I recall the beginning of Isaac Asimov’s biography in his Foundation books where it says he “was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct situation.” At the age of three, he stowed away in his parent’s baggage when they emigrated to the United States.
To many people’s surprise, I was born in Connecticut. I don’t have grand or fond memories of my time there. My family moved to Arkansas six months after my birth. I grew up a southern boy and enjoyed writing from an early age. The earliest recollection I have of writing for pleasure is a second-grade writing contest. I placed second. I can’t remember if the contest was school-wide or district-wide, but I do remember where I finished. The prompt was “If you were stuck on a deserted island, what would you bring with you.” I wrote a fine masterpiece, one I’m sure the Smithsonian will treasure for years when they obtain it. My composition related how I would take a magic book with me and use it to conjure up the necessities and a flying carpet to leave the island. Welcome to the world of my writing.
I continued to write stories throughout junior high and high school. I wrote a science fiction series in colored magic marker, where each character was represented by a different color. Even at that young age, I found a way to remove unnecessary tags. I believe there are over a dozen twenty-page stories in that series. I wrote a couple of science fiction trilogies, one included a comical slant. I even designed a worksheet with the mysteries of Dr. Investigator for my little sister to solve. Like a good author, I kept all these treasures. Maybe one day I’ll revise them and share them with you.
I entered the Air Force after high school and journaled my experience. On the last Sunday of basic training, at the church services, your flight is allowed to say a few words. I wrote a poem for my flight. It was read by another flight member. I still have those journals and interesting stories abound within them.
After the Air Force, I continued to improve my craft. I wrote a novella and published it monthly in the newsletter of my local Society for Creative Anachronism group. That, as well as the work I did on the newsletter itself, allowed me get my Award of Arms, a lordship, within the SCA.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I focused on poetry. During this time I lived in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Teen drug overdoses were frequent and my poems drifted to telling their story. I have a poem in each of the following The National Library of Poetry anthologies.
- A Prism of Thought
- Soaring with the Wind
- A Picture of Elegance
- Outstanding Poets of 1998
- Blossom in the Dawning
- America at the Millennium
One of my most powerful poems, The Measure of 0.16, I wrote after a drunk driver killed four Brock High School students on December 19, 1998. 0.16 was his blood alcohol level and the event helped reduce the legal limit in Texas to 0.08. I’ve written over 80 poems and most fall into the “Tragic Poems of Life” chapter in a Word document where I keep them.
On April 20, 1999, the Columbine Massacre occurred where two students killed twelve classmates and a teacher. The school shooting dominated the news that week. It also led me to launch a memorial website, www.Columbine-Angels.com, where I tracked acts of school violence for the next ten years. The site has over 2000 entries, the most of any site that I know of. I also provide extensive data as to when and where the attacks occur. Many people from around the world visited my site and several asked for permission to use my data in their research. I wish I could have continued the site in perpetuity, but the ever-growing numbers, nearly 300 in one calendar school year, is just too much for one person. Keeping the site updated became a second job. Although I received great response from the site, I couldn’t continue to dedicate that much of life to it. From 2010 to 2015, I updated the site with acts of school violence I saw in the news. Those are fewer, but if you research diligently and consistently (i.e. twice a day like I was), you will see how violent are kids truly are. Early in 2016, I posted my last update to the site.
Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure is the brainchild of me and my former girlfriend. We truly enjoyed our time in Bayou Cove. I developed the story after we separated, but with her help, I was able to bring the characters we portrayed to life. It is a very fun story. I hope you enjoy it.
I am currently writing a companion novel to Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure. This tale expands on Peggy’s back story. I’m having a lot of fun with these new characters.
After writing Bill’s, I wrote a new tale set in medieval times on a different planet. Each town is highly influenced by various times in history. One town, Hacker, is an interesting experiment on if the information age exploded in the 1300s instead of the 1990s. Pee-On, where the Pee-Ons live, is influenced by Peter the Great’s Russia. The environment in Morabia comes from Spain’s glory days of exploration, 1480-1530. There’s a Polynesian town, complete with a head-hunter chief, and a town dedicated to Poland. And finally, the small community of Dead Oak finds an interesting way to deal with their dead, instead of the conventional way of depositing them on a cart to be hauled off. The story follows a whiny privileged prince and his entourage as they travel across the continent to get his bride. This hilarious tale was not published by my former publisher. I’ll return to this world and get this story to you as soon as possible.