About The Author
I was born in 1953 in Cleveland, Ohio. My family lived there for my first ten years. It’s where my mother used to read to my sister and me and where my love of reading began.
In 1963, we moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania. I attended St. Brigid’s grade school where I soon discovered its small library and its large collection of National Geographic magazines. Television was limited and in black and white in those days. Books showed me the world in color and had the ability to transport me in time and space. I was a willing traveler.
At Meadville Junior High School I discovered The Complete Sherlock Holmes and spent my study halls sitting with Holmes and Watson around the fireplace at 221B Baker St. The author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inspired me to try to write. Since his detective (Holmes) was a master of deductive reasoning, Doyle went into great detail describing his characters and their settings. He had the power to paint a picture with words. I loved that!
I would try my hand at writing during those study halls. A friend of mine, Pam Kern, would read what I wrote and either give me a thumbs up … or down. Mostly down. She was a harsh critic … but a valuable friend.
I graduated from Meadville High School in 1971 and attended Edinboro University where I majored in History until switching to Psychology in 1973. I received my degree in 1975.
I had been trying to write my Little Bighorn novel but was having trouble mapping it out. Several times I started it only to lose faith in the project and stop. While caught in this doldrum, a friend asked me to write a book for her about a woman who lives in a castle …by herself … and it’s besieged. My friend was experiencing one of life’s hard times, so I started writing a book about just such a woman in just such a castle. In the story, the woman struggles but ultimately rises victorious above her besiegers. This story became my first novel, GWEN, and it is categorized as a Gothic Romance Adventure. It involves a woman who is Lady of a castle called Wellstitch in England in 1348. That year marked the arrival of the great bubonic plague in England. I published it in 2000.
GWEN attracted a small, but loyal following. One of them told me one time that she couldn’t put it down and she didn’t want it to end. Those are the two nicest things you can say to a novelist! So, I replied that it didn’t have to end and I sat down to write AIDAN (2005, iUniverse).
AIDAN enlisted the same characters that populated the pages of GWEN but its story begins 20 years later. I crafted it so that, though it is a sequel to GWEN, it is its own story. I had hopes that AIDAN might be picked up as a sequel to Mel Gibson’s BRAVEHEART which had just arrived in theaters at that time. At the end of BRAVEHEART, the Princess of Wales (played by Sophie Marceau) realizes she is carrying the child of Mel Gibson’s character, William Wallace. Historically that child would become Edward III, one of England’s greatest Kings. The plot revolved around Edward III struggling to keep his true father's identity secret.
As of this writing, Mr. Gibson has not yet called.
I currently live in Lakewood, Ohio just outside of Cleveland where my life revolves around my three wonderful daughters, my three wonderful son-in-laws and my two wonderful grandchildren. Life is sweet!
“I myself did not fight with the warriors. I cannot, then, be a witness. As a seer, I had visions of the soldiers coming for us. We went to fight General Crook on the Rosebud and drove him and his Shoshone and Crow allies away. I then told the people that I had a dream in which the skies opened and the bodies of many more dead soldiers fell like rain, upside down and into our camp. It was a sign of the coming of Peoushi. And so he came and threw his soldiers at us, ordering them to fight and die. But I was not in the fight that day. So I have gathered next to me three warriors who fought the soldiers that day. They will tell you what they saw.
