Like my ridiculous character Brian Medlock, I am a gay scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. After training as a surgeon, I invented the personalization technology used by WebMD, and in 2021 I sold my conversational AI company Conversa. Medlock’s theory of persistence is actually my own, and it provides a unique scientific underpinning for all my writing. For the past five years, I’ve immersed myself in my writing journey and have been fortunate to meet fantastic mentors and fellow speculative fiction students at Taos Toolbox, Futurescapes, and Cascade Writers. My newest adventure is Spoken, which if you’re reading this, you know a little about. Fun fact: Spoken was inspired by my fellow students at Taos Toolbox. They inspired me to write Kill Your Darlings (KYD) for the second week of the workshop, and one particular fellow student brought me up on the state of AI narration, which needless to say got me excited. My subsequent attempt to narrate KYD using AI became a complicated and costly endeavor. That's how Spoken was born. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. In fact, on July 14th, 2024 Kill Your Darlings was the very first story on Spoken. My "official" profile is @philhasspoken.