Hi, I’m JW Burchick. I’m an American author from rural Central Pennsylvania, and I’ve spent a good part of my life asking one question:

What if?

What if there’s something out there we haven’t explained? What if a story we’ve dismissed deserves another look? And what if that big, hairy creature hiding in the woods has a family—and a kid who gets into as much trouble as ours do?

Those questions have taken me in a lot of directions. But my writing journey began with a college professor who asked me to stay after class.

I was forty when I finally went to college. I spent my first year at the Community College of Allegheny County, taking required courses and getting my thinking brain back into gear. I was working at the same time, I might add.

For a creative writing class taught by Barbara Rattigan, I wrote a short story. Several days after we turned in our papers, she told me she wanted to speak with me about mine.

After class, she asked, “Did you write this?”

“Yes,” I told her. I had.

Then she explained why she was asking: my story had made her cry.

I hadn’t written much at that point, and I certainly hadn’t expected that reaction. She told me I had an ability to write with emotion and put words together in a way that made people think. Her encouragement stayed with me.

I went on to Grove City College and on to Slippery Rock where I focused on English and more creative writing classes. The more I learned, the more I realized how much I loved writing.

After college, I started a publishing company. Over the next twelve years, I wrote what seemed to be somewhere around a thousand articles for my own publication and others. It was satisfying work, and the business did well. Later, when illness forced me to slow down, I decided to write a book.

That first book, Two Lane Blacktop, took about two years to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

While I was learning, other authors offered a familiar piece of advice: “Stay in your lane.” Choose a genre, become proficient at it, and keep writing there.

Well, anybody who knows me knows how that was going to turn out. Show me more than one lane, and I see a raceway. I’m going to do some passing.

So I wrote in different genres, following whatever question caught my imagination. The connection between those books was an approach I came to call “fact-based fiction”: beginning with research, reported experiences, or real-world questions, then building a fictional story around them.

I don’t treat every claim as a proven fact. I want to understand what people say they experienced, where the information comes from, and why they believe it. Then I ask: What if it were true?

My novel Sapient grew out of many conversations with a man who described an encounter with what he believed was a Bigfoot. I couldn’t verify his experience, but I found no inconsistencies in the account he shared with me. He wanted his identity and location kept private, so I built a fictional story around the details he provided.

For Return of the Anunnaki, I immersed myself in the stories, theories, and speculation surrounding the Anunnaki and extraterrestrial life. Then I imagined what such a return might look like.

I do the same thing over and over in every book I’ve written. My wife, Belinda, knows the pattern well. A question takes hold, and I dig into it. Eventually, that curiosity led me back to Bigfoot—and to a different kind of question.

If Bigfoot exists, wouldn’t there be families? And if there are families, there have to be kids. If those kids act anything like human kids, they’ve got to be some of the funniest critters on this side of the world.

That was the beginning of Teen Squatch.

And wouldn’t you know it? I found my lane.

Ji, the young Bigfoot at the center of the series, is bigger than life. He wants to be one of the guys, sharing adventures and getting into trouble with his human friends while trying to remain hidden from adults. His size complicates things. His personality doesn’t always help.

I’ve written four books in the series, with a fifth in the works. They’re funny adventures, but I also want them to give young readers something to carry with them about friendship, loyalty, and how we treat others.

There’s research behind the mischief, too. Throughout the four books—and the fifth I’m writing—I weave in details drawn from eyewitness accounts and discussions within the Bigfoot community. Those reported behaviors and observations help shape Ji’s world. The characters and adventures are my invention, but readers familiar with Bigfoot research may recognize some of what inspired them. Everyone else can enjoy discovering those possibilities along with the kids.

Then I began wondering about Ji’s life before he met David, the human boy who becomes his best friend. Before those adventures, Ji was a twelve-year-old Bigfoot kid growing up in the woods. Surely he had already found plenty of ways to get himself into trouble.

Those stories became Ji’s Secret Files: short, humorous adventures combined with activities for children to enjoy. I want kids to laugh, participate, and look forward to turning the page.

So, who is JW Burchick?

A literary lunatic is probably a fair description.

I’ve never been very good at staying inside one genre. I like questions that send my imagination wandering, and I want to have fun with what I write. Humor matters to me. So does raw emotion. I want a story to make you feel something.

Although I spent years writing articles, storytelling is where I feel most at home. Technical manuals? I would be in trouble if my life depended on my writing one.

I’ve written every book I’ve published. I’ve worked with editors and cover designers, and my background in design has allowed me to create many of my covers myself. I value the people who help bring a book together, and I take pride in the stories I write.

Ultimately, I hope to leave something worthwhile for my family, my friends, my community, and readers I may never meet. If someone remembers me by saying, “That guy was crazy, but he was fun,” I can live with that.

But there’s one thing I hope for most.

I hope you look in on your child while they’re reading one of my books and catch them laughing.

That’s what I want to happen. Just know I planned it that way.