Dear Reader,

Welcome to my website.  I'm thrilled to be able to reach out to so many interested readers in this way and to acquaint you all with my work.

I hope you noticed the image up above. It was chosen for me by my intrepid webdesigner, Mark Sayers, and it amazes me how apt it is. You see, I write by hand. From five-line tankas to two-hundred-page novels, everything starts with an impulse coming from who-knows-where, and then travels through a pencil and out onto a sheet of paper. Many of my writer friends can't believe it, but it's true. So old-fashioned. But although I find myself living the rest of my working life in front of a computer, I need to feel the weight of the pencil in my fingers and the coolness of the clean paper under my hand to get that first rush of words down. From pencil to Internet is a long way to go. But it's no different from anything else in life, I suppose. An old lyric from the Band is playing in my head as I'm writing this -- "you take what you need and you leave the rest" -- one of those obvious "life lessons" that can mean more than it says.

This leads me to another section of this homepage, the little white box. In this, you may find a poem, an opening paragraph from a story, an overheard comment, or notice of some (hopefully) exciting bit of news. But you will also find, from time to time, one of the many quotations I have read and saved over the years, sentiments that have kept me going in this writing life even when it has seemed that no one, ever, would read of word of what I wrote. Anyone who has ever tried to think of himself as a writer will know what I mean. For every publication, there are a million rejections. For every public reading, there are months when you feel like Cassandra screaming alone into the darkness. There were times when I thought of my work as just a collection of unbestowed gifts. How sad. But I now know it wasn't true, and so, for anyone who has ever felt the same, I will share my collection with you. I hope they help you to believe that any gift offered in honesty and love is a gift shared, even if you have no idea who it might go to, or if it might ever be received.

So, here is my website and my pledge to you. As often as I can, I will use it to keep in touch with all of you, to let you in on the ups and downs of this writer's life, and take whatever encouragement I may receive and pass it on for use in your own dreams. Cruise around the links. Contact me if you wish. And thanks for stopping by.