I was born and raised in Nebraska—a place where people prefer you think well of them should you think of them at all—and attended the University of Nebraska and John F. Kennedy College, where I studied English literature and history with a focus on creative writing. While in college, I won the Mari Sandoz Prize for my short story, “The Tourist,” and subsequently moved to Los Angeles where I wrote sketch comedy, started another novel, and starved. After a couple of years I gave up writing and went to medical school at the University of Nebraska followed by post-doctoral training and teaching/research appointments at the University of Iowa, Brown University Program in Medicine, and the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Twenty years passed and I authored or co-authored forty scientific articles, abstracts, and textbook chapters.

In 1994, my first literary publication in two decades, “The Next One,” appeared in the journal, The Long Story. More literary publications followed, including a collection of short stories, Howling at the Moon. A novel, Treasure of the Blue Whale, was published by Regal House in 2020. A 2021 Silver Medalist in the IBPA Benjamin Franklin  competition, it tells the story of a boy who discovers a treasure on the beach during the Great Depression. My next novel, Delphic Oracle, U.S.A., takes place across nearly a century in small town Nebraska. Released in 2022, it was the Grand Prize Winner in the 2022 CIBA Mark Twain Book Awards competition. The Penny Mansions—a novel set in an Idaho mountain hamlet during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918—was released in October, 2023. It was a featured selection in Kirkus Reviews and won a First Place ribbon in the 2023 Mark Twain Book Awards. My next book from Regal House Publishing is “Sixty Seconds,” in which nine seemingly disparate, yet inextricably intertwined, people hurtle toward their own climactic finishes as midnight and the official start of V-E Day approaches on 7 May 1945.  It will be released in July 2025.

I reside in Oregon with my wife, Pam, who reads my rough drafts and then tells me the truth.