I live and write in Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Virginia. Living for nearly fifteen years in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I was immersed in the region's rich history, living in its culture, exploring its deserts, mountains, and ranges and learning much of the rich story life of the southwest. I'm a physicist by training, and I have a couple of books on remote sensing through the atmosphere (the Atmospheric Filter)that were published nearly fifteen years ago and are still in use today. I began writing fiction in 2002 in an attempt to get at the truth behind one of the great mysteries of the southwest - the Fountain murders - I learned while living in Las Cruces. The result was my first novel, Hombrecito's War, which won a Western Writers of America Silver Spur Award for Best First Novel in 2006 and was a New Mexico Book Award Finalist for Historical Fiction in 2007. The sequel, Hombrecito's Search, was released in July 2007, and is based on the remarkable fact that Sierra Madre Apaches still raided across the United States border as late as 1930. Treble Heart Press published my third novel, Conspiracy: The Trial of Oliver Lee and James Gililland, in 2009, which, while a novel, covered in historic detail the trial of the men accused of murdering the Fountains. Tiger Tiger Burning Bright: The Betrayals of Pancho Villa, my fourth novel, also from Treble Heart, depicts the fall into near insanity by Pancho Villa and his raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. Tiger, Tiger completes The Vanished Trilogy. I have also published short stories in two anthologies, won awards for essays at the Christopher Newport University Writers' Conference, and published an essay on Pat Garrett in Roundup magazine.
Historical fiction, framed with as much accurate detail as possible about the events driving the story, is my passion. I've learned that, as Oakley Hall once said, "The pursuit of truth, not facts, is the business of fiction." I believe Oakley Hall was exactly right, but I've also found that fiction built around the facts provides powerful insights into the life and times of historical characters and events as they actually were. I hope you enjoy my work and I look forward to hearing from you.
