Writing has always gotten me in trouble. Still does.

I grew up in Lexington, MA, in the shadow of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, where many of my friends’ parents worked at the cutting edge of scientific exploration.

When I was in high school, I wrote short stories instead of paying attention in math class. This did not help my math grade and would have serious consequences a few years later.

I went to Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, graduating in 1971 with a BA in theater. In college, I could be counted on for divergent opinions. This was after my failed math forced a complete redirection of my life plan.

With a draft number of 42, the only way to avoid going into the Army was to enlist in something else, so I enlisted in the Air Force. I was stationed at Shaw AFB, Sumter, SC, where I worked with the chaplains. When the war ended, I finished his master’s in theater at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.

While in the Air Force, my anti-war sentiments did not become an issue because I kept them secret. I did no writing except for my graduate school classes, which I took while still in service. Even here, I was the contrarian, unwilling to go where the others went. Fortunately, as a design major, my writing was of less concern than my draftsmanship.

With less than a month to go on my MA, I left school lacking my thesis. I took a paying job at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus World in Haines City, Florida. I also became involved with the local community theater as I had done in South Carolina.

In an incident that would forever embed chaos theory in my brain, my neighbor, myself, and our wives drove home from the movies one fine evening in August 1976. Traffic stopped, and a Highway Patrolman motioned for them to pull over. Tupperware was holding its first Jubilee, its annual sales conference, in their new building. Visible in the fireworks display in an otherwise dark sky, a rectangular block stuck through the trees.

I said, “That’s a theater. What’s it doing here?”

The neighbor replied, “I don’t know. Tupperware built it.”

In January 1977, I started working in that theater. I jumped across town to help open Orlando’s first full-time convention center. Those were exciting times, and we took on challenges that had never been done before. When I left rather abruptly twenty years later, I had time on my hands and began my first novel. “Stagehands Walk,” a “boomer-lit” novel, was published on Amazon in June 2013. My online handle, “Stagewalker,” derives from this effort.

While there, I picked up an MBA from Rollins College. The MBA has had a profound influence on my writing. I stayed at Tupperware until November of 1996.

I started writing in earnest when I suddenly found I had a lot of time on my hands. “Stagehands Walk” was the first project I tackled. The first copyright was issued in February 2000. It would go through several iterations before being published and re-copyrighted in 2013 as Stagehands Walk.

In January of 1997, a former client helped me get a job as a contractor doing convention event support work for Disney Event Productions. In October of 1999, the month-to-month contract was not renewed. “Solomon Family Warriors” was started while I was at Disney but not completed until 2011.

“Solomon Family Warriors” is the epic saga of five generations of a space-traveling family who would prefer to be left alone if all things were equal. “It is like growing up in the circus only more lethal.” “Warriors” was started after “Stagehands” and was written concurrently. It was published in November 2011.

In December of 1999, I went to work for someone I had hired to work at Tupperware and against whom I had competed at Disney. The first project I worked on for Paradise Sound and Light was the EPCOT Millennial celebration. Among the other notable projects was sponsor event support for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Presidential press conferences, always a surprise, were among the most fun to produce.

I left Paradise in January 2004 to open the Osceola Heritage Park and Silver Spurs rodeo arena. I left Heritage Park in June of 2005 and returned to Paradise.

I published articles in trade journals and worked on “Stagehands” and “Warriors” for over ten years. The first published fiction was the first volume of the “Flying with Fairies” series in 2008. Published by Club Lighthouse, it would be followed by the remainder of the series in 2009, 2010, and 2011. They would later be consolidated into a set of over 151k words.

Based on my experience working in the rodeo, I wrote a short piece called “Gatorbait.” It was written for a small magazine in Gainesville, FL, about a teenaged barrel racing competitor and her flying horse and was published in 2009. I was working in a venue that supported rodeo competitions at the time.

In 2009, Club Lighthouse published “The Adventures of Doogie Stone” (75k words).

In 2010, Club Lighthouse published “Heron Baby Island.“ Club Lighthouse also published “Swamp Witch” (34k words), “Seeds of Anger” (54k words), and “A Father’s Ghost” (29k words) “Heron Baby Island” came out of some of the research I did for “Gatorbait” and my increased interest in local environmental issues. “Heron Baby Island” became the first in a series that followed a high school nature photographer and his girlfriend from their junior year in high school. Over the length of the series, now called “Rookery Island,” he shifts from being a photographer who writes his own stories to be an activist journalist who takes his own pictures.

