Look and Listen

Biography

I was raised in an eccentric, baby-boom family, which provided rich materiel for “Our Grandpa Was an Alien”. I earned a degree in English Literature before an un-slaked thirst for adventure and foreign travel led me to enlist in the United States Air Force. I trained and worked as a radio and television broadcast technician, serving for 20 years in Greece, Spain, Japan, Korea, Greenland and Ogden, Utah, in a wide assortment of duties which included midnight alt-rock DJ, TV news anchor, video-production librarian, radio and television writer and producer, production manager, and base tour guide. In 2002, I became a regular contributor to the military-oriented weblog, “Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief” (now “The Daily Brief”) at www.ncobrief.com, as “Sgt. Mom” writing essays and commentary on matters historical, personal, political, literary and military.

Inspiration

I keep being drawn back to the 19th century western frontier; that is the century and the place that shaped who we are as Americans. I believe we must remember what our strengths are, and where they came from. It's many-layered, complex, full of fascinating characters and riveting incidents which are practically unknown today - and much more interesting that B-movie westerns and TV shows have ever let on. I am currently working on my next epic of the frontier, about the 19th Century German settlements in Texas, which already promise operatic levels of drama, involving love, Indian raids, sudden death, revenge, stolen children and Civil War, too. A fan has dubbed the Adelsverein Trilogy as "Barsetshire with cypress trees and a whole lot of sidearms"