Biography

It’s always been there, the writing has. The urge, the drive, the need.

It was there before I’d even learned the alphabet. I used to scribble on scraps of wood to make signs, then stick them on trees. Only I would’ve known what they meant, but it still felt powerful.

Or maybe it was my grandmother’s doing. She used to tell me stories in the dark, as I fell asleep, making them up off the top of her head. I still have no idea how she conjured such fluid, effortless magic, on demand.

So far it’s led to 10 novels, over 100 pieces of short fiction, 4 collections, and a small mountain of nonfiction. The next novel is underway and has been taking too long. There are no trunk novels, no orphaned stories. If they were worth seeing through to the end, they sold. Not always immediately, but I hung with them until they did.

I live in Colorado with my longtime love, Doli. I also like to fart around with music and photography, under the belief that success in one field of creative endeavor should fund the ongoing abuse of others. In season, there’s organic gardening to do, and since the beginning of 2008 I’ve been training in Krav Maga.

I wish I could play piano like Leon Fleischer.

I wish I had the breadth of human understanding of Shakespeare.

I wish I could sing like ICS Vortex.

But I believe in the possibilities of tomorrow, when backed by a question I try to ask myself a lot:

“Come tomorrow, what will I have to show for yesterday?”

Which is just another way of saying that what really matters is today.