I am thrilled to announce that Mountain Springs House Publishing is doing a blog tour from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

This is the VERY FIRST blog tour I have ever been involved in and I am honored that my publisher, Allison Bruning, has asked me to participate. I will be getting to host some really fine authors on my blog, and I will be doing guest posts on other blogs. This is going to be so much fun! Even for a technosaur like me!

Check out Mountain Springs House on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/mountainsprings/
And “LIKE” us on http://www.facebook.com/MountainSpringsHouse?fret=ts

I have been asked to post a bio and photo so you can get to know me a bit better.

One dark night, just as the wolves howled…. Oh, wait! I’m supposed to do the true stuff, right? Okay, try again.

I was born. I grew up. I am now a big monster. Oh, okay, that’s not quite what I was supposed to do. Do I ever do what I am supposed to do? Not really. Probably why I like Sergeant Nita Slowater of the Special Crimes Team.

Sooo…here’s the real skinny:

Born in a rougher section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (and there were several of those areas when I was growing up. I hear they’ve cleaned Pittsburgh up very nicely, now. Haven’t been back in many years.) I soon learned how to make myself invisible. If you tend to be on the smaller side, this is a very good talent. As a result, I got to observe people in their myriad of attitudes and emotions. They fascinated me.

In self-defense against loneliness, I learned to read very early, and to write. My first story was written in pencil on those tablets for little kids with huge spaces between lines. It was a story about a lost dog. Do you ever forget your first?

Ever since that day, I have been creating alternate realities.

Fortunately, my life has been anything except traditional, and therefore, I have never run out of stories to tell. I lived on the road for several years, have worked non-traditional jobs (and a very few traditional jobs), and have walked many dark roads and city streets.

Currently, I live on a 12 acre wildlife/wild bird/indigenous plant habitat that my wife of 25 years and I have created. During a single year, we host over 68 different species of birds, and many different animals.

When I am not either reading or writing, I love to hike, take photographs, work with my dogs, tend the land, horseback ride, travel, learn new things, and recently, I acquired a motorcycle, so I am having a great deal of fun learning to ride. Whenever I have the opportunity, I also search for the perfect chocolate. There are many good chocolates in the world, but I am convinced that there is a “perfect one”. Have to eat a lot of chocolates while I am researching!

Now that you know who I am, let me share what I write.

My novella, Dead Men and Cats, is a murder mystery set on an island in Puget Sound, Washington. Two women, Megan Albright and Janie Sampson, while walking on the beach, discover an old rowboat stuck in a driftwood tree. As they turn to continue their walk, a calico kitten leaps from inside the rowboat and onto the slick tree trunk. Nearly falling into Shallow Point Cove, the frightened animal leaps back into the boat.
Megan wades out to the rowboat to rescue the kitten, and encounters the body of a dead man lying in the bottom of the boat. A few days later, Dan Uley’s bookstore is firebombed. With a black cat.
Not long after his bookstore is firebombed, Dan is gruesomely murdered.
Fearing that Sheriff Johnson’s lack of progress may stem from his well-known anti-gay sentiments, Megan and Janie launch their own investigation. They never expected their search to lead to a young man that they both considered a friend.

In mid-July, my literary, coming-of-age novel, Good Intentions, will be re-released as a second edition, by Mountain Springs House.
In August, the first book in my three-book series about the Special Crimes Team, Sketch of a Murder, will be released by Mountain Springs House.

So, there you have it: who I am and what I’m up to!