“Flying with Fairies,” a young adult fantasy, was published by Club Lighthouse Publishing. This book has been rewritten and consolidated into the “Flying with Fairies Complete Series” and republished in February 2015.

“The Adventures of Doogie Stone” is an alternate history coming of age story about the third son of a powerful warlord in what we now call New England as it might have been if the Vikings and Irish explorers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had navigated as far south as Cape Cod and established sustainable colonies. It was published by Club Lighthouse and Amazon in May of 2010.

In 2011, “Solomon Family Warriors” published. The book was now nine volumes and was over 500k words.

“A Father’s Ghost” was written in three frenetic months while I was on reduced work hours due to a business slowdown. It is a young adult thriller. A geeky young owner of a small Boston electronics store has his life turned upside down when he visits a woman’s apartment down the hall searching for food for a stray kitten. The woman’s sister embroils him in a vendetta against the man who murdered their father in a hate crime. She drafts him into her small task force that uses social networking, the Internet, and legal and “extra-legal” assistance to track and trap a serial rapist who targets single mothers with small children. It was published by Club Lighthouse and on Amazon in July 2013.

Seeds of Anger is a young adult thriller about a brilliant high school student mentored by a renegade botanist who uses stolen seeds in his research. “Seeds of Anger” was published on Club Lighthouse in October 2010. The second edition was released on Amazon in June 2016.

“Swamp Witch” was published in January 2011 by Club Lighthouse and Amazon. A young woman survives her father’s attempt to kill her by feeding her to alligators in the swamp a few days before her eighteenth birthday.

“Our Last Summer Musical,” a teen romance, was published on Amazon in June 2013. An amateur community theater summer musical provides the vehicle that brings three teens closer to being adults and forces their parents to own up to their darkest secrets as the family rallies to aid a summer theater program gone astray.

In 2013, after fifteen years,” Stagehands Walk” was finally published. It was three volumes and over 250k words.

“Second Tango,” a “boomer Lit” romance, was published on Amazon in March 2014. It explores the idea that a jerk can be a visionary and can do nice things for people and make a positive difference even as wolves nip at his heels.

In 2015, I compiled the four volumes of “Heron Baby Island” into a single set titled “Rookery Island.” The collection now included “Heron Baby Island,” “Citrus Sanctuary,” “Murder as a Competitive Business Strategy,” and “The Voyage of the USS Video Village.” It is over 320k words.

“My Three Warlocks,” the fantasy prequel to “Cowgirls and Dragons,” was published on Amazon in July 2015. Three Warlocks, brothers, triplets run a ranch where they train horses for cowboys and cattle ranchers. They use their special powers to keep their ranch solvent and, despite the recent death of their adoptive mother, are content with their lives. All that changes when a pre-teen equestrian shows up with her father to buy a horse. On the same day triplet witches, and their mother are directed to the ranch by a mysterious stranger.

“Cowgirls and Dragons” follows on the heels of “My Three Warlocks” and was published on Amazon in January 2018. The team, led by a teenage equestrian, finds ways to make peace and form coalitions with creatures who were enemies, both the humans and each other. Allied with powerful ancient wizards, they win over the dragons, shape-shifters, and practitioners of dark magic. The only adversaries they cannot overcome are the vampires, and the evangelicals, despite many gruesome lop-sided battles.

“One Wounded Pilot” is an inspirational action romance. It was published on Amazon in April 2018. Six months after returning home from combat, a wounded helicopter pilot commands rescue missions to support crews fighting a forest fire. This is the story of how that female Army helicopter pilot and her family came to be in that helicopter.

“Fifty-Year Tryst” is an action-adventure. I began work on it in 2018. It was published by Club Lighthouse and Amazon in April of 2021. You know it’s going to be a bad day when the police chief calls in the middle of the night, barely containing his laughter, to ask you to meet him at child services. In an old man’s worst nightmare, the FBI drops two little girls, products of a fifty-year-old tryst, into the custody of a retired small-town attorney while exploiting their mothers for an investigation into an international crime syndicate.

