About me
A retired Agriculture teacher, he spent 28 years teaching and never thought much about writing. His parents and others close to him always claimed he had a knack for stretching the truth. Not really lying, just in talking his way out of trouble.
A third-grade teacher, Mrs. Larson, decided that her students needed to learn to express their inner souls and suggested accomplishing this through painting. The effort wasn’t totally successful. Most times, the art produced with tempera paints required a vivid imagination to understand what the artist was trying to convey.
To get more student involvement and participation, she added creative writing stories to our paintings. Never sure it really helped interpret the pictures, it gave us all some insight into our classmate’s thinking. An avid comic fan, the connection hit home. Imagination and story-telling are natural talents all children possess, mine were just extra strong.
Writing stories, be they scary ones, action, or suspenseful ones. Watching the reactions words brought to an audience was exciting. I won a county-wide Thanksgiving story competition with ‘Mr. Turkey’ that year. Mother impressed, father looked across the table, nodded, and asked me to pass the sweet potatoes.
Needing to support my growing comic habit and at his father’s insistence, he entered the world of work. Sweat and hard work at a myriad of jobs from sales, construction and even the docks followed. He worked all over the southwest, doing anything for money.
A sophomore in high school, he attended a reading given by his favorite science-fantasy writer, Andre Norton, and left shocked, learning he was really a woman.
After graduating college, writing evolved into creating lesson plans for high school agriculture classes taught for over a quarter-century. My return to serious writing began with writing grants to get money for classes taught. It’s surprising how similar writing fiction and grant writing mirror each other.
Retired, seeking something to do, a writing group appeared. That group and my wife Nancy encouraged the creative spark buried so long ago. My wife, our two dogs, two cats, and a variety of pets my three children left as they moved on, live in the California desert. Traveling the southwest, meeting new people, we visit ghost-towns and forgotten parts of the frontier, and keep busy seeking the next stop along the trail.
My short stories span a wide spectrum. Novels include westerns, mysteries, and a little science fantasy. I consider myself a story-teller more than an author. While you’re on my site, I hope you’ll take time to enjoy some of my work.