When I was a tile installer, one over-used joke we said after a job was complete, "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to tile it," just like painters would say about their craft. However, as a writer, I can quickly say that it's not a small world, and that I would want to write it.
Just the maps, I'm from the East side of Cleveland, Ohio and now live in Youngstown, Ohio. After graduating from Marquette University I lived in Los Angeles, California, then Portland, Oregon, and eventually Chico, California where I continued post-graduate work at California State University, Chico. Spending my twenties on the West Coast was another education, and my writing journey started with poetry performances, continued with unpublished novels, and kept the faith with love-letters.
My journey is more about the people I met, their stories, and the stories we made together.
After a summer in Europe, I returned to Ohio to rewrite those novels, but I found Independent Film in Cleveland, and turned to screenwriting. I've had 2-screenplays optioned, have since rewritten them, and am happy to collaborate and work to make a story come to life.
Just the facts, my experiences come from all the work I've done that has supported my efforts of writing at night. Childhood memories include working on an urban farm, delivering newspapers, bussing tables, washing dishes, and life-guarding. During college, I continued with labor in a factory bakery, volunteered as a teacher's aid on an Indian reservation, and more restaurant and bar work. After college, I started a career in social service work as a homeless case manager, dual-diagnosis counselor, and juvenile crisis counselor. After Europe, I dove into the restaurant business in every aspect, and opened a few of my own joints. Then, I turned to construction, stone and tile, eventually becoming a territory salesman for a stone factory. The territory paced me at 90,000 miles per year and that road led me to Biotechnology sales.
That was and is a long and winding road.