Be warned that from time to time I use this space as a soapbox for the unpopular or arcane, or as a repository for prose unlikely to find a home elsewhere. This is where I also drop excerpts of raw, barely revised work in progress that offers (I hope) a peek into the creative process.

Hard to believe, but I began this site a decade ago. In the early years I posted quite regularly, but my offerings dwindled as my free time narrowed, my cynicism deepened, and my interest waned. Finally, I abandoned ship altogether. Not only did I abandon this site, I abandoned all my writing.

But something has happened over the past year or so. In spite of the darkness encroaching on us, I began to feel my cynicism giving way to a new creative spirit. I resisted this development at first, perhaps out of fear–fear of failure. Now I simply don’t care. I see the bottom of the hourglass filling and chant my daily call to prayer: Better to have bloomed late than not to have bloomed at all. I’ve come back to my writing. I’ve even come back to my guitar. My life is the richer for it, and I’m enjoying it more.

To those in middle age and beyond who also have lamented a creative passion lost to the push and pull of hustling a buck, raising a family, towing the line, I say pick up the pen, the paintbrush, the guitar–whatever once made you mad to create–and get busy! As Charles Bukowski reminded us, “You can’t beat death, but you can beat death in life.”

Biography

My novel Flicker in the Porthole Glass was published by MAMMOTH Books in 2002 and drew favorable notice in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, which called it “an aural event both jagged and elegant, assaultive and inviting, that moves with the clipped, dangerous, urgent kinesis of hard bop jazz.” Novelist Paul West observed that Flicker in the Porthole Glass “has elegant momentum, a strong narrative drive, a host of articulate phrases, and genuine fascination. Not a syllable goes to waste, not a sentence seems otiose. It crackles and flashes with wit, verve, and earthy contrasts.”

My short fiction has appeared in Haydens Ferry Review; War, Literature, & the Arts; The Little Magazine; Pennsylvania English; and Stolen Island Review. My fictive-critical essay, “Totally Wired: Prepare Your Affidavits of Explanation,” appeared in the anthology Retaking The Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization, published by Pluto Press in 2004. I’ve lived in State College, Pennsylvania (two tours of duty), Philadelphia, Boston, and now Pittsburgh. In my life I’ve been a professional student, rockabilly guitarist, nightclub manager, projectionist, golfer, PR hack, and technical writer-editor.

I’m currently (still) at work on the novel Housebreaking the Muse, the novella KORPORATION, a companion to KORPORATION titled Think Tank, and a collection of bio-fictional short works titled Evocations. In addition to rekindling my creative spirit through prose fiction, I golf as much as my suspect back allows and explore the wonderful world of instro-surf guitar.

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