I began writing when I was ten years old, during a prescribed immobility due to a case of mononucleosis. Finding school mundane and boring, I would continue to escape reality by writing throughout my childhood, adolescence, and into early adulthood.

There are many stories that are woven into The Great Imitator. Like many novels, the personal is interwoven with the projections from experience. But the motivation to write this story came from the last three years of my life in Memphis, some of the personal accounts that were shared with me, and the observations about culture and shame that were revealed to me.

Each of us live in a certain mental space, a separate universe if you will. At times it's hard to see beyond the boundaries of our own galaxies, to reframe our experience, or to understand how others live as they do. My joy in both writing and reading is the widening of the collective universe in an attempt to understand one another more fully, to see each other's humanity more clearly, and to erase lines of separation. Although I love the writing process, the greatest joy I receive is from the opinions and perspectives of those who read my work.

My next book examines concepts of social and cultural control in regard to the pathologizing and penalization of a certain population within our society. It examines masculinity, labelling, and an examination of the tacit assumptions we make about others due to social constructions involving law and fear. There will be some intertwining of characters and issues from The Great Imitator, so you may see some of your favorite characters again!

My favorite authors include Daniel Quinn, Barbara Kingsolver, Khaled Hosseini, Bill Bryson, Aldous Huxley, Howard Zinn, Alice Sebold, Clive Barker, Tad Williams, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and many more. My interests span fiction and nonfiction, from quantum physics and meditation, to science fiction and horror.

The adventures in what is possible, working to make our world a more loving and peaceful place, and mayonnaise.

Until about a month ago, it was working 80+ hours a week teaching ESL to the most amazing children in Tennessee. For now, reconnecting with friends and family, taking long walks to contemplate the current novel I am working on, and driving around the country promoting my novel are what fill my days.

Yes! Writing is something of a cathartic experience for me. It's often either the medium through which I deal with issues I'm confronting, or it's divining truth from the jumble in my head and subconscious. I've forgotten the name of the first story I wrote, but I was ten years old, laid up in bed with mononucleosis, and just gaining consciousness about family secrets that had yet to be disclosed to me. That story was about a ten-year-old boy and his eight-year-old sister, Nicki, seeking their missing father. Imagine Spy Kids, but without the technology, and a lot more of drama. It was about thirty handwritten pages long, and left unfinished as I moved on to begin hundreds of other stories - most of which I never finished before another intriguing idea would grip my young mind.

Interestingly, many years later, an unknown sister - Nicki - reached out to me. She was my biological father's daughter. Our father had disappeared when I was two and her mother was still pregnant. It would be many years into our adolescence before we knew the truth, and more than a decade longer before we would meet.