About Writing/Bio
eople sometimes ask me: Why do you continue to devote so much of your time to writing? What they leave unsaid is that I've lived a long and full life (I'm 79) and isn't it time to sit back, relax and enjoy life?
It's true that I've had lengthy and satisfactory careers as a journalist and public relations practitioner, and that I've earned the right to play golf, go fishing, take leisurely walks in the woods, frequent theaters-do all the things that retired folk do. But a greater truth is that planning the remaining years of my life around those activities would leave me feeling that something was missing. There would be a void in my life.
I've spent my entire adult life writing-- as a reporter, editor, columnist, speechwriter, scriptwriter, and lots more. You name it and I've written it. And now, in the sunset of my life, I find that I simply cannot stop writing. Nor do I want to because since I was a teen, the process of writing has been my passion, my despair and my joy. I blame it on-or credit it to-my discovery of fiction at the age of 12.
Confined to my Newark home after an appendectomy, I was miserable with boredom. My dad, born "in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge," as he used to say, had left school after the sixth grade to go to work and later to serve in the Army in France. As a taxi driver, he worked nights and slept during the day. My mother had emigrated from Eastern Europe and could neither read nor write English. But both of them encouraged me to take my schooling seriously and to frequent the local library. My illness, however, prevented me from visiting the library. So, in desperation, and with nothing else to do (this was at least a century before television, the internet, iPods, etc.), I started reading several books that an aunt had brought me. In those books, I discovered the wonderful worlds and characters created by Mark Twain, Zane Gray and Newark native Stephen Crane, author of the Red Badge of Courage, still considered a classic novel of the Civil War. Never mind that I couldn't attend classes or play with my friends after school; I had discovered strange new worlds and made friends with far more fascinating characters! I even fell in love for the first time-with Tom Sawyer's childhood friend, Becky.
As a reader, I was hooked. The writing came later.
I was a senior in high school when my English teacher assigned each of us to write a paper. The only rules were that it had to be creative and at least 1,500 words. I knew instantly that I would write a short story. The Last White Line was about a high school football player who had disappointed his coach, his teammates and his father with his poor play. But in his last game as a senior, he scored the winning touchdown on a spectacular play as the clock ran out. My teacher loved it, and my classmates (especially those on the football team) thought it was the best thing they'd read in class all semester. From that moment, I knew I would devote my life to writing.
It didn't happen right away. In college, I worked part-time in retail stores, studied literature, wrote short stories and dreamed of writing a novel. After my discharge from the Marines during the Korean War, I learned that credentials as an English major elicited more yawns than interest. My first job as a civilian was as a statistical clerk for an appliance and TV manufacturer where there wasn't much opportunity for "creativity." When a union-organizing effort led to massive layoffs, including me, I decided to get serious about writing. I needed to earn money so newspapers seemed the way to go. One year on a weekly on the Jersey Shore and another ten years with the Newark News taught me the discipline required to write under deadlines. I tried writing fiction at night and on weekends, but the thought of sitting down to a typewriter after writing all day left me feeling burned out. In those days, newspaper pay was poor and a growing family required more income. Public relations paid much better so I joined the old Bell System and stayed there for 20 years, all the time thinking about writing a book but doing nothing about it.
After my retirement from AT&T in 1985, my late wife, Ann, said: "You've always wanted to write novels. Now you have no more excuses." She was right. But I was still doing some PR consulting and freelance writing. I collaborated with a Denver attorney to write and publish How to Run Your Business So You Can Leave It in Style, and learned quite a bit about agents and publishing. By now I was ready to concentrate on fiction. At the age of 59, I put all my energy into learning how to write a novel. I joined writers' groups, subscribed to writers' publications, filled a shelf with books on fiction writing--and wrote my first novel, an international thriller/suspense/intrigue set in Iran in the late 1970s. (I had "commuted" to Tehran for three years on a Bell System project.)
As a first novel, my thriller remains unpublished. But writing it taught me a great deal. With Ann's support, I wrote and published Deadly Passage and Sakura's Stratagem employing the same protagonist I had created in my unpublished novel. But when my beloved wife and best friend for 47 years died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, I no longer had the passion to continue writing, and I stopped. Later, after I met and married Beverly, the old spark returned and, with her encouragement, I resumed writing. Since then I've published No Laughing Matter, an amateur sleuth mystery, and Neptune's Chariot, an historical I first started many years ago. More books are planned.
Looking back, I realize how fortunate I've been to have chosen writing as career. I've always enjoyed my work, and it provided enough to live comfortably while raising our daughter and son. Now I am a proud grandfather of four and great-grandfather of five, all living in Colorado. The fact that I did not publish my first book until the age of 62 - and four more since then - has convinced me that one is never too old to achieve one's dreams.
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