You're probably curious about me or you wouldn't be here. I'm likely to be just as curious about you.

I've been writing as long as I can remember. I've been reading even longer. My parents told me that about the age of two, they found me in my father's study looking at the pictures in an adult book on dinosaurs. I would pull the books off the shelves and look at the inside.

I was the editor of my junior high school newspaper (ah, to be young again). I didn't do much writing again until I was in college. I took several English classes, and was a staff writer for The Daily Illini, the school newspaper of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

I have a bachelor's degree in American history with a specialization in foreign policy. I took several speech communications, English, and Business & Technical Writing courses while in college.  I have an MBA in marketing from Southern Illinois University. I attended law school for a year at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. I studied graduate level sociology for a year also at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

I wrote a weekly column for two small newspapers in the late 1980s. My column appeared in the Augusta Advocate and the McCrory Leader (both Arkansas).

I spent the majority of my first career as a strategic planning advisor in one capacity or another to presidents and vice presidents of universities, corporate general managers, and others. I wrote business case studies based on research information. I published a few journal articles. The jobs and companies had various names, but I was doing basically the same thing from 1984 to 2001.

In November 1994, something happened that would change my life forever. I was in a terrible automobile accident, and suffered spinal cord and head injuries. I spent the first two years after the accident trying to put my body, my brain, and my life back together sufficiently so I could return to work. I worked until 2001 coincidentally when I was laid off from a major telecommunications company, and my body told me I could no longer handle a nine to five job based on somebody's else's schedule.

I tried various other part-time occupations before my family finally convinced me to go back full-time to what I loved doing most, reading and writing.

People say you should write about what you know. Others say you should know about what you write. I did both on my first book, which I finished writing in August, 2007. It will be available later this year. See the publications page for more information and ordering information.

It is now November 2007. I am trying my hand at National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) for the first time  Along the way I've written a few short stories, dusted twenty years' worth of dust off some others and brought them up to date, and entered a few contests. I'll keep you posted on the contest successes.

If you would like to know what writing organizations I belong to, I've given you a page with those, along with the appropriate link, if you would like more information.

I do a little bit of freelance photography as well. I'm one of those people who has always "marched to the beat of a different drummer."