Authors Marketing Cooperative

Autobiography

I was born in Pennsylvania in the last hour of 1929. Dad was from West Virginia, Ma was a McManus from Glasgow, Scotland. Hopefully, I wasn't the worst thing that happened that year. 

Becoming an avid reader at an early age, I thought I might become a writer. I still thought so in the senior year of high school, but, when a scholarship suddenly made college possible, I used it to become a chemical engineer.  One of the few things I knew, or thought I knew, about writers is that most of them died broke.  Worse, most of them lived that way too. Chemical engineering allowed me to raise a family that didn't have to go barefoot except when they wanted to. 

But the tilt toward writing remained. A particular interest in the American West was prompted by an interest in history and my father's gun collection. The family farm in West Virginia had a house and barn of logs, dating from the 1860s.  A lack of electricity on the farm made a living museum of the place, which was also rich in Indian artifacts.  The book, 'Roughing It', by my favorite author, Mark Twain, also had its influence. My book, 'Thirsty', which was published in 1983, consisted of humorous tales of life in a fictional Idaho gold mining town called Thirsty. It won the Western Writers of America Spur Award as the best western of the year written by a new western author, and was reprinted in a large print edition by G.K Hall in 1999. 

In 1984, a genuine New York literary agent offered to represent me if I would stick to the western genre. Taking the road less traveled by, I declined, and have had occasion since to wonder if that other road might have attracted the multitude by having fewer potholes. The problem is that good plots tend to be born when you didn't even know you were pregnant, and they refuse to restrict themselves to genre. I feared that I couldn't remain original in a genre box.

My next book, 'The Green Flame' was published in 1991. It was the result of being a writer who worked as a chemical engineer on a classified Government project. It was a very dangerous and expensive project which resulted in many accidents and eight fatalities. When it ended in 1960, I thought it would be buried in secrecy forever. By 1985, I thought the story should be told, and began writing it. Thousands of people had worked on that project and I remain surprised that no one else wrote that story. It may be that writers aren't so common after all.

Having turned 70, I'm running out of time to explore the normal publishing routes. (Okay,  if the good guys die young, I ought to last at least to 100, but who's to guarantee it?) Fortunately, technology offers a fast alternative in the form of publish-on-demand services and internet sales. In June, 1999, I decided to publish six books via Xlibris within the year.  I'll miss the target by six months, but, true to form, the six books are in the jelly bean genre:

The Spruce Valley Miracle

A novel of sci fi about to come true.

The Crossroads Time

Western coming-of-age novel, set in 1862.

Vermont Mosaic

Short fictional stories set in Vermont.

A Lifetime Nature Walk

Non-fiction nature tales. Just released.

The Diamonds of Kronos

Sci/fi, aliens attack Earth. Just released.

Murder, Singular & Plural

Private Eye Mystery. January, 2001?

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