards prose.

Joshua started writing his first novel on his older brother’s laptop in 2007, while living with said brother and several friends from work. Tentatively titled The Scholar’s Legacy, it was a sword and sorcery work that drew heavy inspirations from his favorite shows, books, and video games of the time. He completed it in 2009, but following some emotional crises and life events that led him to his short stay in Reno, he left the book forgotten for a time.

After returning to Sacramento in late 2010, Joshua finally managed to get his life back in manageable order, and was ready to start writing again. Looking at The Scholar’s Legacy, he realized he was unsatisfied with the quality, and began rewriting the whole thing. He took the elements he liked most from the book and rebuilt it from the first word. This was the book that would eventually become known as Broken Soul.

During that time, Joshua started a small writing blog he wanted to use to experiment with different styles, writing short stories on a somewhat regular basis. Among these small works was an experiment in writing a story without a single line of dialogue, which he called Against All Instinct.

A lot more has happened to Joshua since those days, and a lot more will happen to him after the writing of this. His sincerest hope, though, is that he will be able to continue to write, even when things get tough and maybe push him away from the keyboard for a while. And, more than that, he hopes that anyone willing to pick up one of his works will find a world they enjoy exploring.