I had several motivations for starting this site.  The first was to chronicle my journey as an aspiring author of literature for younger readers.  The second was to share what I learn along the way with others who have undertaken a similar journey. And the third was to encourage my son to post some of his book reviews online, as calling him an avid reader is quite the understatement.

Currently I teach biology.  I have been a university professor teaching animal biology, animal development, cell biology, and coral reef natural history.   I’ve been fortunate to travel widely during the years when I was very active in research.  I lived in Hong Kong for a year while working at the University of Science and Technology. I lived on Catalina Island, off the coast of LA, during a post-doc stint with USC.  I also managed to visit Antarctica twice (for 4 months each time) as a research diver.  That’s right, diver.  I dove through holes we either drilled, cut, or blasted through, anywhere between, 3-15ft of sea ice.  Also some drysuit training and research diving methods courses in Monterey, CA.  So if you’re reading this you are likely seeing a trend here, I have been what one would call a Marine Biologist.  My research interest was investigating how marine animals communicate through chemical signals, which can be used between predators and prey, between mates, and between individuals competing for space.

At a point, shortly after being awarded tenure, I decided to quit.  It seems sort of insane.  Leaving a job that I worked for years to get, which is highly competitive and rare, and extremely secure.  But I knew that there was just something else that I needed to do, so I moved on.  We had three boys over the last ten years, currently there is Jack (age 10), Henry (7) and Owen (4).  I’ve spent my time largely with them and continuing to teach at a local community college with an excellent group of colleagues.  I read to my boys, every day, for the past ten years and continue to do so. At some point, I felt that there were stories I had within me that I would like to share.  That I would like to create.  And at first it was just for them, my kids.

I wrote and illustrated a rhyming picture book, entered it in one contest and shelved it.  A few years later I started writing a short novel (starting with the idea that it would be a Magic Treehouse type book, but with science ‘sci-fi’ replacing the magic, as new and futuristic tech can seem magical in itself).  I knew little to nothing about writing, creative writing that is.  I have published over thirty peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals, and many lab guides and protocols, but really dry technical stuff.  So writing a story ‘for kids’..which I’ll get to later as a real misconception…was much more of a challenge than I imagined.

The story was OK, but not something I felt could ever be published for real, just shared with family.  But then I started feeling that I had more stories I wanted to write.  I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed the characters, I enjoyed living in the story and waned to continue.  I outlined several other stories, but came back to my original “Wormholes to Whales” and decided that I needed to work with it and make it ‘real’, whatever that meant.  I started reading books on writing and learned a lot.  A started applying this information to my original story, finding it lacked a recognizable Through Line, there were weak/no real sub-plots, my characters were all sort of flat, the intensity just wasn’t there… So I re-wrote, and edited, then wrote new material, then edited, and again and again and repeat and after iteration after iteration I have, with great pains at times, thrown out over 75% of what I originally wrote, and greatly expanded the story and the characters.  I love the characters now. I want to to see what happens to them next. I have outlined several future adventures for them and intend to keep adding to their story.

But I really want to improve my writing skills, and the only way to really do that, is to write.  So I also wrote a chapter book; Bristol and Bones: Unnatural Investigations, that I tried sending to several agents but didn’t receive any positive feedback, so I will eventually re-work it some and try again (I think it could have greet appeal as a supernatural detective series).  I’ve also submitted a short story to Highlights and started on several other short stories for publication in Sci-Fi magazines.

And now I began this blog site.