I was born in Bowling Green Ohio.

I was raised in Ohio (Lima and Findlay, if you know the area), and, except for family vacations, and trips for school or Boy Scouts, didn’t leave until I was 18, when I went to college at the University of Dallas.

UD was a fine school, and a fun place, but when they sent me to Rome for a semester my sophomore year, I got restless. I dropped out, hoping to see the world and learn what I really wanted to do with my life. I moved to Seattle when I was 19. While living there, I worked an array of interesting jobs, including tending bar on cruise ships and working as a licensed massage therapist.

Eventually I realized I wanted to write, and I went back to school at the University of Washington. I learned, I wrote--and I hit a massive writer’s block when I tried to write a novel.

I stopped writing, and decided to go to graduate school. I ended up at the University of Iowa. A funny thing happened in graduate school. I had to write all the time. When I did, I developed much better work habits, and had a lot of my illusions about writing stripped away.

While I was finishing my dissertation, I was seized by the old desire to write fiction. I attended Clarion West in the summer of 2000. I hadn’t written a short story in seven years; I wrote eight stories in six weeks.

I went back to Iowa and finished my dissertation. Then I moved back to the Pacific Northwest, this time to Bellingham Washington, and turned my attention to writing fiction. It feels right.

When I’m not writing, I teach for the University of Phoenix Online and Baker College Online.

Fiction

Non-fiction / Poetry

Autobiographical Sketch

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