Biography
I was born and raised in central Iowa, where the corn pollen seems to have done irreparable damage. My training is in the natural sciences, and I obtained my BS in Biology from Northland College in Ashland, WI, where the negative-thirty temperatures seem to have done irreparable damage. I returned to Iowa, where I received my MS and PhD from Iowa State University, where my schooling seems to have done irreparable damage. Incidentally, I did attend the University of Iowa for two years, but have no connection to the Writer's Workshop. I moved to Mississippi in 2001, where the heat seems to have done irreparable damage. As a research scientist, I have about fifty articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. I have been writing fiction since my teens, but being a shy Midwesterner and an insecure Pisces I locked away my characters and stories so that they could not do irreparable damage. In 2007 I finally got serious about publishing my stories, and my first, "The Governor," appeared on www.365tomorrows.com and "Be a Sugar Daddy!" appeared in the May 31, 2009 issue of Ruthless People's Magazine. There are about a dozen or so short stories that will be published one day or another, and I have one novella, Chalkie Aftertaste and the Knights of Indigestion, a silly little thing that nobody takes seriously, nor is meant to. A second novel is currently being shortened to prevent the word count from doing irreparable damage, and the third novel is about halfway done. My writing has been touched by just about every writer I have read, but my favorites include Kurt Vonnegut, Dennis L. McKiernan and Dave Barry, all of whom -- you guessed it -- seem to have caused irreparable damage.
