It was former CAL President, Barb Lundy, bless her soul, who first suggested that I begin submitting my short stories for publication.
Soon thereafter, and much to my daughter's chagrin, "How Not To Buy a Bra for Your 11 Year-Old," an embarrassingly true, never-to-be-forgotten, father-daughter experience, was picked up by Fatherly Magazine.
With a bit of success and my wife, Patsy’s, suggestion that I stick with what I know best, I began writing, rewriting and editing a score of short stories about my life and earlier times in Brooklyn, Louisiana, and my service in the military.
With each success I grew braver, eventually combining my art, science, military and street-urchin backgrounds into a series of police-procedural/mystery novels and novellas. The outcome was The Banty Conners Trilogy: three books about a diminutive, disabled, but strong-willed, red-headed Irish woman and former NYC detective from East Flatbush in Brooklyn.
She is my proof that a strong-willed woman with a good brain can overcome physical setbacks that would stop many a macho man. To my great surprise and satisfaction, books one and three of the trilogy were short-listed for CAL Awards. Along the way, I was asked (and honored) to serve on CAL's Board as the Awards Director. The other members were, and are, to this day, inspiration for improving my writing skills. Now, as I fantasize a new project, I find myself wanting to explore more substantial themes, having farther-reaching consequences.
I self-publish under the moniker of Little Orphan Press. Yes, there is a story there, too. Wilhelmina, my next effort, is set on The Myrtles, a modest four hundred acre plantation in Northern Virginia, just prior to the Civil War. Ending forty years later, close to the turn of the Twentieth Century, Wilhelmina will be a fiction of unexpected secrets and truths of what good people might have done and, perhaps, what should have happened. Stay tuned.