Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
– I was born in Philadelphia, PA.
– For my first three years of school I attended Overbrook School for the Blind, a boarding school with classes for the “partially sighted.”
– I attended “normal” schools starting with fourth grade.
– When I was twelve my father joined IBM and we moved to Poughkeepsie, NY.
– When I was fourteen IBM transferred my father to Zurich, Switzerland where I attended Institute Minerva.
– When I was eighteen we returned to the U.S. and I started Lehigh University, majoring in Engineering Physics.
– I left school for a year in the middle of my junior year to work for Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ.
– I went to graduate school at Boston University and received a master’s degree in physics, then left after two years in their Ph.D. program.
– At 26 I moved to Los Angeles and changed my life. Between bouts of creativity I worked intermittently as a software engineer to earn a living.
– Along with the bouts of creativity, I strenuously pursued psychological and spiritual awareness.
– When I could, I retired and moved to Thailand to write full-time.
I’ve written two novels. The first still languishes in a desktop bottom drawer. It’s not yet ready to see the light. My second, however, is.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The latest is: Memoir of an Unlikely Savior
The inspiration for this book was a chain reaction.
In a 2003 writing class I wrote a “word portrait” of Rene Magritte’s The Mysteries of the Horizon, an interpretation of the person and setting of the painting. Then as a later exercise I wrote a “wrapper” story about the writer of the word portrait and how it reflected his life. I liked what I’d done and wrote more. I began to connect them into a set of linked short stories.
Then I read an issue of Time Magazine about autism and realized the autistic nature fit my protagonist. I read books that taught me more about the attributes of an autistic childhood and about how some were able to overcome their limitations.
By then the collection was becoming a unified piece, finding its own life probing the boundaries of social, psychological, and spiritual understanding and how they fit together. My goal became the expansion of these boundaries for the protagonist, the author, and hopefully the reader.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t know that it’s unusual, but for me the writing process is essentially rewrite. I get the chassis down as quickly as possible, then starting with this die-cast toy car on which the wheels may not even turn, I take it apart and rebuild it over and over and over until I have what I hope feels like a two-seat sports car. (The risk is thinking I have the sports car when it’s still just a hay wagon.)
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I confess I’m too busy writing to read much. The latest to wow me was Hesse’s Steppenwolf.
What are you working on now?
The sequel to Memoir. It’s too early to try to describe.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m no good at that. Giving the book away on Amazon Select seems to give me the most hits. I give it away at the beginning of every month and every other month list it on all the sites I’ve found to list Amazon freebies.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I hardly feel qualified, but if asked I’d say:
1. Sit down and write. Don’t struggle with the process and don’t care what comes out. Research what you need to research, take classes when that feels good, but mostly write.
2. Get as many people as you can to read what you write, have them give you their honest opinion of what you’ve written, and button your lip down hard while they give it. It doesn’t matter whether they know what they’re talking about or whether they’re right or wrong. Listen to what they say and it will make you think about your writing. And that will make you grow.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
If you want to write, write.
What are you reading now?
Nothing. I’m too busy writing.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Whatever feels right to do as I get to each day.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
It wouldn’t matter. Whatever I took I’d be tired of in a month.
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