A commitment to good writing and meaningful literature
A second act
This website is part of a venture I’ve labeled as my second act. When first entering college in 1968, I sat at my used Remington portable typewriter and started to write the Great American Novel. That came to no good end, and I went into the world like everyone else, worked as a cog in the machine for decades. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, I have been blessed to enjoy almost everything I’ve done. But 50 years of working (more if you count driving a tractor during haying as a 7-year-old) will put some wear on the cog, and it was 32 years later, as the new millennium dawned, that I sat down for the second time, to write.
Writing as reflection
California’s Mount Whitney, at over 14,500 feet, it’s the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states. I climbed Mount Whitney a couple years ago. And the next morning, about 6 am, I was greeted with this scene of the sun-drenched mountain with a perfect reflection in the small lake next to my tent. I thought the perfection of the reflection was symbolic of literary writing as it creates its story and builds its characters, turning the result from fiction into Truth – a good symbol for good writing.
So this is a return to literature, writing, and probably most importantly, reading.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, I have published a dozen short works of fiction and a couple of non-fiction essays, all in a variety of literary journals, many of which no longer exist (such is the nature of the world to under-value literature.) In 2024 I published two novels, both available on Amazon: Too Many Stones and Quiet Desperation. Too Many Stones won the 2025 IndieReader Discovery Award in Literary Fiction. Quiet Desperation earned Honorable Mention, making it one of the top 5 books in the 2025 Eric Hoffer awards contest in the Short Story / Anthology category. My third novel, Neighbors was published in February of 2025 and my fourth novel Why Belize? was published as of June 10, 2025. These four novels are the result of 25 years of work, with the first draft of Too Many Stones written in 2002, and the first draft of Why Belize? written in 2015 and the others between that time period.
Along the way, my writing has won or been honored in a number of literary contests. I’ve frequently served as a judge in several writing contests including the Minnesota Book Awards, the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association, and the national Eric Hoffer Award. During my career-long hiatus from literary writing, I wrote professionally on financial services and technology.
A lifetime of pursuing education, over the decades, have acquired a BA, MBA, Graduate Banking School, Graduate Certificate in Information Systems Management and have taught in a couple of MBA programs for more than 16 years. To bolster my second act, I went back to school and received my MFA from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
I continue to read and post about notable works of fiction, where I emphasize literary fiction. For some this traditional category may be old news. For me, literary fiction brings Truth to Life through Art. So, I view literary fiction as a classical literary genre and will endeavor to do it justice in my reading, reacting, and writing.
Write&Read 