My Qualifications

Through the years, I have built a rapport with various agents and editors at major publishers and firms while submitting my work. These generous people at Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and McIntosh & Otis, to name a few, helped me shape my work into publishable form. Subsequently, I published Rimsky Rises (young adult novel) and Salamander Illusions (literary fiction) with Word Wrangler Publishing. I also published The Erotic Manifesto (an indictment of America's selling of sex in the marketplace) with Seven Rivers Press. I have also written several middle readers and children's picture books. Additionally, I have authored mainstream fiction and two horror novels, the first of which was a finalist for the Anubis Award for horror fiction.

My latest novel, published in September of 2007, is John Lennon and the Mercy Street Café. It is sci-fi/fantasy, although readers who like literary and mainstream fiction will also enjoy the book. It is a "rock-and-roll Field of Dreams," with John Lennon alive and unaware of his assassination. The book is on sale at the following online bookstores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million, Booklocker.com, and many others. It may also be ordered from any conventional bookstore. Click here to visit the novel's promotional site.

I have an MA in English and thirty graduate hours in education. I taught writing for twenty years at colleges and universities and have given numerous seminars on getting published, selecting agents, and submitting manuscripts. Before publishing books under my own name, I wrote newspaper columns, edited company newsletters, did technical writing, and wrote short stories.

I have always been interested in verse and have published poetry in American Poets & Poetry, Pegasus, Poem, Black Buzzard Review, The Lyric, Tight, Creative Juices, Twilight Ending, Angelflesh, Lynx, Parnassus Literary Journal, Offerings, and many others.

I have also worked with many clients during the last eight years to help them produce their own manuscripts. I have worked with corporations, celebrities, sportsmen, housewives, ministers, social workers, engineers, artists, politicians - in other words, people from all walks of life. I have written nonfiction on numerous subjects for my clients, and fiction representing several different genres: mainstream, literary, horror, romance, adventure, science fiction, historical fiction, humor/satire, and more.

While most clients prefer confidentiality, some do not mind acknowledging the collaboration. One of the recent books I worked on is One Hell of a Ride by Lou Federico (published in the fall of 2004). Mr. Federico was one of the first men to build luxury resort hotels in Baja, California, constructing his own roads and airstrips in the barren terrain while battling the Mexican government for the necessary licenses and permits. He is an avid fisherman and hunter who entertained people like John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Jayne Mansfield, and other Hollywood notables on their vacations to Mexico. His is an engaging life story, and one that I am proud to have helped shape.