Hey guys, I'm Ry. I could end there, but I'm not sure that would be a welcoming enough introduction. So, let's see how this goes... The prompt for this is to tell all I am, were, and will be...that may be a bit excessive. My name is Ry Downey. I'm a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest and for the better part of my life lived in a town of less than a thousand people called Odessa, Washington. In my hometown I proved Flannery O'Connor's quote that if you live to the age of thirteen you have more than enough stories to last you a lifetime. All that appears in my work is derived and/or inspired by where I grew up, though I hated almost every inch of that town when I was there. I guess you'd have to ask James Joyce why those things work out like that, because I don't know. And as far as a mission goes, I guess I'd have to say that my work exists to explore the reasons behind a few traumatic occurrences from early in my life. My work drives me to explain and explore the cruelty that some people have in them. Also, I write a lot about "that old father-son" thing quite a lot and hopefully people never get tired of it, because I suspect I won't.