About the Author

About the Author

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BIOGRAPHICAL

Born in Troy, New York in 1973. Attended Sacred Heart School in Troy followed by WK Doyle Middle and Troy High Schools. Received a B.S. in 1992 in Elementary Education from the College of Saint Rose. Received a M.S. in Developmental Reading from the State University of New York at Albany in 1997. Holds New York certifications in Math and Elementary Education.

PUBLICATION CREDITS

Racing the Rope, AuthorHouse Publishing; International distribution through Ingram Book Distributors, 2007. "Public Vs. Private School"; Capital District Parent, 2005. "Twelve Angry Doughnuts"; Jacqui Bennett Writing Bureau, 2005. "How we can all make a difference"; Capital District Mature Life, 2004. "How to make good readers great"; Capital District Parent, 2004. "Ric crossed my path all too briefly"; The Evangelist, 2004. "A look at selective Mutism"; Capital Region Living, 2004. "The Gifted Child", Capital District Parent, 2004. "6th Grader heads for trip of a lifetime"; Times Journal, 2004. "Four from Schoharie raise $ for cancer"; Times Journal, 2004. "Making the Grade"; Capital District Parent, 2004. "Adam's legacy lives on as one of Andrews Warriors"; Times Journal, 2004.

IN A NUTSHELL
I wrote my first book when I was in junior high school. I have it in a special place at home. It was handwritten, as I didn't know how to type at that time. My "manuscript" filled a three subject notebook and an additional single subject notebook for a grand total of nearly 400 pages. This is when I was thirteen, mind you. I shared this story with award winning children's author Daniel Hayes who was my English teacher at Troy High School. I recall that he told my mother in a parent-teacher conference that I had the potential to be a published writer one day.

I wrote all the time as a youngster, but I also got heavy into the band, and it kept me very busy. As a trombonist, I participated in a half dozen different ensembles from concert to jazz and was given the opportunity to be part of local and regional jazz concert ensembles. To the extent that I was enjoying the art of music through high school I did less writing. So, when it was time to choose a career path I thought of music education. Fearing that the job market would be smaller in a generalized position, I decided to earn a degree in classroom education. I had worked with kids in the Big Brothers program as a high school student and enjoyed it so I chose to focus on a degree path that lent itself to working with younger pupils.

I got back to writing seriously in my second year of teaching. I saw a commercial that inspired my first chapter book for children and so sent it out to an agency in New York City. To my surprise, an agent contacted me about it. First book. First submission. Contact. This is almost unheard of. They ended up passing on the project after several dialogues, but this was the event that changed my thinking about the possibilities. "Wow. If I write something and submit it, maybe it will get published." This started an intense journey of writing and submitting. If after several submissions a book didn't take, then I went on to the next best thing. From 1998 to present I've written about thirty short stories and ten chapter books for middle level and young adult readers. I've only tried to market a small portion of these because of time and finances, but gained a lot of experience in my endeavors. I've come across terrible literacy agencies, horrible copyediting services, and worked tirelessly to squeeze into a cluttered market that, quite frankly, does not welcome new writers with open arms. Publishing is a business after all, and new authors do not draw in tons of customers. I decided against my better judgment to start writing articles and short stories, thinking that I would build a writing resume and expand from there. Having only nights to work with, I hated to spend time writing for magazines. I wanted to write books. Once I got going though, I found writing articles, conducting research, and interviewing quite fun. I even got to write a couple of personal essays that were published. To see something you've written in a regional magazine is surreal. It also helped to validate all the time and energy expended on the process. Within a couple of years I had almost a dozen articles printed in nearly half dozen local and regional publications. I was on a roll.

Twelve Angry Doughnuts was a surprise victor in a short story fiction contest. It offered me a quick buck and local praise. Did I say local praise? This silly story snagged the attention of a young writer in Turkey who asked to translate it into his native language for publication in a Turkish magazine. I agreed to this arrangement and thought it was yet another cool thing.

I decided to work with AuthorHouse in publishing my first book. I chose Racing the Rope because it was freshly written, short, and I thought it was funny, in a darker sense. This is the area of comedy I enjoy most.

I'm still writing and submitting. I want to boast a high sales record so that I can continue to publish, or seek new venues for getting my work out there. When you write, your passion is creating, not necessarily making big money. However, you must always set new goals no matter how far you've gone, otherwise you stop. Then what?

The next book I'm looking to put out is quite different from Racing the Rope.