I retired from Paradise show and design, now the Launch Group, in June 2019.

Published in 2020, “Butcher Boy Rebellion” is an action-adventure. Standing in the blood of the man who tried to kill him, the boy, almost a man, froze, horrified at what he had done. The head, separated from the body, lay face down in the forest undergrowth. Blood flowed from the open neck onto the mat of decaying leaves. There had been no time. There had been no time to think. No time to plan. Only one would walk away from that confrontation in the woods. The boy had gotten the better of this man who had killed many before him. When the woman, dressed to blend into the forest, emerged from behind the trees, pointing her crossbow at him to admire his handiwork, he thought he might have killed for naught. Little did any of the handful of people standing in the forest that day know the changes that this one death put in motion.

Published in 2020, May You Meet a Stranger” is the first in the Logger’s Ridge series. A young pianist and his new-found singer girlfriend use their music to rescue a historical resort from bankruptcy and reverse the economic downturn of their small town while falling in love.

Published in 2020, “Welcome Home Doc” is the second book in the Logger’s Ridge series. A pediatrician fresh out of residency returns home to join his parents’ medical practice. The challenges he faces have less to do with medicine than with life and love.

Published in 2021, “Home the Ridge” is the third book in the Logger’s Ridge Series. Citizens of a small town have overcome significant hurdles to recover from a series of economic disasters. Their hard work is paying off, and they see a bright future ahead. Much hard work and buried secrets still lie before them. A stranger arrives with a promise of economic stability. Revealed secrets are addressed, and the community prepares to move forward. The promise of a bright future seems within reach. COVID brings the world of Logger’s Ridge to a screeching halt. Only the strong survive.

The fourth and final book in the “Logger’s Ridge” Series, “Drawings of Love,” was published in 2022. “Drawings” opens as a thirty-two-year-old former touring concert professional emerges from self-imposed exile. Shane Denning has been severely injured on the job. Broke and broken, he has spent the last two years in his parents’ care. Searching for gainful employment as a computer-aided drafting technician, he is hired to teach mechanical drawing at the local community college. As word of his skills spreads, Shane is conscripted to assist in several projects for the community and one local business in particular.

“American Whoreson” published in 2022 is an exploration of America’s greatness ending with the Wounded Knee massacre told from the point of view of he son of a whore. American Whoreson is historical fiction placing fictional characters in the midst of actual, documented historical events. It focuses on the life of the son of a whore. He is White, but his lack of a birthright denies him the entitlement of being White. He will find himself on the wrong side of history several times. This book takes place between 1884 and 1890, ending with the massacre at Wounded Knee. The sequel is expected to be published in late 2025 or 2026.

“Dunn Sisters Audio,” published in 2023, is a light contemporary romance set in a community theater. Two sisters who own a professional audio company in the business of supporting concerts and conventions are pulled over in the middle of the night because their truck is overloaded and has worn tires. Forced to spend the next few days in a small town long ago bypassed when the Interstate highway was built, they help the village revive a failing harvest festival, regain its dignity, and find romance along the way.

“Prehensile Digits,” published in 2023, is a dragon story that revolves around the fact that dragons may breathe fire, but humans have fingers. After dragons render the human race defenseless by destroying all the air forces and navies, a team of young adults assists the dragons to procreate safely and return to their home world. The pairs of young adults, who have formed carefully melded couples, travel to the dragons’ home world to combat a threat that imperils all life on the dragons’ planet and find romance along the way.

“Finding Love on the Flightline,” published in 2024, is a light romance. What happens when the girl at the point of the triangle in a rom-com decides to go with the flannel shirt guy, and the three-piece suit guy does not get thrown in the trash? Mix in a fleet of aircraft, some teens, some airborne rescue missions, and a bit of skullduggery, and that’s the story.

The sequel to “American Whoreson” and a new romance tentatively titled “Two Too Tall Widows” are due out in either late 2025 or 2026.

A resident of Central Florida, in my “day jobs,” I have managed a convention center, opened a rodeo arena, worked for a world-famous theme park company, worked for the circus, and provided technical support for meetings and conventions. Photography has long been a hobby. Now retired, I hold a BA, MA, and an MBA. I am married with two grown daughters.

I have been a Democrat since I watched Kennedy debate Nixon.