I am told I didn’t start talking till I was three. Presumably, I was waiting until I had something to say. Further family tradition holds that I haven’t stopped since.

Somewhere in the elementary school years I decided I’d be a novelist when I grew up. Some—too many—decades later, that’s still the plan. But along the way I have been a zookeeper, a bookkeeper, a waiter. For one stint I took blood pressure door-to-door in Burbank, California. Tried college briefly but it wasn’t a comfortable fit. Managed a commercial photography studio. Landed in a grown-up job—later than most—as a technical editor and writer in environmental consulting.

After retiring from my day job (which I managed to conclude without anyone discovering me for the corporate impostor I always believed myself to be) I moved with Dana (the love of my life, wherein lies another story) from California to New Mexico, to Colorado, where we currently reside in the company of pinon-juniper woodland, prolific mule deer, and one diminutive cat.