About The Author

I was born and raised on a farm in West Texas about 30 miles southwest of Amarillo. My first eight years of schooling was in one of the last one-room school houses in the state, located in the tiny town of Umbarger. Though it was a public school, three Catholic nuns taught all twelve grades. I left for the seminary in Ohio for my four years of high school, but had I stayed to graduate from Umbarger High, I would have been the only male student to do so that year of 1955. As it was only three girls graduated. Size, you see, was not the strong point of Umbarger Public School. To say there were seventy-five students in the whole school would be exaggerating on the high side.

I learned a lot during my four years of high school at the Josephinum. In those days the seminary was a strict, nineteenth-century styled boarding school operated under Prussian military styled discipline. Part of what I learned was that the priesthood was not for me. I took my leave of the place in the fall of 1959 and went back home to Texas where I enrolled in college, then law school, finally beginning my practice in 1966. Twenty-five years later I took stock of my life and where I was in it, and with my wife Judy’s support, decided to begin easing out of the practice. Another year passed before I hung up my gloves for good and have since devoted my time to doing those things I love best – writing, reading, walking and biking through Europe and parts of South America, tasting wines and beer with friends and talking about any interesting idea anyone comes up with. I served on the editorial board of the local lawyers’ magazine for five years, two of which were as managing editor. I wrote a bunch of short stories and several novels and got half-way through several more. I’ve had a few short stories published, but none of my novels, yet. That’s the next phase, and so far it’s proven to be less fun than writing them. I’ve had a few nibbles, but no one has yet swallowed the hook. All my stories, of course, are based on and grounded in my life experiences. Accordingly I need not set forth details of my life here since they are to be found, after a fashion, in my stories. Check them out. Some are posted here on my website. Feel free to tell me what you think.