I’ve been writing all my life.  My first poem, about bears, was at age five and all through childhood, teen years, and in adulthood, I’ve written poems to process my feelings.  I later delved into stories and fiction.  In college, I’d write term papers for others and loved taking on such assignments of my own.  I majored in Mass Comm and worked as a reporter covering local, national and even international stories at times.  I loved being in the thick of it, but didn’t appreciate the paycheck and eventually sold my soul to corporate America after a time, lured by the security and extra zero’s in one’s paycheck.

In 2004, I co-wrote a screenplay “Empty Sky” with a fine Nashvillian named Paul Lopes.  We tried, unsuccessfully to market it and with Paul’s full approval, I took the story and crafted a novel out of it.  The 3oo-plus page fictional work sat gathering dust until late last year when Four Pillars Media Group came knocking.

We’re in the final stages of bringing this book to press and I am so excited!  It’s like emerging from a long slumber to actually hold the paperback proof copy in my hands, finally!  It is in post-editing now and is slated for release in July!  In case you are wondering what it’s about, here’s the synopsis from the back of the book:

“Grammy winning producer Matt Buckley has an enviable career in Nashville and all the material trappings success can buy. But his personal life is a mess and the death of his father sends him into self-destructive freefall. A chance meeting with a stranger who’s just lost his own son inspires Matt to get his act together.

 After taking some positive steps forward, Matt meets and falls for April, a struggling musician and single mother of two. Emotionally damaged from a troubled past of her own, April is understandably reluctant, given Matt’s history and reputation. But with courage, love and humor, the two manage to work through their personal baggage and trust issues toward a life together and a fairy tale ending… or one would think.”

In case the cover looks familiar, it incorporates one of my own paintings!  I wasn’t sure, but now that I’ve held it in my hands, yeah, I think it works!  More importantly, in testing it out on others, they like it too!