Look and Listen

Biography

In the winter of 2005, I was living in a small town, twenty minutes from the city of Chicago, Illinois. I was twenty-six years old, working a mindless sales job for a insubstantial amount of money, accumulating a crushing amount of debt on my credit cards (as Ryan Adams sings, I was "spending money the way it likes to rain"), paying the minimum due every month on my car loan, and seriously contemplating taking on a mortgage and purchasing a home. Then would come a wife, any wife, love didn't seem attainable anyway, and kids. I drank three to four nights a week and partied until near black out every Friday and Saturday night. Recreational drugs were no strangers to me. I mean, at twenty-six and a college graduate, what else was I supposed to do? One day I came home from work to find my roommate and best friend hysterically crying on the floor of our apartment. Through the sobs and shrieks, I learned that a friend of ours who we had known for ten years, Jimmy, had went to sleep the night before and never woke up. A blood vessel popped in his brain and he died. He was twenty-six years old and left a two-year old son and a baby on the way and his fiance. Not to mention, he left us. No "good-bye", no "peace, man, check you later", nothing. He was gone. I'd never talk to him, hang out with him, laugh with him... Two days after his funeral, I quit my job. And from that day forward, I decided that no matter what, no matter what level of success, in my life, in the years I have left on this earth, I will do exactly what I have aspired to do since I emerged from the womb, as my mother says, "with pen and pad in hand", and that is that. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona and last summer I wrote the first draft of my novel OUT FROM UNDER. I am spending the next X amount of time working through the kinks and, as my novel writing professor at Phoenix College Jim Sallis (author of books like DRIVE, CRIPPLE CREEK, DEATH WILL HAVE YOUR EYES, and the Lou Griffin Novel Series) says, "learning how to write a novel." In the midst of slaying this immortal monster we call a novel, I am working on the short story selections that will make up my short story compilation "The Wonderful World of the Mind." All of the stories involving real people grappling with everyday issues that many of us face. To eat, I bartend at Outback Steakhouse in Scottsdale (Indian School and Drinkwater Blvd, come down and see an author at work!!!!). I am hoping to attend graduate school at Columbia College in Chicago or ASU next fall (unless the Iowa Writer's Workshop has a miracle epiphany and thinks I'd be a perfect fit for their MFA program..."Iowa Writer's Workshop, CCCCAAAALLLL MMMMMEEEE!"). Personally, I am single and looking for, quite honestly, someone who would actually put up with a zany, unpredictable, creative mind such as mine ("cute, single, female artists...CCAAAAALLLLL MMMMMEEEEEE!!!!"). There are many great writers on this website and many more potential writers in the world. If you love to read, I urge you to read. If you love to write, I urge you to write. As someone who knows said, "no one else is more qualified to write the story in your head." We all have something to say. You don't have to be a Hemmingway, a Harper Lee, a Stephen King, a Russo, a Dickens to do so. You can be a Virginia Nosky, a Deborah J. Ledford, a Marcia Cross, a Jonathan Lethem, a James Lee Burke, a Celise Downs, a William Gay, an Aryn Kyle, a Karen Russell, a Michael Greenwald... Please, enjoy them all.

Inspiration

My first novel, OUT FROM UNDER, is specifically dedicated to my father. His daily battle to live is a constant and ever present motivator in my life and a real life reminder of how fragile we really are and how easily we can break down. Yet, even in his weakest moments, he has never and will never give up and that is an example of the impervious strength and will of the human spirit. So many others fight these fights. My stories are for and about these people, who wrestle with with this fire-spitting serpent called Life. In my darkest periods, I think about Dad and I think about others who have refused to succumb to illness, whether mental or physical or emotional. Those thoughts fuel the engine of my spirit. People like Jimmy Valvano, who once said in a speech: "Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever...don't give up, don't ever give up." They are the heroes. I only aspire to create markers of their lives for posterity.