Fiction is an exhilarating pursuit, one with no limits or constraints. It offers the freedom to seek out and preserve that which is mistakenly seen as mundane, workaday, worthless. It champions, through sheer documentary force, people and worlds that would otherwise be lost: shouldered aside by a crowing, jostling world or worse—left to shrink, fade, yellow and crumble. It elevates lives and thus life.
It eschews, when required, flash and bombast in favor of brief glimmers of revelation…of hard-won wisdom, camaraderie, shared struggle and even tantalizing scraps of truth. How audacious, how delicious, this meditation upon the language and its possibilities!
Ultimately, writing affords one an immortality of sorts. If the writer is able to organize and set down thoughts that may be read long after their physical passing, they have achieved some small portion of renown, a mark upon humanity’s stone, and certainly a chance to share with, confide in, perhaps even offer a bit of inspiration to a restless lover of words and ideas yet unborn. Stories—old as the sky, old as us—fuel a special torch, and it shines brightly indeed.
This sharing is all that a writer can hope for, and it is at once a humble pursuit and a fantastic, florid gift, endlessly opened in delight.

1993-95 Arts & Entertainment Writer – Cincinnati News Record newspaper, Clifton Journal and Panorama arts magazines. Wrote record and movie reviews. One feature-length piece, “Stacks of Wax: 50 Years of Cincinnati Record Labels” served as the initial germ of my subsequent two-volume history of the city’s musical development.
2000-01 Wrote several early short stories.
2001-2004 Wrote novel, Apologia with Plymouth.
2006 Literacy speaker for Bossier Parish middle schools.
2009-10 Published a blog entitled Misplaced Zeal, which featured critical pieces on music, film, books, periodicals, television and current events in each of its 12 editions.
2010-13 Wrote further short stories.
2013 Vignette entitled “Pure Morning” published by Australian journal Vine Leaves.
2014 Essay “Queen City Grooves” published by Rust Belt Chic Press, in its collection The Cincinnati Anthology.
2016 Short story “The Windows of Wolinska Street” published in Stone Coast Review (Winter Edition).
2017 Winner, Literary Group, of Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s Critical Mass 5, in April, for “The Windows of Wolinska Street.”

http://misplacedzeal.blogspot.com

Art Institute of Colorado (AA in Graphic Design, 1985, now laughably useless), Louisiana Tech and University of Cincinnati (Art/History)

BA in May 2018.