I am a native of Burke County, North Carolina. I was educated in the North Carolina public schools and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both college and law school. I’ve lived and practiced law in Northeast Tennessee for most of my adult life. I still practice law, but now only part time. (My official job title is “of counsel,” a law practice term of art that means…part time.) Most of my practice is now arbitration and mediation.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cowboy. My boyhood hero was Davy Crockett, as played by Fess Parker in the Disney television episodes. When I developed a love of reading, my favorite books were the history and natural science books for youngsters. There were the Landmark books, the “All about” series, and the “real books.” They covered everything from pirates to dinosaurs to space travel.

When I was eleven, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs through a battered old copy of “A Princess of Mars” my father told me I ought to read. I decided that fiction was worthwhile, and Burroughs led me to numerous other writers who wrote everything from high fantasy to space opera to “westerns” to historical novels to mainstream science fiction. I generally thought these entertaining stories were better than the stuff my high school teachers made us read. But I developed a fondness for Shakespeare and Milton and for various of the ancient Greek playwrights. I carried a predilection for fantasy and science fiction into adulthood even as my tastes in reading broadened (when I had time to read, which wasn’t always).

I started wanting to be a writer when I was about 13 years old. I started with stories about my classmates and me being thrust into wild and improbable adventures. My classmates thought they were funny. I wrote some stories in college, one of which made it into a campus literary magazine. Then came law school and beginning law practice, which left no time for writing at all, not for a long time.

Along the way, I met the love of my life, Deborah Patrice Harvey, who was crazy enough to marry me. Deb has always been my best friend. She manages to approve my various undertakings. I’ve been lucky in my spouse, having sadly observed so many who have not been so lucky.

My five published novels all have some relationship to the practice of law. On a whim, I decided to inject the paranormal into my stories, and thus was born the concept of “The Haunted Law Firm,” the clients of which turn out to be …well, unusual. I’ve been gratified that some readers like the series. There may be more of the Haunted Law Firm in the future.

But right now, I am trying something else. My latest work, which should come out sometime in 2024, is a story set in another world, similar to but very different from our own, a world inhabited by people from our world who have “crossed over” to it in some mysterious way at various times in history. It’s a world in which England is a continental power and holds the fealty of the duchy of New Texas, where Texas Rangers guard against Scythian raids, and where the greatest enemy is the Empire of Carthage, whose priests and priestesses hold awesome magical powers.

And it all began with a dream, a long time ago…