First off, I’m older than dirt. How old? Jeez, you’re nosy. Okay, I admit that I remember my mother listening to soap operas on radio, emotional dramas sponsored by Rinso detergent. (“Rinso white, Rinso bright, happy little washday song.”) I remember Jack Benny, Our Miss Brooks, Amos & Andy, Bobby Benson of the BRB, and The Green Hornet on radio.  I remember when 25 cents got you into a movie on Saturday afternoon and you could see a double feature, newsreel, cartoon, a serial, and sometimes a sing-along, once in a while even a live magician. I’ve now lived seven years longer than my mother. It seems very odd.

 

 I have lived my entire life in conservative, Republican, tiny-town Midwest USA surrounded by corn-, wheat-, and soybean fields. It’s a strange place indeed for a Liberal Democrat to have sprouted. Like Emily Dickinson I have never seen a moor and have never seen the sea (except, unlike Dickinson, in films) but I’ve seen plenty of silos, Amish buggies, whitetails, and amber waves of grain.

 

Though many years past schooldays, my education is continuous, with interests ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, from Shakespeare to groan-inducing puns and limericks. My library has many shelves of history, biography, drama, and reference books–hence my inclusive approach to reviews on this site. My special love of drama was used in The Phoenix, and my passion for Classical and Romantic music pervades Counterpoint: Dylan’s Story.

 

Words, imagination, books, music and writing have always been the means by which I could find escape from childhood poverty and other bad stuff in my younger years. The “bad stuff” comes in handy for torturing my characters, though. As someone wiser than I, said, “To a writer it’s all material.”

 

After forty years in the workforce, the chance finally came for me to write full-time. Since then I’ve been able to focus on the stories that have been in my head for years. My characters are thankful to escape; it was getting crowded in there.

 

Novel: The Phoenix (ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year HM)
video for The Phoenix: http://youtube.com/user/badcock24

Novel: Counterpoint, being submitted to publishers

 

Short story, TOM: or, An Improbable Tail–in two anthologies: Charmed Lives (Lethe) & Best Gay Romance (Cleis)
and in April issue of Forbidden Fruit e-zine http://www.forbiddenfruitzine.com/ 
Short story, “Mariel” — Blithe House Quarterly http://www.blithe.com/
Short story “Mr. Newby’s Revenge” to be in Fall issue of MystericalE at www.mystericale.com

 

Works in progress:

Quinn, A Bit of Earth, The Outcasts (formerly Mahrime), Cullaine, Hamilton’s Wife

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