Author of the novel, A Jolly Good Fellow.
Winner of the Silver Medal in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards
Best Fiction -- U. S.
Northeast Region
Thanks for visiting. Most people are interested in the background of authors
and the stories they write. The most common question for me is "What inspired you to write this story?"
A Jolly Good Fellow has its origins in lost love. In a period of crushing depression after the love of my
life married somebody else, I holed up and wrote all day, every day for six weeks. I conjured up a man named
Duncan and a boy named Gabriel, and put them together by kidnapping.
Several years and many re-writes later, I began
to discover that Duncan and Gabriel both represent portraits of myself, and that writing the book was a way for
me to kidnap my inner child and experience a bit of healing, renewal or what I call "inner parenting." The two unlikely
bunkmates live together in an anonymous apartment in downtown Boston while Duncan begins his quest for a ransom payment.
Another question is, "How long did it take you to write the book?"
The first draft took six weeks.
I had friends in Amherst in the early 1980s who read the first version. The working title had been Wake Me Up,
followed by That Good Old Kidnapped Feeling, then That Old Kidnapped Feeling. During the 1990's
I had the great fortune to meet up with a high school friend, John Michael Williams, at a reunion. He is a successful writer
and musician, and he offered to read my manuscript. A couple of days later I got a call on my answering machine from
him. He said that we needed to talk, because he had stayed up an entire night reading through the manuscript.
The
news was not all fantastic. He said that there were numerous changes that had to be made. We met and talked for
3 hours, going over point after point. I then rewrote the entire book from start to finish, and came up with about a dozen
other titles. Something Green for Christmas and Secret Santa were bandied about for a while,
but I was intent on emphasizing the more universal themes and relationships in the book, and downplaying the Christmas angle. One
day while I was at work, the song "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" came into my head from out of the blue, and
the rest is history.
"Whatta you want, better than that?"
Click here to see more about A Jolly Good Fellow
Now that I've finished A Jolly Good Fellow, the real work begins. I'm
working with Emma Viggh of Lund, Sweden on a Swedish edition of the book. French and Italian versions are expected
to follow. Soon this book will be all around the world, hopefully because people will want to share it with
their friends and loved ones, and not because international copyright pirates discovered it.
|
|
What's New?
Right now I'm finishing work on another book, Short Circus.
This is a children's book narrated by twelve year old Jem Lockwood about his adventures with his Big Brother and a merry assortment
of neighborhood friends, all while living under the threat that his Big Brother may have to move away.
|
