These are my dogs. As of this moment, they haven’t written anything. But they are extremely photogenic. I am not. I will eventually get around to posting a photo of myself…

I’m not big on putting myself into the ether, but it’s important to me that those who visit this site, and especially those who take a chance on an unknown writer, know they’re dealing with a real person.

Not that long ago, I had the experience of being sucked into an algorithmic vortex that led me to buy a book by an author I’d never heard of, but whose social media reviews promised the read of a lifetime… By the time I got to chapter two, I realized I was reading something generated by AI. I understand the allure. Writing is hard. But the lack of logical cadence, the spliced-together feel of it all, the sheer number of clichés, really brought the artificial part to the fore.

That experience left me wanting to assure readers—as much as you can in a virtual environment—I am real, flaws and all.

I have been writing from a young age—who hasn’t? I have a degree in film, which hasn’t proved particularly practical. After college, I interned as a journalist for a film magazine that no longer exists. I had a brief and weird experience writing for a game show no one would recognize. I wrote a lot of plays, some of which won awards and were published and produced here and there, which was delightful.

Writing a mystery novel has been a bucket list item of mine for years. So here we are.