Originating from St. Louis County, Missouri, it wasn't until my senior year in high school  that I discovered more than a casual interest in reading chiefly because of my college-prep English class and frequent trips to a local bookstore. It was that class and its teacher and all the wonderful books he had us read and critique in class discussions and what he called written "critical comments" that lit the flame for me. I headed south with the Missouri Pacific Railroad, long since absorbed by Union Pacific, the day after graduating to put together some money for college and packed some paperbacks and my cheap guitar to keep me company since I was now venturing out into the world on my own.  The three months in Texas and Louisiana during that long, hot southern summer would yield valuable life lessons along with the hard-earned money. And, many years later, that summer would be the inspiration for my debut novel, Southern Passage.   

        At summer’s conclusion, I attended Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg, and after remaining there a while, enrolled at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. With a major in Sociology and several hours in Anthropology and Psychology, I graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. My interest in creative writing was nurtured during my college years; some of my poetry, along with a one act play, appeared in the school literary publication at Warrensburg.   

 

           After a thirty-three and a half year career, I retired in 2006, and with the free time it has afforded, I completed my first novel, Southern Passage. As is true with many first-novelists, I took what I knew for the endeavor and wrote about it, falling back on my love of all-things-railroading and childhood memories of train trips with my dad and brothers for inspiration. Often times now I spend hours at the keyboard, crafting stories in the realm of science fiction. Thanks in part to the educational mentoring by senior and doctoral level physics and astrophysics students from my alma mater who cheerfully donated their valuable time, my second novel, The Kellstrumm Paradox, has been completed. I found myself on a fascinating and challenging journey, trying to imagine the unimaginable and trying to artfully and realistically fuse facts with fiction in the multiverse story-line. Who knows. maybe the handful of alternate, overlapping, competing and conflicting universes in my scheme of things will actually one day reveal themselves more as fact than fiction!

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            My interest in playing guitar took off as a high school junior and has continued to this day. I've written several songs over the years and my brother and I periodically drag out our Martins and entertain ourselves while working our way through the beers and the words and chords on fading sheets of my music and his.