Writer.
Novelist.
Journalist.
I’ve written for a living for four decades, as a journalist and an editor/writer in academia. The stories I’ve done run the gamut from the routine – covering town government, transcribing bowling league scores and standings, writing announcements of research grants – to the extraordinary: interviews with John Kerry and former Irish President Mary Robinson; profiles of accomplished, respected faculty authors, artists, and scientists; features on Celtic music and dance performers, whether local favorites or internationally renowned; and an award-winning, co-authored piece recounting a teenage love affair that led to murder and a cross-country chase.
I did try my hand at fiction here and there. As a kid growing up in the Hudson Valley of New York, I wrote heroic short stories about football players and for several years produced my own versions of Marvel Comics titles (for personal enjoyment, not profit). Intermittently, as an adult, I would get an idea for a short story or a novel, and sometimes actually work on it, but none of these endeavors amounted to anything.
But sometime in the early 2010s, I found my groove. I started and finished a short story, then began a novel, and in general I felt more at ease about writing fiction than in earlier attempts. This in turn opened me up to new ideas and possibilities for working in fiction. So it was that, driving along the Massachusetts Turnpike one morning in early 2017, I got a flash of inspiration for what eventually became Transformation Summer – my first published novel.
I live in the Boston area, where I’ve been known to haunt Celtic music events and jam sessions, and I’m trying to get the hang of tenor banjo. (Here is my music website, if you're curious.)
