Bio(ish)

Have you come looking for a bio? You found it!

My life as a writer started as an eight-year-old right fielder in St. Therese’s Little League, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Not many balls found their way out to the patch of dandelions where I stood swinging my red mitt from the end of my right hand. I had plenty of time to daydream little stories, poems, and other creative ideas that skittered around in my somewhat oversized head.

Baseball got me out of my hometown and into college. While trying to pitch for a small school in southeastern Ohio, I discovered the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, plus the joys of mind-altering chemicals. I traded mitt for pen, grass for grass, and began filling journals with hard-luck ditties and random love songs.

Four years, two colleges, and a few bong hits later, I graduated with an English degree from a Big 10 university that prides itself on football and Defense Department contracts

Soon after, along with my #1 traveling companion, Courtney, I set up camp in the heart of the Beer Belt for a long two years. I accidentally started writing copy for a fly-by-night ad agency that no longer exists. My first batch of copy was for a vacuum cleaner; my second for an HVAC company. I realized my job sucked and blew. Eventually they fired me for pairing Birkenstocks with Polo shirts.

In dogged pursuit of living our hippie love dream, we pushed westward for Portland, Oregon. After one more failed stab at full-time employment (that company is also out of business), I started what has become a 20+ year career as a wordsmith-for-hire.

To date, I've written for multiple Fortune 500 companies, along with nonprofits, schools, institutes, small businesses, and individuals. We're talking everything here: brand strategies, web copy, commercials, white papers, blog posts, speeches, presentations, and even the occasional haiku.

I've taught hundreds of writers of all ages in curated workshop settings, board rooms, and on college campuses throughout the U.S. Since 2016, I've worked on more than two dozen published books as a ghostwriter, editor, and manuscript consultant. If you have an idea for a story or book the world needs right now. I'd love to hear it.

Today, Courtney and I share a home and office in the sticks of Vermont with one almost-teenage daughter, and a gaggle of four-leggers. I'm's a little grayer now than when I pitched my last game (July, 1996). Still, if you ask me, I'll tell you I'm ready to bring my 58-foot slurve to any team that needs a left-handed specialist.

Other things of note:

  • I like beer and pizza
  • I talk a great deal about baseball
  • I write poetry and apply the tools of poetry to every piece of writing I create
  • I'm among the poets featured on Oregon's Poetic Voices
  • I'm a father and a husband, both of which factor into nearly every decision I make
  • I work from a home office but am known to shuttle around
  • I was fired from my first agency gig because of my Birkenstocks
  • In 2004 I was laid off from my second and last full-time job. That company has since imploded as well though is still sort of around
  • I tend to stare longingly out the window whenever "My Hometown" is playing nearby
  • I left my hometown to play baseball and wound up becoming a writer
  • I like donuts
  • There's photographic evidence on this website of me being cited for selling beer without a license in a Phish parking lot, July 1999 (but you have to look for it)
  • I'm okay not using periods at the end of a bullet statement, but I will use periods if it makes more sense to do so
  • I'm left-handed but am actually stronger with my right hand
  • I'm a middle child (two brothers)

And a few more random bits & pieces

  • My wife and I have a side business that involves selling meat from our home, but really it's Moe's business
  • I do not like soccer, but most designers I work with do and they don't mind that I don't
  • I have taught writing workshops throughout Portland since 2005 (kids and adults)
  • My daughter was born on April Fools and fooled my wife by being breech, and our world turned upside down in a profound way
  • The futon in my office is there for Moe, who likes to hang with me while I write
  • The Birkenstocks that got me fired were the same ones I'm wearing in the picture of my Phish lot citation
  • My title at the last full-time employer was "marketing specialist," but I never really understood what I should be specializing in
  • "Glory Days" also gives me pause, but for different reasons related to my father and baseball
  • As the story goes, as soon as my father discovered I was left handed, he put a ball in my hand and told me to throw
  • I have passed my like of donuts onto my daughter
  • I've been writing a book about the summer of 1999 since the summer of 1999, and I'm still writing it. It's the story I'll never finish but will always write, and I'm okay with that.
  • The right and left hemispheres of my brain work well together.

Questions? Ask away.

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