I'm a native Texan, and I spent my early years a few miles from the Mexican border in Starr County. Eventually my family moved to West Texas where I grew up in the oil fields and ranches of the Colorado River valley northwest of San Angelo. After graduating from North Texas State University and spending a year in graduate school (focusing on 19th century European literature), I moved to Austin in 1970 where my wife, Joyce, and I still live.
I took an editing job with a small regional press and spent the next decade knocking around in a variety of jobs, including running my own small publishing company for a few years, and editing books in the humanities for the University of Texas Press. Finally, in 1980, I decided I couldn't wait any longer to try my hand at fiction. I decided to increase my odds of getting published by researching what kinds of fiction had the best chance of finding a publisher.
Mystery novels rose to the top of my research results. I don't think I'd ever read a "mystery novel" at that time, but I immediately bought a representative collection of twenty-five popular, famous, and classic mystery novels, including British and European writers. After reading these, and many more, I realized that the "genre" encompassed a startling variety of work, everything from Mickey Spillane to Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Two years later I began my writing career by publishing two mystery novels in the same year. Though I began writing in the mystery/crime genre, the subject matter of the books always leaned into the psychological aspects of human nature. I eventually went on to write fiction in other areas, including thrillers with international settings dealing with national and private intelligence professions. When I'm not writing, I spend most of my time in my library filled with books predominately in the areas of literature, history, religion and art.
My other pleasure is gardening and landscape work where I live in the hilly streets of West Lake Hills (Austin). it's a great pleasure to watch things grow. Joyce and I now sit in the shade of trees that are forty feet tall that we planted when we first moved to this place over thirty-five years ago. That's a good thing.
I took an editing job with a small regional press and spent the next decade knocking around in a variety of jobs, including running my own small publishing company for a few years, and editing books in the humanities for the University of Texas Press. Finally, in 1980, I decided I couldn't wait any longer to try my hand at fiction. I decided to increase my odds of getting published by researching what kinds of fiction had the best chance of finding a publisher.
Mystery novels rose to the top of my research results. I don't think I'd ever read a "mystery novel" at that time, but I immediately bought a representative collection of twenty-five popular, famous, and classic mystery novels, including British and European writers. After reading these, and many more, I realized that the "genre" encompassed a startling variety of work, everything from Mickey Spillane to Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Two years later I began my writing career by publishing two mystery novels in the same year. Though I began writing in the mystery/crime genre, the subject matter of the books always leaned into the psychological aspects of human nature. I eventually went on to write fiction in other areas, including thrillers with international settings dealing with national and private intelligence professions. When I'm not writing, I spend most of my time in my library filled with books predominately in the areas of literature, history, religion and art.
My other pleasure is gardening and landscape work where I live in the hilly streets of West Lake Hills (Austin). it's a great pleasure to watch things grow. Joyce and I now sit in the shade of trees that are forty feet tall that we planted when we first moved to this place over thirty-five years ago. That's a good thing.
