My older sister, six years old to my three years, came home from first grade each day and sat me down and made me do what she had just done in class. She put me through first grade that year and a reader was born. Thanks, big sis. I became an English Professor in one of the oldest universities in the West, Willamette University.
Well, there was one other big influence. During college I worked in the summer as a river boat guide for the Grand Teton Lodge Company in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, floating the river with eighteen guests in a WWII bridge pontoon converted into a long raft. I talked, told tales, pointed out ospreys and eagles, and related Wyoming tales from mountain men to ghostly appearances in the nighttime sage brush. I became a teacher.
My previous novels took on: pollution (The Greening of Ben Brown, a finalist for the Ken Kesey novel award from Oregon Literary Arts); alternative history about the presumed-lost original manuscript of Moby-Dick (The Moby-Dick Blues); historical fiction on nineteenth-century northwestern brewer and entrepreneur, Henry Weinhard (Henry: A Novel of Love and Beer in the West); DNA and A.I. experiment in a humorous and sort of sci-fi novel (Some Assembly Required, nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), and the spurious notion of “royal” blood in the three children’s chapter books (Middle Grade), The Princess Gardener, The Alyssa Chronicle, and Jake’s Book.
Books have been the both the icons and the reality of my life, and maybe it was my sister’s shove early in life that made me a facile reader, maybe just the alignment of stars, but books have always seemed like doors to me, doors to engaging things in the world. In the meantime, I lived in Spain for five years—Fulbright and teaching gigs in Barcelona, Madrid and Alicante—went on a Fulbright stint in China and taught in Galway, Ireland, for a semester, and my wife and I raised kids in Salem, Oregon–home of great skiing, fly fishing and mushrooming.
Regal House Publishing has been a delight to work with from the start. These are the book people I met going through the portals of literature; the care and high seriousness of RHP is a light in my life. My new novel, A Confluence of Strangers, with RHP will be out in 2026.
