THE LONGER BIOGRAPHY

I grew up in Albany County, NY the eldest of two children to working class parents. I graduated high school in 2000 as a two-sport Varsity athlete in football and baseball as well as a member of the Drama Club and Model Congress. My education career continued onto college at SUNY New Paltz where I eventually majored in English with the goal of becoming a lawyer. When I graduated in 2004, however, I got married instead of going to law school and moved across the country to Los Angeles.

At this point, I began to learn about life. As a newly married man, I had to learn to live with my wife, support us financially while she went to graduate school, and figure out how to accept defeat. I became interested in law enforcement and began processing for the Los Angeles Police Department. However, after a year in LA, we moved back home. I proceeded to work manual labor and construction jobs for the next year as I began taking civil service exams. During this time I spent long periods of time working with my father and I got to know him more deeply than my formative years. I draw a lot of inspiration from this time of my life.

In 2006 I was hired as a correction officer for the NYS Department of Correctional Services and began a 2 year career of working in prisons. As part of my career I met some high profile men such as David Berkowitz and Arthur Shawcross, but mostly I fell into the day-to-day maintenance of life for incarcerated people. During my time in corrections, I began to work on creative pursuits, especially in the long days I spent as an officer in the yard tower. I began outlining and planning a novel on the backs of paper forms. But, I didn’t have all the life experience I needed just yet.

My next turn in life came when I was hired as a Deputy Sheriff and went to the police academy. Over the next 16 years I worked patrol, served as an investigator and as a first line supervisor. I have been specialized in fraud investigations, computer forensics, advanced leadership skills, and more recently in grant coordination, record keeping and threat assessment and management (all the fun things you dream about when you become a cop).

Throughout my life, I have always had my creative pursuits. I have been a musician since my teenage years and played in a band while in college. After the dream of rock stardom faded, I continued to play guitar and write songs as a hobby. I thought that I would pursue songwriting and do little singer/songwriter gigs, recording music independently.

And then one night, working as a sergeant on the midnight shift, I came up with an idea. A new idea. I dramatic question that just wouldn’t quit:

What if you were an adopted kid who went looking for your birth parents only to find out your mother was the unknown victim of a cold case murder?

I wrestled with that idea for months before I finally decided that I was going to write a novel. Then I wrote that novel. Then I decided to self-publish said novel. That’s how my writing career got started. It was that simple…

One of the common interests my wife and I share is the love of camping and the outdoors. About 10 years ago we began hiking in the Catskill Mountains and began a multi year effort to complete the Catskill 3500s, a far flung collection of mountains over 3500 feet of elevation. Our subsequent trips to the area became more and more frequent to the point we spent anniversaries and winter get aways, in addition to camping. I found the mountains a beautiful and mysterious place and while on these long hikes my mind wander. The combination of time, ideas and an open setting allowed my mind to run wild. We have completed the public 33 of the 35 mountains and hope to have an opportunity one day to complete the 2 mountains on privately owned land.

I currently live in Nyack, NY with my wife, my daughter, two old man beagles and a rescue pup.